Faig Ahmed’s ‘Textiles of Consciousness,’ in Princeton, features carpets that will floor you

FAIG AHMED STUDIO AND SAPAR CONTEMPORARY, NEW YORK

Faig Ahmed’s “Singularity AP” is part of the “Textiles of Consciousness” exhibition at Bainbridge House in Princeton.

We’ve all heard of a flying carpet. But what about a melting carpet? What about a glowing carpet, stained with nuclear meltdown and 7-Eleven candy-aisle colors? How about a carpet that has been yanked apart at a diagonal angle that invites comparisons to printer errors and computer glitches? What about an unraveling carpet, a carpet with a pirate’s beard, or a tapestry that begins in its top half with a strict Central Asian motif and then loses form and shape and puddles on the floor like spilled ice cream?

These are some of the fiber fantasies in “Faig Ahmed: Textiles of Consciousness,” the rare show of floor coverings that deserves to be called psychedelic. This is your brain on rugs.

Ahmed, an Azerbaijani artist born on the Caspian Sea, makes his erudition and understanding of the carpet-making traditions in his home country evident. He also has plenty to point out about the odd similarities between Islamic carpets and computer chipboards. His solo show, which runs at Bainbridge House in Princeton until Aug. 2, investigates what our minds do when the rug is pulled out from under us. But “Textiles of Consciousness” is also indebted to those old-fashioned op art exhibitions designed to startle us with illusions and tickle our eyeballs with tie-dye color, wavy lines, stretch marks and swirls. The show is a gymnasium workout for the rods and cones. It is entertaining, overwhelming and crowd-pleasing, and constantly defies expectation.

FAIG AHMED STUDIO AND SAPAR CONTEMPORARY, NEW YORK

Faig Ahmed’s “The Knot.”

It is also the exact kind of splashy single-artist exhibition that Bainbridge House does as well as any small gallery in the Garden State. Curators Monica Huerta and Ava Shirazi of The Sense Archive make dramatic use of the architectural features of the historic building: its small Colonial-era rooms, its walls interrupted by windows, its mantels and foyers and stairsteps. They have hung “The Knot,” a wool and silk carpet that begins in regal Azerbaijani style and ends up in a fierce wad of blackened cloth, right by the antique fireplace. The implication is that the rug hasn’t just been yanked and folded and tarred. It also has been roasted by a ball of flame.

Since we have a tendency to read a story (or a tapestry) from top to bottom, the piece tells a tale of a sudden, sharp decline from meticulous, rich and ordered cultural heritage to monochromatic tapering toward a charred, chaotic mass of winnowed possibilities. If Ahmed wasn’t so good at reproducing traditional rug patterns, these distortions and demolitions wouldn’t feel as radical as they do.

“Big Emptiness,” a giant wool carpet that greets visitors to the gallery, epitomizes Ahmed’s approach. The piece consists of concentric squares of carpet with each one ringing another square a little darker than the one that surrounds it. The perimeter of the “Emptiness” is a typically crisp and ornate Azerbaijani rug. The closer we get to the core of the piece, the dimmer those decorations become. By the time we reach the center, this progressive annihilation has had its effect: the heart of the carpet is a solid black box. Looking at this piece is like stepping down into an inverted ziggurat. In the heart of the piece, there aren’t any orienting marks. There is nothing to observe at all.

Shall we interpret this as a statement about the loss of cultural distinctiveness and slide toward homogenization? Or is this textile fabricator simply playing mind games with us, employing techniques reminiscent of the op art movement to conjure a sense of vertigo, and encouraging us to buckle up and imagine that we are falling into the wall?

FAIG AHMED STUDIO AND SAPAR CONTEMPORARY, NEW YORK

Faig Ahmed’s “Kutab.”

I reckon it’s a little of both. The curators present another experimental carpet in the corner of a nearby room, allowing it to sprawl between two perpendicular walls. The ends of the piece are done in traditional Islamic style. The middle is a taffy pull of threads with colorful rays of fiber streaking toward a vanishing point at the rug’s dead center. It reads like a digital intervention in an analog form — a rug re-threaded and reupholstered by a berserk computer bent on expedience — and it may strike you at first as a commentary on traditional art in a data-driven society. Then you notice the title: “Kutab.” Ahmed has named his warped carpet after the wedge-like flatbreads common in Central Asian cuisine. Yes, he has made a rug that evokes stretchy cheese between two halves of a sandwich. It’s art inspired by the dynamics of dairy, and it’s a delight.

Sketches for these designs, exhibited alongside completed artworks, give us an idea of the exuberance of Ahmed’s imagination. Rugs cascade down the walls like a water in an industrial sluice, or burst into fuzzy sheaths, or aerosolize and fill the space over the head of the viewer with a rainbow cloud of colored rings. We can feel Ahmed working hard against the limitations of a traditional medium, but there isn’t a lot of frustration in these drawings. To this artist, the carpet really is magic. It’s remarkable how well he is able to realize these textile dreams.

FAIG AHMED STUDIO AND SAPAR CONTEMPORARY, NEW YORK

Faig Ahmed’s “Catalysis.”

Pieces like the eye-popping “Catalysis” — named for the unplanned residue of chemical reactions — demonstrate the artist’s ability to manifest his fiber fantasies in the material world. The color of this hanging wool carpet changes midway from handsome Islamic maroons and browns to bright purples, the electric blues of flat-screen pixels, and radioactive greens. Closer to the floor, the colors run down in slick-looking streams that curve and waver like paint splattered on the side of a garage. The contours of the carpet take on the character of liquid. The whole thing seems marvelously wet.

A traditionalist might point out that a well-made Azerbaijani rug is already a spectacle. It is made to be eye-catching and, for years, it represented the height of luxury for collectors looking for something opulent to put on the floor. Are we really so desensitized to craft that we need to take such liberties with an ancient form?

I doubt very much that Faid Ahmed would argue with that. He loves Azerbaijani carpets too much to let them lie quietly. If he’s got an objection to Islamic rugs, it’s that they are too sedate. He wants them to bound up to viewers like shaggy dogs and maybe lick our faces. So he keeps teasing them, worrying them and playing with them as he runs his fingers (and his thoughts) through the pile, pulling at loose threads like a restless kid might.

In “Speech of the Birds” and “Virgin,” the two substantial pieces that dominate the exhibit’s final gallery, thick tufts of blue and red fiber, dense as Muppet fuzz, leap from the bottom halves of carpets. These are Islamic rugs spilling their guts, with bright strands in primary colors drooping toward the ground. Stand close to them and they will fill your field of vision with frayed fibers. Stand back and they will still command your attention. The artist means to seize us by our lines of sight and get us wrapped up in the shag. It’s aggressive. It’s flamboyant. At times, it is even annoying. But it’s awfully hard to resist.

The Princeton University Art Museum will present “Faig Ahmed: Textiles of Consciousness” at Bainbridge House in Princeton, through Aug. 2. Visit artmuseum.princeton.edu.

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