Approaching
fashion from a personal vantage point, I am confronted with the
topic on a daily basis. My young son frequently asks me for money
to buy clothes by Armani, Calvin Klein or some other popular
designer. I am also witness to his daily fashion-inspired ritual
of identity building, which means getting out of bed in the morning
as just another young boy and transforming himself into a "super-styled"
fashion freak in knee-high jeans by the time he's ready to go
out in the evening. It doesn't even take the "Fuck is Cool" on
his t-shirt to make it clear to me what role fashion plays as
a medium for communicating youthful rebellion!
A Way Beyond Fashion analyzes the shifting boundaries between
art and fashion design. The selected 11 artists and designers
blur the lines between the two disciplines when exploring phenomena
related to the global fashion industry in their performances,
public art actions, films, animations and installations- all
as a means of juxtaposing the prevailing discourse on identity
and media-related consumption patterns with entirely new concepts
and forms of articulation. Indeed, an examination of fashion
codes, languages and strategies serves as the source material
for the presented projects that, charged with aesthetic, economic
and technological implications, are contributing to the design
of "real life worlds."
Naturally, my own passion for fashion resonates with a project
like A Way Beyond Fashion. I like to wear Helmut Lang — a vintage
suit that I couldn't have afforded if it had been new — and a
Viktor & Rolf tie, as well as a "horny headpiece" from jewelry
designer AND_i. At the same time, I'm fascinated by the fact
that art "peers at" fashion, and that the art world has developed
an envy complex of sorts due to the glamour, commercial success
and mass appeal of fashion. Conversely, I'm impressed that designers
keep peering back at the artists. Take Raf Simons, for example,
who has flagship stores styled by artists, and who regularly
visits art shows to view content with artistic depth and gather
inspiration for his fashions. Indeed, this fascination isn't
something new, nor is it mine alone, since one can trace back
the interplay between art and fashion to the beginning of modernity.
It started with fashion designers using works of art as models
for their creations and, reciprocally, with the Futurist Giacomo
Balla designing clothes in 1913.
A related idea that interests me is the luxury aspect. Art is
de facto a luxury idiom. On the one hand, we saw this in the
art boom that raged prior to the collapse of the market amidst
the most recent recession. On the other, we notice the increasing
glamour and hype that surrounds grand openings and cocktail parties
at art exhibitions, to a point nearly matching the pomp found
in the world of fashion shows. Additionally, we no longer speak
only of star designers, but also of star artists. Of course,
the question of commodification also applies to art these days.
Take, for example, the works of Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst. The
latter's For the Love of God is a diamond-studded scull
that, in my view, is no more than an inflated piece of jewelry.
With respect to high fashion, the topic of luxury is intertwined
with haute couture, which is ultimately a handcraft and thus
leads us back to the dressmaker who sits in the atelier and creates
pieces by hand — as do most artists. Even fashion history
offers plenty of excellent crossover examples, like Viennese
men's tailor Knize, who not only mastered his craft, but also
collaborated with the architect Adolf Loos — and subsequently
opened the world's first "flagship meagstore" in 1913. Though
a tailor, Knize deliberately cooperated with the greatest intellectuals
of his day, such as Loos and the designer Ernst Dryden.
For A Way Beyond Fashion, my primary intention was to find works
on the periphery between art and fashion. Together, the explored
issues — relating to communication, identity, technology and
ecological sustainability — provide exciting fashion themes,
which in turn are analyzed from the perspective of art. Fashion
designer Rudi Gernreich, whose level of conceptual depth and
radicalism I set out to find in the contemporary fashion world,
provided the historical starting point for the exhibition. I
was immediately fascinated by Gernreich's unisex design concept,
which he first presented at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka. There,
he asked the male and female models to shave all of their body
hair, including their pubic areas, and then sent them across
the catwalk, which to me was a performance comparable in significance
to a signature Yoko Ono action named Cut Piece. With his unisex
and monokini designs, Rudi Gernreich thematized sexual identity
as an important aspect of fashion. Gernreich also experimented
with technology, toyed with unusual fabrics, including vinyl,
plastic and paper, and created the space suit and military look.
