Sam Barsky does not use pattern weaving. If you don’t knit, so don’t know, that’s a big deal – indeed bragging. And he didn’t make Blobby sculptures or anything else, just some of the most complex painting sweaters I’ve ever seen.
Barsky first obtained knitting in 1999 after being diagnosed with a chronic disease and quit nursing school. (I also learned to weave on sick leave, but it has never been that good). Barsky went to the library, checked a book, taught himself, and quickly surpassed the Lifetime Weaver. His first sweater had a muddy sky, a covered bridge and a waterfall, which he did after knitting just 17 months.
Barsky has been knitting sweaters ever since. Often, they are beautifully landscaped, depicting places he has been to or wants to visit or memories he has. Not long before 9/11, he weaved the wearable twin towers. He recently took the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in his recent personal display, and some other sites have turned to trainers and are easily identified: Central Park; the Lighthouse in Portland, Maine; the London Bridge. These sweaters hang from the ceiling on a wire hanger with arms outstretched out of the way, you can wear one or even take a selfie. By the way, selfies are part of the Barsky process: he often takes pictures in sweaters, usually where they depict, making them between specific artworks and specific artworks, making them something. In fact, he wore his own sweater every day, so he knitted long sleeves and tanks with wool and cotton to prepare for any weather.
2025, at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin, Sam Barsky’s 2025 exhibition “No You”.
Weaving almost all the abstractions that require Barsky to convert its images into color blocks. The way he handled this was both very complicated and very stupid. Sometimes he introduced different textures or colored yarns. His sunset sweater might give Missoni a pass, but his Hoover Dam sweater looks more like an Ellsworth Kelly painting. A waterfall sweater looks completely unique and is simply perfect.
Currently, Pasky is more famous on the internet than in the art world: after trying to adapt to society, he found that his sweaters and selfies were a great way to find the community. Soon, people started to send messages to him and recognized him in the wild. Indeed, his humor shines when it comes to sweaters: In the wall label, he calls the sleeveless military sweater “the tank on the tank” and adds: “I don’t like war, but I do like history.”
The show closed at the Kohler Centre this week is Pasky’s first museum performance, which is important than the encouragement of the internet for asking audiences to appreciate his truly extraordinary artifacts to marvel at his material in the flesh and to slow the appearance of his work. After seeing it for a few months, I was still stunned. His sweater also came to mind in “Ru Still Daid???”, which recently installed a massive hip show in an abandoned office building in Manhattan. In the hypothetical vivid Astro Focus, Uri Aran and Elizabeth Neel’s work, Barsky’s sweater hangs from the ceiling every few yards or so, interrupting the show. They surfaced and exuded colorful paintings of cool people, exuding relaxed effortlessness, as if the bold and delicate people would have some good clean fun.
