Yesterday's post closed with a brief focus on Ruben and Isabel Toledo's exhibition "Labor of Love" (until 7th July 2019) at Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), so let's move from there to start this new post.
Among the other works, the exhibition features Ruben's own interpretation of the four reclining female gods, known as the Four Races, from Diego Rivera's "Detroit Industry Murals", that the artist reinvented and painted on strips of pleated canvas.
In another room, Isabel's installation entitled "Migration" features mannequins in sculpted black gowns with their heads covered in black hoods, representing a celebration of immigration and integration of different cultures in the local social fabric.
Suspended between the fashion and the auto industry, the works dialogue one with other creating a juxtaposition between the worlds of art and fashion design.
This juxtaposition has been explored also in recent runways: in January John Galliano showcased in Paris during Haute Couture Week, the latest Maison Margiela Artisanal collection.
Inspired by the theme of decadence in different fields - including art, fashion and film – the collection was a sensory overload, a visually eye-confusing journey of excess and decay.
The collection presentation felt a bit like being trapped in Kenny Scharf's "Cosmic Closet" (1980/2017), the multimedia installation recreating the iconic Club 57 at New York's MoMa (View this photo). Among the chaos of colours and graphic elements on Margiela's runway, a bright blue poodle appeared here and there.
Models moved in a confusing environment, wearing chaotic garments covered in dizzying graffiti, appliqued elements and hand-embroideries that seemed to completely merge with the surrounding space.
This multi-textural chaos was an ode to the Instagram generation, binging on digital images. Yet, as the collection progressed, the focus re-shifted towards tailored constructions and transformative garments: a trenchcoat was cut into skateboard shorts; skirts became capes; trousers were turned into a jacket; coats were taken apart and reassembled into "combinaisons", that is one-piece garments in Galliano's language.
A velvet jacket was transformed into a black dress, while a jacket's pocket flaps turned into shoulder elements and the sleeves of a coat were mounted in a Frankenstein's monster-like experiment onto a light jacket fastened with ribbons.
The collection was in a way also a reference to the possibility of altering reality as we know it via computer-generated imagery, but reapplying this concept to real life.
This sense of transformative and unsettling confusion and the possibility of camouflaging yourself with what surrounds you and in particular with a work of art, seemed to be evoke a scene in the recent Netflix film Velvet Buzzsaw.
At a certain point of this satirical and supernatural horror film set in the art world and directed by Dan Gilroy, one of the main characters, Josephina, is transported into a gallery, here the graffiti-like paintings around her start melting, cover her skin and eventually suck her onto a wall, transforming her into a work of art.
For Maison Margiela's A/W 19 collection Galliano left behind the chaotic graffiti to refocus on tailored silhouettes interpreted in an experimental way such as a gray double-breasted coat recombined with felted sleeves borrowed maybe from an old coat and renewed with a shoulder roll detail (a trend seen on many runways in the latest fashion season).
Transformative tailoring gave the chance to the designer to experiment with morphing silhouettes, with coats turning into dresses, and pants being dissected into a bustier and a skirt, while quite a few garments incorporated tailor's stitching, a fetaure used as if it were embroidery on classic men's fabrics including tweeds and herringbone. Art came back in the appliqued panels on boxy jackets that featured a hot pink flamingo and in the graffitied leggings.
The colours of the bright prints in the collection that emerged through solid black or grey, evoked the bright shades of works by artist and designer Jerszy Seymour. The artist has currently got an exhibition on entitled "Sacred Mountain" (until 29th April 2019) at the Copenhagen-based Etage Projects gallery.
The piece that gives the title to the event is a climbable totem that can be transformed into a fully functioning kitchen. Composed of a rational free stack of the minimal elements needed for a kitchen, the piece is characterised by vivid splashes of colours on a black background and the artist conceived it as a way to find an unlikely harmony between the creative art world and industrially produced furniture.
There seems to be an unexpected correspondence between the colours and transformative power of this piece and the palette and morphing power in Galliano's collections for Margiela. And while all is casual and there are no connections between these collections, "Velvet Buzzsaw" and Seymour's works, it is intriguing pondering a bit about the ways the art world can merge into the fashion universe, where it can be transformed in multiple ways. As for Galliano's clothes for Margiela, you can bet you will see some of the more wearable designs becoming uniforms for many fashion fans going to hip art fairs all over the world.
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