GOLD – While all Flow’rs and all Trees do close To weave the Garlands of repose is the solo exhibition by Thomas De Falco, inaugurating the three-year exhibition program of the new director, Elsa Barbieri.The thirty-five textile works, most of which were created specifically for this occasion, speak to us—through their craftsmanship, materials, and forms—about nature, the world, and life. Moving through the galleries, each distinct from the other and suited to different displays, we observe the artist’s work unfolding progressively. From the very first gallery, we encounter the piece Red seed (2024), a tapestry made of cotton, silk, linen, hemp, and gold threads, where the yarn transforms from two dimensions into a three-dimensional accumulation of fabric that thickens, takes form, and becomes a woman’s body with weaves and fissures evoking the maternal womb.
Thomas De Falco, “Red seed”, 2024. Detail
The journey then continues to the complex site-specific installation Tree (2024), composed of textile sculptures in wool, cotton, and silk. Here, we encounter swollen forms from which roots, extensions, and hanging elements emerge—resembling organs, umbilical cords, arteries, and veins—open to multiple interpretations. This becomes even more evident in the fourth gallery, with the site-specific installation Egg-Stone (2024), sculptures made of cotton, linen, and silk, embroidered and arranged in a circle. In the same room, we find a Sculptural Dress (2011) that has been used over the years for various performances and modified each time; it has, in fact, been worn during the premiere performance WO-MAN, curated by Clara Tosi Pamphili, which accompanied the presentation of the catalog on Saturday, December 7.
Thomas De Falco, “GOLD”, installation view, Museo Arte Contemporanea Cavalese. Ph. Erjola Zhuka
Returning to the diversity of spaces, special attention should be paid to the small bow window in the third gallery, named Erker, where the artist and curator placed Seed (2024), another textile sculpture in cotton, wool, silk, and gold thread, which enjoys a remarkable highlight. Sometimes, Thomas De Falco starts with a preexisting element, such as a toy, and incorporates it into his artistic language, as in Untitled (2024): a plastic dinosaur adorned with cotton, silk, and gold threads. At other times, he adds something from the surrounding world to his usual elements, as in the two works exhibited at Triennale Milano between 2017 and 2018: Untitled (2013), a sculpture made of cotton, silk, and wool, incorporating wire; and World (2017), a textile sculpture on canvas wrapped in cotton, wool, and gold threads, enriched with tree branches. Another example is Nature (2017), a tapestry with wrappings in cotton, nylon, hemp, and wool, which also includes leather.
Thomas De Falco, “Seed”, 2024. Installation view, Museo Arte Contemporanea Cavalese
In the fifth gallery, we find one of his many artist’s books, covering the period from 2022 to 2024, enriched with drawings interwoven with various materials such as leaves, branches, straw, and hay. For the artist, who lives between Milan, Paris, and America, the world exists wherever he may be, always establishing an intimate connection with nature and the surrounding territory. His primary need is the pursuit of relationships with others, expressed in the aesthetic that characterizes him and emphasized in the Room of Research, which features works by ten selected artists: Dionysis Saraji, Zehra Doğan, Rosa Lüders, Andrea Mauti, Carol Rama, Dionysis Saraji, Greta Schödl, Urara Tsuchiya, Francesco Vezzoli, and Zoe Williams. This space, chosen by director Elsa Barbieri and De Falco, serves as a meeting point—a symbol of social life—and a place for contemplation, where every step or breath is an opportunity for knowledge and imagination, self-reflection, and inner connection with the feminine body and nature.
Thomas De Falco, “GOLD”, installation view, Museo Arte Contemporanea Cavalese. Ph. Erjola Zhuka
As the artist himself states: «Nature is the center of my research. My work stems from roots, trees, and leaves. By connecting it to nature, textile sculpture comes to life». Textile art critic Barbara Pavan adds: «An enfant terrible of weaving, if it’s true—as it is—that even during his time at the Advanced School of Tapestry at Castello Sforzesco in Milan, his works defied flatness, projecting into the third dimension and becoming, in every respect, sculptures, Thomas De Falco is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting artists internationally who use textile languages, particularly tapestry techniques».
Info:
Thomas De Falco, GOLD – While all Flow’rs and all Trees do close To weave the Garlands of repose
curated by Elsa Barbieri
23/11/2024 – 9/3/2025
Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Cavalese
Piazzetta Rizzoli 1, 38033 Cavalese (TN)
artecavalese.it
museoartecontemporaneacavalese
Emanuele Magri teaches History of Art in Milan. Since 2007 he has been writing abroad for Juliet art Magazine. Since the 1970s he has dealt with writing and visual arts. He created taxonomically defined worlds, in which he experimented with the self-referentiality of language, such as “La Setta delle S’arte” in which ritual clothes are made starting from words with multiple meanings, the “Treaty of genetic art” in which a series of plants is obtained from grafts of human organs, eyes, hands, mouths, etc., and the project “Fandonia”, a city where everything is double and hybrid.
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