In projects by Lucy + Jorge Orta (UK and Argentina, residing
in Paris), technological and social aspects converge. Their transformable
rescue wear for homeless people in the Paris Metro can be worn
as an overall, or used as a sleeping bag or tent. Orta + Orta
don't deal with clothing as fashion, but focus instead on the
protective function of clothing and on survival strategies. In
Connector Mobile Village VI — Makrowear
Ljubljana (2002), the two artists developed autonomous, modular
"body architectures"
for environmental researchers, in which the latter can perform
their scientific work in isolated areas while always remaining
mobile with integrated laptops and cell phones. What is truly
remarkable about Orta + Orta is their unyielding ethical commitment
to rebel against cynical positions in the art industry, against
selling out as artists and designers. Taking this autonomy and
protective function a step further leads us to the question:
How do we go about reclaiming the public space in a manner which
places the focus on human beings as opposed to commerce?
With their Umbruffla project (2005), the Acconci Studio creates
a new concept of an umbrella whose foldable surface is made of
reflective polyester film. When closed, the umbrella is no larger
than a fist, but it transforms into an "umbruffla" when opened.
Not only does the thin skin of the "umbruffla" prove to be a
thick skin in the end, but it also provides a reflecting, camouflaged
hideout in the urban environment as it can be fully wrapped around
when unfolded serving as a mobile, "urban retreat" inside which
lovers can hide out. Acconci Studio also presents another preliminary
study entitled Magnetic Field Clothing. In both projects the
Studio continues its relentless and visionary research concerning
the human body and its performance in the private and public
realm.
"Fashion stopped being clothes and became value, a tool, a way
of life, politics, a kind of symbolism."
This statement by critic
Marilyn Bender applies to the political imperative behind the
performances — or "wearable situations" — devised by Jenny Marketou
(Greece, residing in New York). Marketou has heavily explored
scents and smells, primarily focusing on the olfactory sense
as a means of accessing memories or identifying individuals —
"I can smell you." For ParKour (wear), 12 wearable situations
(paper dresses) will be handed out at the entrance of apexart
for participants to wear during the exhibition opening. Each
piece of clothing bears texts consisting of inscriptions and
advertising slogans circulating in the public realm — e.g., "Fragile"
or "Freedom is the new luxury." Marketou's project thus provides
an update of how the human body is reclaiming the public space
through fashion similar in intent to Acconci. Marketou's interventionist
projects play with advertising and graffiti in an effort to create
better access to urban areas for individuals and thus wrest them
from the dominance of cheap investor-architecture.
At first, I was shocked by PIET2WEAR (2009) by Mirjana Djordjevic-Thaler,
aka DJ MIRA* (Serbian, residing in Vienna), because the Mondrian
icon has truly become one the most overused commercially, in
everything from posters to fabric patterns. However, DJ MIRA*
appropriates this icon of modernity in a surprisingly new way.
In the video Djordjevic-Thaler poses as a static model in a terry
cloth bathrobe whose design adapts Piet Mondrian's modular. A
precursor to this homage is Yves Saint Laurent's wool jersey
Mondrian tunic dress (1965-1966), a piece that first introduced
the fashion world to the Mondrian look. The concept of treating
a dress as a canvas is one which DJ MIRA* "foils" by hinting
at Mondrian's ascetic neoplasticism and its inherent dogma of
achieving a purely plastic form. Here, fashion confronts a social
reality, whose reflection in turn demands a reflection upon the
artist's own work. Through use of a mirroring effect to create
the image and the soundtrack of The Beauty
Regime, DJ MIRA* becomes
an interactive part of the scene.
In an off-site intervention, Terence Gower (Canada, residing
in New York) dares to enter the lion's den with his installation
Display Modern II (Hepworth), 2009 - in this case Barneys luxury
fashion department store on Madison Avenue. There, his installation
of papier-mache copies of original sculptures by Barbara Hepworth
will play on the modus operandi of an art gallery amidst the
commercial-world backdrop. I still remember going into the former
Helmut Lang boutique in Soho and not knowing whether I just entered
an art installation, a museum's white cube or a fashion store.
Gower emphasizes the artificiality and factitiousness of banal,
salable goods, whose value is boosted by adept merchandising
techniques.
