CHUCK CLOSE

 Chuck Close’s "Cindy" tapestry depicts Cindy Sherman, a photographer best known for a career-long series of dramatic self-portraits in which she transforms into various characters and archetypes. His "Lyle" tapestry depicts Lyle Ashton Harris, a photographer and performer who creates emotionally stirring portraits. Harris often appears as a cipher in his own work, posing with costumes and props to create characters with powerful cultural associations.

Chuck Close has created portraits from tonal grids of fingerprints, pointillist dots, brushstrokes, paper pulp, and countless other media. It was only natural that the artist’s ambitions led him to tapestry, a classical and difficult medium possessing Close’s signature tension between abstracted units (woven thread combinations) and a legible, unified surface.

Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer known for his massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very large format camera. He adapted his painting style and working methods in 1988, after being paralyzed by an occlusion of the anterior spinal artery.