Chelsea, New York
Group Exhibition
Stretch, Hold, Release
Picture TheoryElisa Lutteral Lior Modan JaLeel Marques Porcha Luis Emilio Romero Terumi Saito Picture Theory is pleased to present Stretch, Hold, Release, a group show highlighting the interchange of cultural memory and fiber-based materiality. As the title suggests—these emerging contemporary artists root their creative practices within the field of fiber arts, situating these continuous hand-making processes within the greater poetic capacity for textiles to transmute ways of knowing–not from static categorization, empiric knowledge, or documented traditions–but as dynamic flows cresting precisely across unified mental and bodily systems. Exploring craft heritage from Indigenous Guatemalan weaving traditions and South East Asian ikat dyed weaving techniques, Luis Emilio Romero and Terumi Saito expand the rigorous iconography of each’s inherited material wisdom reflecting the artist’s hybrid perspectives within our global- ized world. Undeniably distinct cultural markers of localized wisdom traditions, Romero and Saito each overlay these techniques with an additional unexpected process in their work allowing confrontations of each piece’s objecthood to evade stringent categorization, therefore offering instead aesthetic harmonies that triumph over pedantic museology. On the other side of the pendulum’s swing, utilizing more industrial scale knitting and heat pressed velvet yardage Elissa Lutteral and Lior Modan respectively make plain otherwise unnoticed structures. Both metaphorically and physically Lutteral’s and Modan’s surfaces extend beyond their material parts to transgress their purported genres of objecthood. Pushing beyond the utility of design, Lutteral’s elongated gloves generate ever changing visual structures of human interconnection through performance art. Elements of the familiar quickly expand into the realm of the absurd: materializing the unrelenting push and pull of desire, duty, attachment, or guilt. Taking concrete form, Lutteral conveys the physicality of these mental constructs that all-too-often have energetic consequences subsumed within governing systems of the body. Whereas–in contrast to instantiating the unseen–Modan denies the garment-centric use function of velvet fabric, instead harnessing its subtle refractive qualities of lightbearing to generate ghostly frozen forms that firmly connote bas relief sculptures. Isolating familiar objects from their own immediacy, Modan instead offers an uncanny trace of what things might have been–relying on experiential memory to complete each form’s own instantiation. JaLeel Porcha utilizes the laborious pictorial tapestry tradition to interrogate the knowledge systems surrounding nostalgia, unprimed personal experience, and utopian constructions of nature. Together these coalesce as significant sources for the communal strength of sensory memory, as decentralized sites of personal growth, that collectively elevate alternatives to empirical knowledge systems. Defying the limitations of strict adherence to extant textile traditions, this group of contemporary artists provide complex counter-processes for familiar materials, creating objects that capture our current era’s unconventional paradigm shifts. Where protected technical expertise gives way to disquieting juxtapositions, which reveal the societal disjunctures of our present moment. —Carson Woś Elisa Lutteral (b. 1992) lives and works in New York. Elisa Lutteral studied at the University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism (FADU), graduating in 2015. She holds an MFA in Textiles from Parsons, The New School for Design, completed in 2023.She has participated in several artist residencies, including Sakata Orimono (Hirokawa, Japan), Emma Kreativzentrum Pforzheim (Pforzheim, Germany), the NYLAAT Residency Program (New York), and High Desert Test Sites (Joshua Tree). In 2024, she attended the Vermont Studio Center Residency, and she also took part in the NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentorship Program. Her work has been exhibited internationally at Kunstraum Super and 9020 Klagenfurt Gallery (Vienna, Austria), and Laguna Mexico (Mexico City). In the United States, her work has been shown at L Space Gallery, Picture Theory Gallery, The Slip Gallery, Textile Arts Center (TAC) Gallery, New York Live Arts – Ford Foundation Live Gallery, Praxis Gallery, and the New York Latin American Art Triennial, 2025. Lutteral has received several awards and recognitions, including being a finalist for the Dorothy Waxman Textile Prize (2022, 2024) and the Windgate Charitable Foundation Fellowship (2024). Lior Modan (b. 1983) lives and works in Queens, New York. His practice exists in constant slippage between distinct territories: painting and object, abstraction and figuration, gestural and surreal. Modan received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University’s Sculpture + Extended Media program (2013). Modan’s work has been exhibited