Ptolemy Mann's admiration for the 20th-Century Mexican architect Luis Barragán began back when she was a student at the Royal College of Art in 1996, learning to weave and hand-dye textiles that she would stretch over frames to create her decorative pieces. The biggest thing I learnt from him is the idea of chromatic minimalism, she says, explaining how she drew inspiration from his vast concrete walls painted hot pink, burnt orange and lime green. I love those sweeping planes of colour - they're simple, but incredibly bright and vivid!
Thirty years on, she's exhibiting a new body of work inspired by Barragán at the art fair PAD London: finely threaded panels of gently undulating colour that evoke the feeling of standing inside Barragán's buildings. Last spring, Mann, who was born in New York and grew up on the south coast of England, finally made it to Mexico City for the first time and visited half a dozen of his modernist masterpieces. 'It's funny, when you've only ever seen photographs ofspaces, and then you find yourselfstandinginside them, she says, smiling. The trip was a bit of an epiphany for me!' Her triptych of blue woven textiles streaked with orange and red references Barragán's final residential project, Casa Gilardi, with its famous indoor swimming pool, a geranium-pink pillar rising from the aqua-blue water. Another piece calls to mind Casa Pedregal, a pastel-coloured house on dry, rocky terrain dotted with succulents described by Mann as both 'lush and desert-like'.
There are also nods to Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly and Barnett Newman - 'those New York minimalists'. From afar, you might mistake the designs for paintings, cousins of Mark Rothko's expansive glowing veils; come closer, though, and you'll notice the threads, which are dip-dyed using the ancient ikat technique.
Alongside a group presentation at PAD, Mann will be exhibiting at Frieze Masters, followed by a solo show at Tristan Hoare in November - an extension of this Barragán-infused body of work. Although she has recently experimented with painting, this autumn she's sticking with woven art in its purest form', rather than the 'thread paintings' she has been making since 2021. It's a triple whammy, with both fairs and the solo show, says Mann. "The journey has been long but the timing is good. A big moment indeed!
