HANDMADE BY - Part II. Curated by Patricia Waller.

At the beginning there is the thread. From a single, flexible fiber, a structure emerges through twisting, knotting, interlacing and binding—a structure that creates order without ever entirely resolving what is unruly. Thread connects and holds things together, traces lines and trajectories, while at the same time opening up the possibility of becoming entangled. Our language is rich in metaphors drawn from this realm: thoughts are spun further, connections are woven, stories unravel, we lose the thread or become emmeshed in contradictions.

Nine years after the first exhibition titled Handmade by, Galerie Deschler once again turns its attention to the multifaceted relationship between art and textile processes. Handmade by—Part II, curated by crochet work artist Patricia Waller, brings together international artists Georg Haberler, Seet van Hout, Bouthayna Al Muftah, Sergio Roger, Magda Sayeg, Yukiko Terada and Joana Vasconcelos, whose works explore, in very different ways, the boundaries between textile art, sculpture, installation and painting, while extending the engagement with the creative potential of the handmade through new artistic approaches. Alongside the textile works, the exhibition presents wooden sculptures by the artist Gerhard Kehl, who passed away two years ago. They introduce another dimension of craftsmanship and enter into dialogue with the textile works.

What connects these works is not only a particular material—the thread—but also an attitude towards the process of making. Wherever textile techniques are employed, time itself becomes an integral part of the work. Repetition and patience encounter construction and chance; individual elements come together to form a whole. In this sense, the fundamental human experience embodied in textile work—the transformation of the tangled, disordered chaos of fibers, fluff and knots into a coherent fabric—points to an essential human capacity: that of creating connections and meaning from a multitude of disparate elements.

Here, the textile is not understood as a self-contained genre, but as a principle. It can expand, condense, conceal or reveal; define bodies and spaces; preserve memories and carry cultural experiences forward. The works on view demonstrate how seemingly simple materials and processes can give rise to complex visual and conceptual worlds—situated between craftsmanship and concept, intimacy and monumentality, order and dissolution.