The Mountain – 2022
The Mountain 12, 2022
Several monumental, signed pieces by artist Sabine Cibert were exhibited at the Pays de Mauriac media library through to 28 April.
Sabine Cibert’s background in architecture informs her technique to produce textile creations, category-defying works based on graphic analysis. The artist draws inspiration from this analysis to combine geometry with an alchemy of colour and weave effects.
Sabine Cibert has worked with textiles from an early age, but only started using it to craft works of art in 1973, after leafing through a catalogue of textile art. She threw herself into this artistic technique solo, drawing on her training as an architect for guidance.
Technical prowess
As a collector of art drawings, she quite naturally drew inspiration from her patiently acquired collection. Years later she realised that most of the drawings she had acquired were by artists from one and the same school, Bauhaus, founded in Weimar in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius.
To perfect her technique, she long worked with a private teacher, who provided their documentation and shared their knowledge. Nowadays, she hand-assembles fragments of fabric in carefully-studied dimensions, like a puzzle, to create stunning compositions with relief effects. Onlookers are initially daunted by the sheer size of fer textile compositions, which can occupy up to nine square metres. They are then intrigued by the artist’s masterful use of powerful, seaming techniques that conjure up perspectives and adroit relief effects. Her contemporary compositions echo nature, her source of inspiration.
Sabine Cibert takes her time, letting the fabric matter guide her, juggling utmost care and utter fantasy and dealing with every last detail.
As she says, “for it to become a work, it has to stupefy and startle.”
Juggling patience and fierce urgency, using the infinitely small to produce the infinitely large, Sabine Cibert offered Pays de Mauriac inhabitants an opportunity to discover her works in the lobby of the media library. From afar, and close up, through the magnifying glass or from the other side of the lobby, Sabine Cibert’s works capture the spring light.
Delphine Flamme