Brooklyn’s historic Dime Savings Bank, the landmarked building that now provides the base of the borough’s first and only supertall skyscraper, is all about Beaux-Arts grandeur, from its 40-foot-tall central rotunda, to the towering Corinthian columns that encircle an imposing bronze clock. This fall, the elaborate building is setting the stage not for commerce, but for a quiet celebration of Mesoamerican aesthetics, owing to a new collection of artisan-made rugs from Mexico City-based artist and architect Lucas Cantú.
The group of four rug designs, called Laberintos (Spanish for ‘labyrinth’ or ‘maze’), was created in partnership with specialised producer Radnor Made. Cantú, who runs the multidisciplinary design studio Tezontle, looked to Pre-Columbian stone construction in creating the textiles, a move that evokes the imprint of ancient urban centres, specifically the capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan
‘Lucas has been obsessed with ruins since childhood,’ explains Susan Clark, founder of nomadic gallery Radnor and its offshoot Radnor Made. ‘As a kid, he spent hours drawing mazes and these rug designs are drafted extrapolations of those labyrinthic compositions. They depict how rooms intersect in these dense cities; how one often cuts through narrow passageways to get to wider streets.’
Showcasing Cantu’s creations inside the century-old vault felt appropriate. Though the space has remained in relatively good condition since it shuttered a decade ago, there are signs of wear and tear: cracks in fluted marble panels and chips in the plaster reliefs that line the coffered ceilings. What connects the architecture and rugs is a perceptible sense of weighty history and well-worn materiality; the evidence of long, loving use.
‘Archaeological sites are fragments of what once was; the missing pieces are left to our imagination,’ Cantú explains. ‘In their incompleteness, they become almost abstract forms that invite new ways of seeing.’
Though major fashion houses have requested to stage events at the bank, Clark – who also maintains a temporary showroom in a penthouse on the 92nd floor of the adjacent SHoP-designed skyscraper – is the first to show in the 100,000 sq ft bank portion. Silverstein Properties, the developer of both buildings, asked her if she wanted things repaired before opening the show – on view now until the end of the year – but she said no. Her aim was to amplify the rawness of this relationship.
To emphasize that quality, the four artistic compositions – some more zoomed out and impressionistic than others – are composed like line drawings that evoke millennia-old stone walls viewed from above, with hand-knotted Tibetan wool making up the ground and cut pile Chinese silk. The latter material’s tonal shift and luminescence is matched by the gilded motifs that top the bank’s columns.
Crafted across Nepal through GoodWeave guild artisans, Laberintos comprises four distinct numbered iterations. Each has a sculptural quality that, in the context of this exhibit, is showcased from both sides. The collection’s interplay of 2D and 3D topographical representation is cleverly expressed in a comprehensive range of earth tones, like creme, olive and taupe.
This fresh, thoughtfully-conceived and precision-crafted offering joins a raft of more pictorial carpets turning the floor – a room's fifth wall – into another opportunity for presenting art. Cantú’s contribution, developed in close collaboration with Clark, is less frivolously whimsical or overly nostalgic than some of the other capsule collections that have been recently released; The rugs anchor space with a sense of timeless permanence, hinting at what might have stood in the same place centuries, even millennia, before.
Laberintos is on view by appointment through 31 December at 9 DeKalb Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA