Koen Taselaar is a familiar face in the TextielLab. Since the TextielMuseum commissioned him to make a new work for the 2019 exhibition 'Bauhaus& | Modern Textiles in the Netherlands', he has been a regular user of the lab. To support the publication of a book featuring an overview of his work, he came up with the idea for ‘Sleeves Shellfaces’, a limited series of 12 small woven fabrics featuring faces composed of shells, each with a pocket to hold a copy of the book.
In the TextielLab, Taselaar and the product developer translated Taselaar's designs for 12 different shell faces into fabrics, each with a separate woven pocket.
The pockets for Taselaar’s book presented the biggest challenge in the weaving process. This was overcome by weaving sleeves that could later be cut open and finished. It was especially important to fix the yarns correctly to prevent them from fraying. Various tests were carried out before this was achieved.
Koen Taselaar (1986) uses his work to create a unique universe in which he determines the rules. He is a skilful artist but also makes chunky ceramics and abstract silkscreens. His visual language emerged from the grey area in which text is both form and meaning. He expresses this in drawn puns, imaginary record covers or large psychedelic paintings. As a means to incorporate his wide-ranging output, he also produces publications and large-scale drawings that function as flat exhibition spaces. He is constantly developing his broad scope, for example by learning new techniques in various residencies. He was nominated for the Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize and had a solo exhibition in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