in venues domestically and abroad. Recent solo exhibitions were held at Dinner Gallery, New York (2025), CPM, Baltimore (2024), Make Room, Los Angeles (2021), Triumph, Chicago (2017), Golconda Gallery, Tel Aviv (2016), and Nurtureart, New York (2015). Selected group exhibitions include the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Marinaro Gallery, New York, Peana Projects, Mexico, F2T Gallery, Milan, Italy; Harkawik Gallery, Los Angeles, Coustof Waxman Gallery, New York, WOAW Gallery, Hong Kong, and Haifa Museum, among others. In 2022, Modan released a collaboration with Kelly Wearstler named Technicolor. The project consisted of a series of three velvet works, each in editions of 10. His work was featured in various newspapers and magazines, such as The Observer, Architectural Digest, Timeout, Modern China, HyperAllergic, Wallpaper Magazine, and NewcityArts. Modan has been an Artist-in-Residence at the LMCC Workspace Residency (2013-2014, NYC), and the Seven Below Arts initiative (2013, Burlington, VT). He received the Phi Kappa Phi award (2011-12), the Feed Biennial award (2013), and the VSC Joan Mitchell Foundation fellowship (2013). JaLeel Porcha creates work that does not prioritize the written account of what we know Blackness to be as a definitive way of learning about who is around them. JaLeel uses failure and unfiltered experimentation within their making process as an image maker and performance artist in the hope of guiding the viewer to look next to them and see what knowledge their new neighbor has stored within themselves. JaLeel received their BFA in Photography & Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of Art. Luis Emilio Romero (b. 1996, Bárcenas, Guatemala) holds an MFA from Hunter College (2022) and a BFA from Rutgers State University (2019). He had his first solo show, Fortress of Light/Fortaleza de Luz (2024), at Luis de Jesus gallery in Los Angeles. Romero has participated in exhibitions including Affirmations: Mindfulness in Contemporary Abstract Painting (2025) at the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art in California, Material Knowledge (2022) at Arsenal Contemporary in New York, It Begins with What’s Already There (2023) at 205 Hudson Gallery, Hunter College, New York, and Rituals and the Subconscious/Rituales y el Subconsciente (2023) at Mostajo Projects, New York, among others. Romero was awarded the Dedalus Foundation Master of Fine Arts Fellowship in 2023, and was an artist-in-residence at Mostajo Projects in Warren, CT (2023). He lives in New Jersey and works in Brooklyn, New York. Terumi Saito (b. Shizuoka, Japan) is a New York-based Japanese sculptor and designer who interweaves fiber art and ceramics. Saito’s work reimagines the traditional backstrap weaving technique, incorporating natural dyes and hand-built ceramics to expand and push the boundaries of these mediums. Her practice reflects a dedication to preserving tradition through a contemporary lens, exploring the intersections of past and present, tradition and innovation. With each creation, she seeks to demonstrate the transformative power of art to connect, inspire, and elevate the human experience. Saito specializes in backstrap weaving, one of the earliest weaving techniques, with a rich heritage across Asia and Central and South America. Japan’s history of Backstrap weaving dates to the Yayoi period (ca. 300 BCE– ca. 300 CE). In the past, She has completed research projects and artist residencies in Japan, Peru, Guatemala, and the United States. In this timeless art form, Saito discovers not only a means of artistic expression but also a deep connection to humanity’s shared heritage— a thread uniting us through cultural diversity and creative ingenuity. As she weaves together tradition and innovation, her practice embodies a spirit of exploration and discovery. Saito’s work has been exhibited at venues such as Mana Contemporary; Volume Gallery; Forecast Gallery; Origins and Legacies Gallery; Noguchi Museum Shop; Houston Center for Contemporary Craft; Artexpo New York; Spectrum Miami. Saito is a recipient of the Artist Studios Program at the Museum of Arts and Design; American Craft Council Artist Directory; Crafting the Future(CTF) BIPOC Fund Award; Presidential Scholarship Award from Anderson Ranch Arts Center; Houston Center for Contemporary Craft Artist Residency; Vermont Studio Center Artist Residency and Grant Award; Arquetopia International Artist Residency in Urubamba, Peru. Her recent panels include NYC x Design, Museum of Chinese in America(MOCA), New York Textile Month, Portland Textile Month, and featured in publications like Harper’s Bazaar UK, Interior Design Magazine, American Craft magazine, and Surface Design Journal. Her art has garnered recognition and acclaim, with Cunard Line in the United Kingdom and various private national and international collections. Saito holds an MFA in Textiles from Parsons School of Design in New York and a BFA in Graphic Design from Tama Art University in Tokyo, Japan.