Outer Dark. Continuing after Fashion
13 June–15 September 2013
Museum Angewandte Kunst
Schaumainkai 17
60594 Frankfurt / Main
Germany
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm;
Wednesday 10am–8pm
T +49 69 212 34037
F +49 69 212 30703
info.angewandte-kunst [at] stadt-frankfurt.de
With the exhibition Outer Dark. Continuing after Fashion, the Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt/Main, is attempting to answer the question: What is fashion now?
If fashion is considered merchandising’s dearest child and a yardstick of the modernist process, what distinguishes fashion that emerges in extremely challenging times? People say fashion mirrors the idiosyncrasy of our present, and is the expression of life in society. The happiness researcher Wilhelm Schmid recently elected melancholy as the “in” attitude. But how does the melancholiac dress? What constitutes the fashion capable of giving this era expression?
In the exhibition in Frankfurt, the test assembly begins with the notion of an era that is commonly known to have given birth to anti-fashion. In the ’90s, young designers such as Ann Demeulemeester, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen and Helmut Lang or Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo defined fashion after fashion. Their visions undercut the colourful world of the ’80s, with its glamazons and thick shoulder pads, glamour and opulence, by no longer providing the accessories for this lifestyle, while instead beginning to engage with its dark sides, from which they developed their individual aesthetics. The fashion crowd, accustomed to luxury, was confronted with unheard-of creations, which later went down in fashion history, termed heroin or Hiroshima chic, grunge, deconstructivism or minimalism.
These conceptions of contemporary fashion became the benchmark for the drafts of countless designers in the following generation. By now the question was no longer how to dress the (post)modern person, but the questioning of generally accepted concepts of living. Without becoming part of a theoretical discourse, these designers started out with themselves. Instead of working on a general idea of life, they investigated the idea of their own life. Breaking with the great utopias of post-/modernism they chose to withdraw into contemplation and melancholy, in search of their own quintessence, which they aimed to clothe.
The exhibition will accompany visitors to the shadow side of happiness, take them on a journey into a dark realm, on a necessary exploration into the uncertain, into what remains when we shed our roles. The visitor will lose, feel and find himself in a multilayered multimedia installation. Ultimately, he will also surmise that there can be no intelligible answer to the question initially posed, because fashion is so much more than just a certain cut, a colour or a particular skirt length illustrated in glossies as the next season’s must-haves. It is a thin membrane, a permeable layer between our everyday life and the other side, on which the designers sound out the limits of human existence, feelings and desire—at a time in which everything already seems to have been said—continuing after fashion.
Designers: A Magazine curated by Rodarte, Erik Madigan Heck, Barbara í Gongini, Maison Martin Margiela, Garland Coo, Leandro Cano, Augustin Teboul, JULIAHEUSE, Alexander McQueen, Boris Bidjan Saberi and Yohji Yamamoto for Y-3
Curators: Mahret Kupka and Matthias Wagner K
Exhibition design: Zana Bosnjak
Press contact: Dorothee Maas and Sabine Huth, T 49 69 212 32828 / 33232, F 49 69 212 30703, presse.angewandte-kunst [at] stadt-frankfurt.de
