LIZ COLLINS (b. 1968) is well-known for pushing the boundaries of art and design in innovative and experimental work in fabric, yarn, and other materials and techniques associated with textile media. Although Collins embraces a language of abstraction, bold colors, patterns, and symbols allude to queer and feminist references, sourcing further inspiration from interpersonal and environmental forces such as electricity, volatility, connectivity, and energy exchange. Whether in the form of textile, painting, drawing or installation, Collins frequently explores the dichotomy of structure and entropy–qualities inherent to textile that speak to the fissures present in broader architectural, political, and social structures. Processes of slowly cutting, unbinding, revealing, and rearranging subtly nod to the destabilization that takes place when small but organized acts aim to undercut rigid systems.

In Floating Lightning Wheel (2023), Collins displays her interest in this deconstruction, allowing much of the unwoven work to drape and hang, revealing the weaving process in moments where weft and warp pause and resume. The salmon-pink and crimson-red threads are backdropped by a blue with slight iridescence, and jagged shapes denote areas where the weaving is complete. Edges curl, swallowing up the swooping curves of the loose textile. The piece's supposed incompleteness highlights the craft itself, an ode to the method by which it was created.

LESLIE WAYNE (b. 1953) explores the many ways a painting can imply all the functions, desires, and associations we have for the world around us by transporting you through its artifice. She uses both trompe l’oeil and verisimilitude to explore the range of possibilities for the representation of an illusion in a multitude of ways, while still remaining undeniably within the confines of a traditional painting. Easily moving between abstraction and representation, Wayne uses the tactile quality of paint in her abstractions to evoke geology and the forces of nature, approaching her subject matter through visual manifestations of physical forces like compression, subduction and morphogenesis. In her more representational work, Wayne explores portals and thresholds, and the mundane objects of her daily life, shaping her panels to act as stand-ins for the objects they represent.

Oil paint transforms into plaid mohair in Prêt à Porter (Miuccia), while black-and-white striped canvas spills over the top of the composition. The sartorial overtones of the piece, if not abundantly clear from the titling that employs both the French translation of "ready-to-wear" and the first name of Prada's reigning matriarch, are apparent in Wayne's illusory rendering of textiles in the work. The supposed tactility invites the viewer in before revealing itself to be something decidedly "other," something that instead rejects touch.