In a conversation about the thoughts that accompanied him throughout the project, Lechner makes reference to the opening paragraph in Ovid’s immortal Metamorphoses –The Book of Changes – in which the author confesses his desire to recount and weave all of history since the dawn of creation, all centering on the stories of the metamorphoses. He addresses the gods with a request to infuse his work with spirit and vitality, just as they had done for their own creations:
My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world’s beginning to our day.
Over the years, Lechner has focused his work on oil paintings, drawings, and watercolors, but a few years ago he surprisingly presented a series of modestly-sized works that were all manually woven, and deliberately poorly crafted. This revealed his attraction to labor-intensive handicrafts and textile works. For him, it was a connection to traditions that he has known since childhood as the son of a family of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. “On the walls of our house in Chernovitz,” he explains, “were hung colorful tapestries woven with figures from the world of legend, Russian mythology, and folklore. In Russia, tapestries were used as decoration and as a form of thermal insulation and room temperature control. Even after the move to Israel, they continued to adorn the walls of our home, despite the abrupt change in housing, climate, and culture.”
The current series of tapestries are woven expressively, with threads of varying lengths, unraveled sections, holes, spray gluing, and spray painting onto the tapestry weave. They are informed by a clear line and direct expression that are stylistically not unlike graffiti paintings, as though deliberately lashing out. Cats, be they stray or pampered domestic ones, recur throughout the tapestry cycle. They are depicted with an arched back and a mouth gaping in horror or wonder, on the cusp between the strange and the familiar, the domestic and the animal, the tame and the wild.
Lechner’s tapestries may be read as part of a long tradition of ranting and fulmination against the existing order. It is a protest charged, in his case, with the cultural shock of immigration – a seed of calamity that erupts in the act of weaving – activated by an electric tufting gun that repeatedly pierces the fabric of the cloth with a prickly blade, perforating it like a machine gun.
Less Reading...
