During fashion month we get used to see the most extraordinary things on the runways of the main fashion capitals. Quite often, though, even behind the craziest and most extravagant outfits there is no special meaning, as many designers tend to create things that catch people's eyes and that end up guaranteeing them social media posts and reposts. But there are artists out there who have been creating fashion designs and costumes that we may not see on the runway, but that hide behind their many layers radical and revolutionary messages. One of them is Matthew Flower.
Better known as Machine Dazzle, Flower moved to New York City in 1994 after attending The University of Colorado Boulder.
Flower did odd jobs by day, while his DIY transgressive nature and aesthetics erupted at night in art and dance clubs.
As the years passed, Flower moved between stagecraft, design, music, performance and dance. He has also designed projects for Opera Philadelphia and Spiegleworld, holding residencies at Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Moody Center for the Arts at University of Houston, Wesleyan University and Harvard University's Theater, Dance & Media Department).
A provocateur, self-taught designer and artist behind popular cabaret, drag, and performance stars such as Taylor Mac and transgender icon Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, Flower is well-versed in queer maximalism's aesthetic language of gay liberation.
New York's Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) is currently celebrating Flower with a unique event - "Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle" (on view through February 19, 2023), the first solo exhibition dedicated to the genre-defying artist.
The event comprises around 100 of his over-the-top creations for stage and street theater, but also a variety of material samples, photographs, and videos, alongside stage environments, ephemera, such as posters advertising past performances and tickets to shows, and images of his work in activism.
The multimedia exhibition covers two floors of the Museum and this gives you an idea of the richness of the materials on display.
Visitors are welcomed by a soundtrack claiming "we are homosexual, we are beautiful…" and a platform with a group of costumes in bright and vivid colours.
Machine Dazzle's collaborations with drag and performance luminaries - including the Dazzle Dancers (Flower got his name after joining this performance group in New York in 1996; while the moniker "Machine" comes from his energy in dancing and creating) and Mx Justin Vivian Bond - take center stage.
Some of these pieces can also be interpreted as studies on materials and textures that have a storytelling power about them: these designs aren't mere costumes, but sculptures that get activated when the performers wear them.
Sequins, glitter, feathers, beads, rhinestones, ribbons and found objects including ping pong balls, potato-chip bags, toy soldiers, Barbie dolls, a stuffed animal of Dory from "Finding Nemo" and soup cans, are used to create a "queer maximalism" aesthetic and narrative. Indeed, materials are important not for what they are, but because they allow the designer to tell a story through them.
As exhibition curator Elissa Auther, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator, states in a press release, "In his quest to queer design, Machine Dazzle demonstrates how costumes have world-making capacity, why unorthodox materials have become the preferred way for those outside of majority culture to describe themselves, and the ways in which excess can both transform and transfigure the queer body."
Among the highlights at the exhibition there are the costumes created by the artist for himself and his long-time collaborator Taylor Mac to wear in the queer performance art concert production, "A 24-Decade History of Popular Music" (2016-present).
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, Taylor Mac's show is a mashup of music, history, and theater: lasting 24 hours, the monumental show decodes the social history of the United States - all 240 years - through 246 songs that were popular throughout the country, and in its disparate communities, from 1776 to the present day. Dazzle created costumes for the show (one per decade) plus costumes for himself to wear as Mac's dresser on-stage.
Just like the work of Taylor Mac, this exhibition is colourful, fun and glittery only on the surface: strip down the layers of fabric, tulle, glitter and random objects, and you will discover a political, radical and social experience that, rejecting cultural hierarchies, engages communities and invites visitors to consider the prejudices of high culture regarding extravagance and the overly decorated.
The purpose of these living sculptures is indeed to counter elitist notions and prejudices of high culture that consider spectacle and extravagance as vapid.
Humorous and irreverent, maximalism becomes the language of minoritized and marginalized communities and embracing it is a way of affirming one's hybridity with courage, while getting a message across - you didn't break us, we're still standing and we're beautiful.
For an added dose of Queer Maximalism, check out the catalogue for the exhibition, available at this link. During the exhibition, MAD will present a series of five films from the '70s and the '80s curated by Machine Dazzle (check the programme here). The films helped shape the artist’s aesthetic sensibility as a child. The series will include screenings of the Faye Dunaway classic "The Eyes of Laura Mars" (1978) for Halloween and "Xanadu" (1980) starring Olivia Newton-John to mark the artist's birthday.
Image credits for this post
1. Machine Dazzle, 2019. Photo: Gregory Kramer
2. Machine Dazzle, Experimental Drag Look, 2002, New York, NY. Photo: Mikael Karlsson
3. Machine Dazzle, NYC Easter Parade, 2019. Photo: Dusty Rebel
4 and 5. Machine Dazzle at work on "A 24 Decade History of Popular Music", The Curran Theater, San Francisco, CA, 2017. Photo: Little Fang
6. Machine Dazzle for Heliotropisms performance still, 2019, Moody Center for the Arts, Houston, TX. Photo: Natasha Bowdoin
8. Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle. Costumes created by Machine Dazzle for Taylor Mac's performance art concert production, "A 24-Decade History of Popular Music" (2016–present). Photo: Jenna Bascom
11. Mother Muse costume created by Machine Dazzle for the film "Once Within a Time", commissioned by director Godfrey Reggio (2021). Photo: Jenna Bascom
7, 9, 10 and 12 - 15. Installation views of "Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle" at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Photo: Jenna Bascom. Courtesy the Museum of Arts and Design
16. Machine Dazzle dressing Taylor Mac in "A 24 Decade History of Popular Music", 2016. Photo: Joseph Beyer
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