Let's continue the architectural thread we started in yesterday's post with a quick comparison. Fashion fans may remember how one of Iris van Herpen's dresses from her Autumn/Winter 2012-13 Haute Couture collection looked like an assemblage or agglomerations of leaves recreated using nude coloured polymer. We could say that the dress tackled the dichotomy between nature (the leaf motif) and artifice (the material and the techniques employed to make the dress).
The colour and the consistency of the dress made me think a lot about Hilary Koob-Sassen's alien-like alabaster sculpture entitled "Paracultural Sense of a Larger Nudity" (2012) part of the "Inhabitable Models" (a definition borrowed from Sir John Summerson's essay 'Heavenly Mansions' to describe the fascination of niches and of the ability of the imagination to inhabit buildings) installation at the 13th Venice International Architecture Biennale.
In this installation three different London-based architectural practices - Lynch architects, Eric Parry architects and Haworth Tompkins - were asked to collaborate together depicting London, while at the same time demonstrating an attitude to design that seems characteristic of the place. Each architect brought a large-scale model of one of their buildings to the Arsenale to describe their inhabitable models and demonstrate a relationship with the viewer articulated through art as each façade provided a setting for artworks. These fragments, models and sculptures proved their understanding of the historical and architectural richness of the London context in which they work.
The table exhibit that is also part of the installation includes drawings, collages, projects, sculptures and objects by various artists, among them also Hilary Koob-Sassen, better known for expressing his art in different mediums including steel and marble sculpture and films.
Koob-Sassen's sculpture is not an obvious representation of a city, but its abstract form and alien, spaceship-like silhouette can lead to interesting experiments, both in the representation of the nature vs artifice dichotomy in art and architecture and, why not, as inspiration and starting point for futuristic garments and accessories.
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