‘The Cat, The Herring And More Tall Tales From The Neva’ is a tapestry made by Koen Taselaar for the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Colourful and humorous, the tapestry celebrates three centuries of cultural relations between the Netherlands and Russia.
While researching Russian folk art, Taselaar discovered ‘lubki’, folk prints widely used to educate and entertain. Lubki often depict religious stories or popular tales and are characterised by a simple yet rich graphic style. Taselaar found endless inspiration in the prints, which he used to develop his own visual story.
Taselaar's design sketches show his meticulous, narrative style. He elaborates on mediaeval tapestries, such as the famous ‘Tapisserie de Bayeux’, but uses the contemporary visual language of comics and games. For example, Peter the Great is depicted as an enormous mean cat (taken from a lubok) who is feared by the mouse people. Another image shows Saint Petersburg’s grand palaces, which were built on canals on the marshy banks of the Neva. The view of the palaces is derived from historical nautical charts.
Taselaar tested various weaves to find the right colour combinations. For this purpose, different parts of the enormous fabric were woven immediately after each other. On the far left of the wide sample is a numbered colour palette of yarns and weaves to choose from. The gold area is part of the Winter Palace, which is shown in the middle of the tapestry. Here too, various combinations of yarns and weaves were tested to find the right shade of gold.
It is interesting to note that the back of the samples is completely different from the front. This is because they are double weave fabrics: at least two sets of warp and weft yarns are interconnected to form a two-layered cloth. The layers can be interconnected in different ways. The technique allows for the use of weft yarns in multiple colours, which – whenever they are not needed in the design in the top layer – are woven into the bottom layer.
With his work, Koen Taselaar (1986) creates a unique universe in which he makes all the rules. He is a skilful graphic artist but also produces ceramics and abstract screen prints. His visual language emerged from the grey area in which text is both form and meaning. He expresses this in visual puns, imaginary record covers or large psychedelic paintings. Looking for ways to process his diverse output, he makes publications and large-scale drawings that function as two-dimensional exhibition spaces. Taselaar is constantly developing his artistic scope, including by mastering new techniques during various residencies. He was nominated for the Volkskrant Visual Art Prize and had a solo exhibition at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
