Marco Querin, a native of Italy, has lived in Indianapolis for the better part of the last decade. The city has provided Querin with the right conditions to focus on his artwork full time and has been fertile ground for his fiber art to flourish. His latest body of work, now hanging in the Harrison Center’s Speck Gallery, was created over the past year, during a time of personal evolution and cultural disruption.

One of the largest points of Querin’s personal growth has been in accepting his artwork as an intentional process, rather than forcing himself to focus on a commercial result or a well-defined reason for creating each piece. The result is “Involution,” a fiber-based art series that portrays both visual and metaphoric tension.

Upon entering the gallery, the eye of the viewer is pulled from one wall to the other, as the works mirror and oppose each other with repeated elements. Cyclical relationships, like the one between making money and making art, or between one’s best and worst intentions, are represented in lunar-like contrasting colors and forms. Oppositional relationships, like the one between kindness and selfishness, are displayed in angular forms, as sharp edges force their way into a monolithic background.

Knowingly oscillating between what’s best and worst. Wool, 48 x 96”

The figurative nature of Querin’s artwork captures and communicates the energy and tension ever-present in life. “Involution” and its accompanying description: “If the nation was an inflamed organ, its condition would now be starting to regress,” affirm the exhibition’s multidimensional nature. What at first appears minimalist, geometric, and abstract, can be appreciated as texturally complex, even visceral, as the fibrous layers reveal their depth upon closer inspection. Querin intends for the show to act as an imposition into the viewer’s perspective— a feeling in the gut, whether positive, negative, or simply a shock out of dullness.

Involution can mean a turning inwards and it can mean inflammation of the body, which Querin applies to the nation, where metaphoric disease has been spreading. Rather than politics, the disease according to Querin is about perspective and culture, and we are all in the passage of healing, moving from old to new.

The exhibition has a natural connection to current events, but the pieces are rooted in Querin’s own personal path of experiences. They reflect a struggle for control amidst pressurized confinements, where beauty is ultimately found and expressed, as well as the recurring need to cultivate and embrace the changing self.

While some of the pieces are commandingly large, it was “Underneath it all, thoughts are just as bare” that caught my attention as Involution’s most evocative. Textural tufts of red fibers are trapped beneath tightly wrapped layers of nearly invisible, luminous threads. Querin described the piece as “carnal, irresistible, and partially repulsive,” alluding to the tension between the “shallow” and “noble” draws of one’s desires. It evokes in the viewer the desire to reach out and touch— at the same time, you get the suspicion that it might cut your fingers.

Underneath it all, thoughts are just as bare. Alpaca and nylon, 22” x 22”

This past year of creating has allowed Querin to turn inward and reflect on his own evolution, filtering everything that was superfluous in his life and focusing on what energizes and excites him about art. “Involution” was dictated by Querin’s own need to be less rigid and less perfect with the way he approaches life. Despite a shift in energy from his previous artwork, Querin’s attention to detail and his ability to capture and distill the tension and the chaos of the mind are showcased fully in his latest exhibition.

Though the show is up through December 24th, the work will remain available for purchase via our website for two months. See more of Querin’s art on his website.