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Lukas Müller, SAGG Napoli at Lady Helen, London

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Clothing has always been seen as an indicator of social standing and cultural background. Today, the idea that what you wear is who you are powers ever-accelerating production-lines and gives shape to a constantly-shifting-never-solid pattern of hyper-consumption.

Besides its economic status fashion represents a mode of cultural creation; a lifestyle. It is the epitome of a culture where the boundaries of high and low are long gone. Haute couture mirrors precarity; fake designer items cover the pavements of street markets. There is a permeability to the transit of looks and the longing for style. Fashion creates an understanding of culture that goes beyond the wearable, holding together apparently opposing desires for the security of fitting in and the freedom of standing out; a pendulum oscillating between belonging and separation; identity and diversity.

This is the basis of its ethical purpose for an audience whose impulse to find agency and identity in the other manifests as a thirst for the individual story. The who-where-why-and-what-we-wear of fashion is key to this participatory feeling. Celebrity branded fashion lines, biopics and gossip platforms have reached a peak – apparently the ancient marriage of personality and publicity is having another big moment. The presence of the individual is accelerated by digital image production and the mechanisms of social media. Culture’s attendees become ever more visible by means of memetic marketing and (self-)promotion. The current trend for hi-vis fabrics in fashion is an almost ironic side-effect.

The kinetic relation between speed and impact in the production-consumption pattern of the shared image is forceful and slippery. The habit of consuming and copying the other and promoting the self becomes over-exposure. The result is an avid readiness for accusation as well as excessive praise. The exhibitionist tendencies that come with the heightened visibility and shifted perception of privacy are discovered to be generosity. Sharing is caring.

— JR

12.10.19 — 10.11.19

Lady Helen

'ABSINTHE', Group Show Curated by PLAGUE at Smena, Kazan

'Pupila' by Elizabeth Burmann Littin at Two seven two gallery, Toronto

'Auxiliary Lights' by Kai Philip Trausenegger at Bildraum 07, Vienna

'Inferno' by Matthew Tully Dugan at Lomex, New York

'Зamok', Off-Site Group Project at dentistry Dr. Blumkin, Moscow

'Dog, No Leash', Group Show at Spazio Orr, Brescia

'Syllables in Heart' by Thomas Bremerstent at Salgshallen, Oslo

'Out-of-place artifact', Off-Site Project by Artem Briukhov in Birsk Fortress, Bi

'Gardening' by Daniel Drabek at Toni Areal, Zurich

'HALF TRUTHS', Group Show at Hackney Road, E2 8ET, London

'Unknown Unknowns' by Christian Roncea at West End, The Hague

'Thinking About Things That Are Thinking' by Nicolás Lamas at Meessen De Clercq,

‘Funny / Sad’, Group Show by Ian Bruner, Don Elektro & Halo, curated by Rhizome P

'Don’t Die', Group Show at No Gallery, New York

'Almost Begin' by Bronson Smillie at Afternoon Projects, Vancouver

'I'll Carry Your Heart's Gray Wing with a Trembling Hand to My Old Age', Group Sh

'hapy like a fly' by Clément Courgeon at Colette Mariana, Barcelona

'Fear of the Dark' by Jack Evans at Soup, London

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