Before images lived on screens, they lived in threads. Mountains became patterns. Animals became symbols. Beliefs became geometry. For centuries, carpets have carried entire universes, not as decoration, but as secret languages woven into fabric.
With Encoded Landscapes, Galerie OM transforms the carpet into something far stranger and more powerful: a territory of memory, ritual and imagination.
Presented at P100 as part of Reference Studios’ INTERVENTION programme, the exhibition travels from the seventeenth century to the present, bringing together hand-woven silk, mohair and cotton works that exist somewhere between artwork, architecture and artifact.
Here, patterns become maps. Borders become thresholds. Repeated forms become rituals. A tree becomes a symbol of life, a diamond a protective spell, a field of motifs a silent prayer made visible.
The carpet is no longer something to walk over — it becomes something to enter.
Bridging ancient craft traditions with contemporary material research, Galerie OM connects historic weaving practices with the ateliers of Lake Como, where generations of artisans continue to create textiles for some of fashion’s most influential houses. The gesture remains the same: thread passing through hand, memory becoming matter.
New works by Berlin-based studios Weberei and New Rug Studio sit inside an immersive environment of texture, sound and atmosphere — part sanctuary, part archaeological discovery, part imagined future.
In a world flooded with instant images, Encoded Landscapes offers something slower: a reminder that some stories are not meant to be uploaded. They are meant to be woven.