HELMUT LANG. SÉANCE DE TRAVAIL 1986–2005 exhibition views

Following the opening of HELMUT LANG. SÉANCE DE TRAVAIL 1986–2005 / Excerpts from the MAK Helmut Lang Archive, the MAK presents a series of striking exhibition views. Offering visual access to the spectacular installation, these images invite to engage with the first and only exhibition dedicated to Helmut Lang’s oeuvre from 1986–2005. 

Since its launch the exhibition has received wide international media attention and thoughtful critical response, reflecting the ongoing engagement with and sustained interest in Helmut Lang’s work – a multidisciplinary practice that connected fashion, art, architecture, urban space and media within a broader global and cultural context.

Based on the MAK Helmut Lang Archive, part of the museum’s collection since 2011, the exhibition is conceived as a séance de travail—a working process rather than a retrospective. Large-scale, site-specific installations and previously unseen archival materials offer rare insight into Lang’s way of thinking, foregrounding process, concept, and complexity over finished products. By connecting archival evidence with spatial and sensorial experience, the exhibition makes the enduring relevance of Lang’s strategies visible and underscores his position towards fashion as a cultural and intellectual field, a redistribution of attention, and an ongoing inquiry of traditional hierarchies rather than a consumable style.

The exhibition resists chronological or typological display in favor of overlapping thematic constellations that reveal Lang’s work as interdisciplinary, iterative, and politically grounded, situating his practice within contemporary discourse. By reconnecting images, ideas and materials with the conditions that shaped them, Séance de Travail 1986–2005 presents Lang’s oeuvre as a method and food for thought about authenticity, representation, and self-empowerment.


Curator, Scenographic Idea
Marlies Wirth, Curator Digital Culture and MAK Design Collection

Scientific advisor
Lara Steinhäußer, Curator MAK Textiles and Carpets Collection

Project assistance and visualization of the scenographic idea
Felix Kofler, MAK Design Collection

Assistance and research MAK Helmut Lang Archive
Helena Grünsteidl, MAK Textiles and Carpets Collection,
Nicole Miltner, Museum Database

Exhibition design
Philipp Krummel

Graphic design
Lisa Penz, David Gallo

Partner
University of Applied Arts, Vienna