With his work Hou/Jun (1997, translates as enriched, healthy
and happy) Takehiko Sanada (Japan) proposes a radical rethinking
of the feverish fashion industry. For a fieldwork project he
invited around 500 members of Tokyo's Setagaya Ward district,
to cultivate their own cotton. The cottonseeds are harvested
and hand spun into threads to produce "Ifuko" (clothing). Sanada
creates with these homegrown cotton very fragile sculptures in
the shape of human bodies. Through this contemplative process,
the artist/designer attains the state of an "enriched heart and
mind" where he turns a fragmented, hectic world into an infinitely
layered and interconnected life encapsulated in the "eternal
time" as the philosopher Yukihiro Nobuhara states in reference
to Hou/Jun.
Edwina Hörl (Austria, residing in Tokyo) also refuses to follow
popular fashion trends to create her collections. Instead, she
continually seeks out new, socially relevant challenges. Her
multimedia installation Dead Fashion Reborn
- Exchange Flea Market (2009), produced together with so+ba, examines the importance
of flea markets as an economic niche and as a source of inspiration
for new collections. Spectators of A Way
Beyond Fashion are invited
to participate directly by optionally exchanging a piece of their
clothing. In another break with consumerism, Hörl distributes
her specially designed toilet paper in public restrooms throughout
Manhattan. Visitors have an opportunity to wrap themselves in
the paper and its printed designs, to co-create ephemeral clothing
pieces.
Carla Fernández (Mexico) takes up powerful ethical and sociopolitical
themes, while challenging the role of fashion and design in creating
cultural identity. Mexico is of course strongly influenced by
the USA and the fashion industry's mega brands, which often makes
one city look like the next. Fernández works with original motifs
and techniques, and embraces the indigenous population of the
Yucatan and other areas of Mexico in her work. Inspired by traditional
patterns, designs, colors and cuts, she also uses her mobile
fashion workshop throughout Mexico to carry out design projects
with indigenous communities, and to draw attention to their socio-economic
situation. Together with Pedro Reyes, Fernández devises the installation
Square Clothes for Round-Minded People (2009), in which seven
pieces of clothing featuring a strictly geometric design of squares
and rectangles hang from a bent steel rack. Reyes' sculpture
is a paraphrase on Sol LeWitt's Incomplete Open Cube. Films showing
how the individual clothing items can be worn on the body in
a multifunctional manner run parallel to the installation.
Stephanie Cumming of Liquid Loft, a dance company from Austria,
uses slapstick-like poses to undermine media-hyped beauty ideals
and body styling obsessions, as well as narcissism and star mania.
As the "Anti-Lara Croft," Cumming shows how the media spectacle
degrades our heroines from cult into mere products of the masses.
The layers of clothing that she pulls over her body in the form
of a second skin not only serve as a synonym for overlapping
identities, but also offer a variety of outfit choices.
Hussein Chalayan (Cyprus, residing in London) can be considered
as one of today's most conceptually interesting fashion designers,
alongside Carol Christian Poell, Martin Margiela and Walter Van
Beirendonck. His chador piece is precisely on the mark; the way
Rudi Gernreich's unisex performance was in Osaka. His LED
Dress (2007), in the installation, thematizes energy and the interexchange
that takes place with the environment — in terms of environmental
change. Chalayan's film The Absent Presence (2005) was first
shown as an art project at the Venice Biennale. In it, a frightful
visions of the future plays out, where "fashion scans" are used
to access private data and track consumer behavior; and where
DNA data is used to keep tabs on everyone at border crossings
and airports.
Despite this apocalyptic ending note, the exhibition A
Way Beyond Fashion presents a selected group of artists and designers who
blur the lines between the two domains and revise some key technological,
ecological and socio-economic issues of our day, so that Gernreich's
vision — "Fashion will go out of fashion" — should not become
reality soon.
Robert Punkenhofer ©2009
apexart's exhibitions and public programs are supported in
part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Carnegie
Corporation of New York, Edith C. Blum Foundation, Mary Duke
Biddle Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., The William
Talbott Hillman Foundation, and with public funds from the New
York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State
Council on the Arts. |
