There is something similar to Paolo Scheggi's spatial sculptures in Emilio Cavallini's artworks: through their creations both artists reach out to a dimension that seems hidden behind a canvas, or try to find and reveal hidden interstices and intersurfaces. Yet there is also a major difference between them: Scheggi was an artist and mainly worked with canvases; Cavallini is an artist and fashion designer mainly known for elevating hosiery to art and for creating works using the tights he produces.
Cavallini's works are currently on show at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, as part of the event "Harmony Runs on a Thread", an exhibition dedicated to Cavallini (until 25th August).
Born in San Miniato, near Pisa, in 1945, Cavallini graduated in economics and soon after decided to follow his passion and dedicate himself to fashion and style.
During his frequent trips to London he also met Mary Quant who turned into one of the first designers he collaborated with. After he founded his company – Stilnovo – in 1970, he started producing hosiery for major fashion houses and brands.
Throughout the decades Cavallini has indeed designed iconic tights for Dior, and produced hosiery for (among the others) Celine, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Gucci, and, more recently, Opening Ceremony.
In 2011 Milan's Triennale dedicated him a retrospective and two years ago he exhibited in New York and Paris.
Organised during the Los Angeles Design Festival and curated by Peter Frank, critic and curator at the Riverside Art Museum, the exhibition in Los Angeles is the first one by Cavallini on the West Coast.
The event includes works from the mid-'60s, when Cavallini first got interested in fashion and started exploring the potentialities of tights, to the present day.
Though Cavallini has always been a fan of Optical Art and some of the works included in this event play around with trademark Op Art juxtapositions of black and white polkadots, swirls and stripes (motifs he replicates year after year on his timeless optical tights as well…), most of the pieces included take inspiration from mathematics, geometry, physics and architecture.
In some cases Cavallini played with symmetry, in others with permutations, but most of his creations – some of them to be interpreted as modern reinventions of strapworks from the 1500s – could be considered as perfect optical illusions based on one main dichotomy – "soft Vs rigid".
From a distance the pieces look indeed as if they were composed using rigid materials, but, close up, you realise the fractals are made by tensioning numerous pairs of soft and elastic tights arranged in three-dimensional structures proving that, in Cavallini's case, art and fashion genuinely run on the same nylon thread employed to make his hosiery.
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