Adrienna Matzeg’s work frequently remembers intense summer afternoons, her dynamic table scapes conjuring a lunchtime setting at an alfresco coffee shop. However her latest series, After Hours, leaves from her previous work completely. The punch needle pieces on black linen illustrate nighttime minutes as conjured by memory. The collection, on view at Toronto’s Abbozzo Gallery, is Matzeg’s very first physical solo show (she also displays her tapestries online). And it draws motivation from her experiences on a trip to Jeju Island, South Korea and Kyoto, Japan.
It was so hot and damp during the days that Matzeg and her partner might just sightsee in the morning and in the evening.
“I had this insane vertigo the entire trip. So that’s what specified the night part of this task,”she describes.”We did more at night due to the fact that of how uneasy it was to go outside throughout the day. “The two had likewise purchased a brand-new camera that enabled them to utilize a film-like setting. The result: dreamy images of cities in the evening.< img src="https://design-milk.com/images/2026/05/Adrienna-Matzeg_After-Hours_Portraits-800x1200.jpeg" alt="A person in a white t-shirt and denims sits on a stool in front of a wall showing framed art work, some depicting stores and signs." width="800" height= "1200"/ > When she got home, Matzeg likewise purchased a colour printer; she printed out her photographs, cut them out and pinned them up. Images of a 7-Eleven exterior illuminated from within, a lantern glowing against a wall and– naturally– a portable fan hitting the deck on an inscrutable surface area are just some of the textile depictions she crafted from these images. One of the most evocative is of a taxi heading out into the night.”In Kyoto, the taxis are all these vintage crown convenience Toyotas, and they all have various little emblems on the top for the different business– like a flower clover. They’re so valuable.”
Matzeg sources her cotton threads in France and Japan. The black linen was entirely brand-new to her.”What the black linen does is take these scenes from an insane, hectic part of the city and everything else simply falls away.”The things and architectural structures sometimes appear to be floating against the background– Matzeg likes to play with how she positions them on the canvas– the manner in which “memory pertains to the surface, and everything else is just void around it,”
she discusses.”And I believe that’s extremely unique.”< img src= "https://design-milk.com/images/2026/05/Adrienna-Matzeg-Side-B-Bar_1-800x534.jpeg"alt="Framed embroidery of a bar sign with a dragonfly emblem and the word "BAR" on a dark background, hanging on a white wall."width= "800"height=" 534"/ >< img src ="https://design-milk.com/images/2026/05/Adrienna-Matzeg-Shibuya-Karaoke_1-800x534.jpeg"alt= "Framed embroidery of a small building with a vending maker and a check in Japanese characters, shown against a plain white wall."width="800" height="534 "/ > For Matzeg, nudging fibre art from the realm of hobby craft is a core factor to consider.”I purposefully try to raise the medium in the way that I approach it– in the detail, in the colours that I choose, likewise how I think about it, which is more like painting.”She’s forming her scenes by sculpting shapes and carving colours, rather than relying on line work. This indicates that her architectural styles are uncannily concrete, even if they likewise seem like flattened pictures. She’s equating the chrome and plastic surface areas of a karaoke bar facade into thread; she’s blending her loops into smooth gradients. “I think of it more in terms of aircrafts and products,” Matzeg states.
< img src=" https://design-milk.com/images/2026/05/Adrienna-Matzeg-Alleyway-In-Gion_1-800x534.jpeg "alt= "Framed textile art work depicting geometric roofing system shapes and a white lantern on a dark background, holding on a white wall."width= "800" height="534"/ >< img src ="https://design-milk.com/images/2026/05/Adrienna-Matzeg-Is-Your-Fan-Charged_2-800x534.jpeg" alt="A framed fabric art work depicts a hair dryer, crafted from thread in shades of beige and brown, mounted on a black fabric background. "width="800" height="534"/ > At the After Hours program at Abbozzo Gallery, the works are set up in shou sugi restriction frames(by Superframe) and mounted on an aubergine-painted wall. Together, they appear like a series of windows into dynamic remembered moments– the vivid colors and sharp kinds of the scenes popping against their black backgrounds like vibrant reliefs. In some cases, they even carefully wrap around the borders of the canvas, blurring the boundaries between things and frame. They’re on show to pleasure and influence until Might 30.
All photos courtesy Abbozzo Gallery.
Elizabeth Pagliacolo is the Editor of Azure magazine and Managing editor of Design Milk. Based in Toronto, she covers style at every scale, from the spoon to the city. Some of her favourite things, in no specific order, are Mulholland Drive (the motion picture and the location), charred Basque cheesecake (preferably from Toronto’s Bar Raval), real crime podcasts (indiscriminately) and the noise of boots crunching down on fall leaves.