The TextielMuseum used the Bauhaus’ 100-year anniversary as an opportunity to invite four artists to produce new pieces for the museum’s collection in the TextielLab. Koen Taselaar created an almost nine metre long tapestry entitled 'A Slightly Inaccurate But Nonetheless Lightly Entertaining Story Of The Bauhaus' inspired by the Bauhaus.
Taselaar was inspired for this commission by Bayeux's centuries-old carpet and more recent textile stories. His subject is the history of the Bauhaus from 1919 to 1933, from the early esoteric, experimental and exuberant years to the later period that increasingly revolved around architecture and functionalism. He drew on narrative medieval carpets but also incorporated elements from the visual language of contemporary comics and games.
Taselaar enjoyed resisting the modernity of the Bauhaus, with decoration as a characteristic in itself. He injected this beautiful piece of epic with humour, contrariness and a spontaneous style of drawing. For example, fumes from the garlic-rich diet prescribed by Johannes Itten surround a playful figure from Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet (1922).
Koen usually draws his images and builds them up from lines. While weaving, however, he noticed that the image is largely determined by the colours and adapted his drawing accordingly. Taselaar first drew the design in his studio and later on scanned it bit by bit in A3 formats. Later on he found a program that could read the scanned pictures and translate them into a design suitable for the weaving programs. His working method also changed in other respects. He now worked less intuitively than in his earlier drawings, studying the history of the Bauhaus and collecting characteristic forms, patterns and slogans. He then gave them a place in a planned composition in his own drawing style. He had to leave the execution of his design to the loom. The result is a spectacle of colours and materials falling over each other. Taselaar was searching for different kinds of binding to achieve a diverse variety of structures in his tapestry. It was also very important to him that the smallest details in the tapestry would be clear and readable. To achieve this, the process consisted of repeated testing small samples. Additionally, since Taselaar aimed at a wide variety of textures and structures, the quality of yarns varies as well.
Koen Taselaar (b. 1986) is a visual artist based in Rotterdam who primarily works with drawing, printmaking and, more recently, ceramics. Taselaar graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy in 2008. His work targets hands-on and direct media that allows a certain intuitive approach, conveying a vivid curiosity about the surrounding world rather than focusing on rigid conceptual ideas. Although he has had an academic education, he loves the naive and has a do-it-yourself mentality. With regard to the norms prevailing in the art world, Taselaar adopts a stubborn, slightly mocking attitude, which is evident in the jokes and language in his work.
