Contributed by Kari Adelaide Razdow / Alex McQuilkin’s recent solo shows at de boer gallery in Los Angeles and signs and symbols project space in New York featured needlepoint works on two- to three-foot-wide industrially fabricated aluminum hoops. The pastel monochrome hoops align aesthetically with Minimalism and display quoted passages from“Sentences on Conceptual Art,” Sol Lewitt’s seminal 1967 essay in Artforum. McQuilkin embroidered lines such as “perception of ideas leads to new ideas,” “illogical judgements lead to new experience,” and “the conventions of art are altered by works of art” onto dyed Birdseye fabric, originally used for cloth diapers. Combined with the automotive enamel coating on the hoops and the hand-sewn cursive letters, these declarative statements come across as benignly didactic, like messages on bumper stickers.
