This past weekend Pae White's exhibition Material Mutters opened at The Power Plant in Toronto. The exhibition focused primarily on White's tapestries, although it also included an impressive grid of White's Smoke Carvings and two video works. At the 2010 Whitney Biennial, White exhibited a large smoke tapestry but as this exhibition demonstrates, White's tapestries range greatly in terms of content and style. The smoke and foil tapestries are fairly straight forward in terms of imagery, but the viewer gets lost in all the intricacies. Others are highly collaged and manipulated, full of personal references as well as meta-references to other tapestries made by White.
The Power Plant's signature smoke stack.
30 Smoke Carvings
close up of tapestries
The new commissioned tapestry entitled "Sea Beast".
Foil tapestry. One of White's earliest foil tapestries was a commissioned stage curtain for the Olso Opera House. 
Smoke tapestry originally exhibited at the Whitney Biannual 2010.
Tapestries are one of the oldest forms of visual imagery. Some of the oldest tapestries date back to Hellenistic times, about 3rd century B.C. The success and longevity of tapestries lies largely in their transportability. Kings could transport tapestries from one residence to another and churches could hang tapestries for special occasions. Le Corbusier called tapestries 'nomadic murals.' Even the gallery can testify to the relative ease of transporting tapestries over less pliable artworks.
Detail of Bayeux Tapestry (c. 1450), which depicts the Battle of Hastings (not strictly a tapestry as it also includes embroidery)
The Hunt of the Unicorn, 1495-1505, currently at the Metropolitan Museum
Modern examples of tapestries include those by Sonia Delaunay, a French-Jewish artist working in the early 1900s who co-founded the Orphism movement with her husband. Orphism, a term coined by Apollinaire, coincided with Cubism. It focused solely on geometric abstraction and Fauvist colors. Sonia Delaunay's tapestries are exemplary and her sensitivity to color and form is comparable to White's.
Tapestries by Sonia Delaunay
