Structure, texture, architecture. How can you build with threads?
If you like beautiful textiles, you will surely be interested in the profile of a Polish artist and designer – Aleksandra Gaca, from Łódź, a graduate of the Łódź High School of Art and of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, who has been living and working in the Netherlands for years. For more than 25 years, he has been designing contemporary functional textiles, textile products and installations that bring together art, design, and interior architecture.
Her passion is the technique of weaving, the creation and development of three-dimensional structures. Her inspiration comes from the organic forms found in nature, from large and small architectural objects as well as from modern ballet where rhythm, harmony and repetition are strongly emphasised. Her first structured 3d fabrics were produced on traditional hand looms, later on the industrial ones. Today, the artist creates them using technologically advanced, digitally programmed looms.
Aleksandra Gaca’s fabrics are used in many different ways, but rarely are they purely decorative. They can be found in luxury hotels, used to make cushions and blankets; they are also appreciated by architects who design wall panels. The fabrics not only look beautiful but can also soundproof the interior of a study or an acoustic studio. Renault car designers took an interest in them while working on the interior of the Renault Symbioz model; curtains made from fabrics of her design adorn the huge windows of Hermes shops in the Chinese metropolises of Wuxi, Harbin, and Shanghai. In the Netherlands, her textiles with sound proofing properties were used in the auditorium of the Lakenhal Museum in Leiden during its renovation in 2017, or in the council chamber of the city hall in Groningen.
Aleksandra Gaca also willingly engages in smaller scale projects, allowing her fabrics to be enjoyed by individual clients in their homes. These include a series of exceptionally beautiful kitchen cloths, warm scarves that wrap around tightly or soft seats replacing traditional pouffes.
All the fabrics, regardless of their intended use, are distinguished by their calm colour palette while the texture remains very rich. This characteristic makes contact with them not only a pleasant aesthetic experience, but also prompts concentration, focus on details or – if one can – meditation.
By the end of the week, on Saturday 28 October, at 10 p.m., NPO3, as part of its De Wereld van Dutch Design series, will broadcast a documentary presenting the artist’s work, her vision of the role of fabric as an architectural element and her plans for the future. Don’t miss it!
Text: Monika Gimblett