Deste Foundation invites artists to transform windows of Barneys New York
At a time of year when most New York stores entice passersby with promises of deep discounts, Barneys is eschewing ‘sale’ signs in favour of resin chairs in a concrete bunker, 3-D movies that flicker through a grid of mirrored triangles, and an ode to a turquoise tutu.
Nothing displayed in the department store’s windows (until 15 July) is available for purchase, as these five installations - created by design studio M/M Paris, photographer Juergen Teller; artist Helmut Lang, poet Patrizia Cavalli, and filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari - are the latest additions to Destefashioncollection, an offshoot of art collector Dakis Joannou’s Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art.
‘I’ve had this curiosity about [the connection between] art and fashion since the early 1980s, when Artforum put an Issey Miyake dress on its cover,’ says Joannou. ‘Back then it was shocking to see the image of a fashion piece in an art magazine.’ He hatched his own collaborative initiative a couple of decades later, over dinner in Greece with Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak of M/M Paris.
The trio developed a project to appoint one artist curator per year to chose five fashion pieces, interpret those pieces visually or verbally, and explain the choices in writing. The resulting ‘capsule collection’ would then be acquired by the foundation.
M/M inaugurated Destefashioncollection in 2007 by immortalising picks such as a Comme des Garçons bunny-eared hat and injection-molded Balenciaga heels in drawings, a medium described by the pair as ‘forgotten in the fashion industry’. In the years that followed, five more curators put their own creative spin on everything from a Hermès Birkin bag to American Apparel leggings, and Joannou decided it was time for an exhibition. His friend Dennis Freedman, creative director of Barneys, had just the venue: the store’s Madison Avenue-facing windows.
‘We went to every curator and asked them to make site-specific installations for our windows based on the fashion pieces they had selected,’ says Freedman, who spent a year masterminding the presentation of the new and often highly complex works. They include Lang’s replicas of five front-row seats from his final fashion show and Cavalli’s spoken and computer-printed musing on Viktor & Rolf’s frothy ‘Vestito da Distacco’ (‘detachment dress’).
Among the most visually arresting installations is that of Teller, whose 2000 portrait of Yves Saint Laurent—with a mad-scientist gleam in his eyes—has been enlarged to billboard proportions and pasted onto white cladding that suggests a high-fashion construction site. M/M opted for primary colours that evoke both Mondrian and Memphis to stage a game of accessories peek-a-boo, with moving panels that reveal and conceal, while Tsingari’s haunting black-and-white film, featuring a cast that includes actress Clémence Poésy, has been installed behind a lattice that affords a 3-D effect. Meanwhile, 2011 curator Charles Ray sat out this project, as he imagined his selected fashion items as ‘invisible clothes’ (translation: naked photos).
The windows were unveiled Tuesday night at a store party, where German artist John Bock, assisted by a team of seamstresses, put on a performance that involved cutting and collaging clothing. As for the future of Destefashioncollection, Joannou is eager to stage an expanded exhibition, but for now, he’s enjoying the debut. ‘Barneys, New York City, five windows - what more do you want?’ he asks, with a laugh, before returning to matters sartorial. ‘The whole thing just fits like a glove.’
Helmut Lang's cast-resin replica of five front-row seats from his final fashion collection are installed in a concrete room in the window of Barneys, replicating the artist's own basement, where the piece has been stored. Flat-panel plaques on the floor display the fashion items the artist selected as highlights of 2009
Poet Patrizia Cavalli presents 'Vestito da Distacco' ('Detachment Dress'), her ode to a frothy dress from Viktor & Rolf's spring 2010 collection, in three forms: text posted on the rear wall, a spoken word performance that plays through speakers positioned outside the window, and a computer printer that emits, word by word, the verses of her tribute to 'a big rich dense crinkly / soft hut / of angelical turquoise'
Poet Patrizia Cavalli presents 'Vestito da Distacco' ('Detachment Dress'), her ode to a frothy dress from Viktor & Rolf's spring 2010 collection, in three forms: text posted on the rear wall, a spoken word performance that plays through speakers positioned outside the window, and a computer printer that emits, word by word, the verses of her tribute to 'a big rich dense crinkly / soft hut / of angelical turquoise'
ADDRESS
Barneys
660 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10065
United States
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Stephanie Murg is a writer and editor based in New York who has contributed to Wallpaper* since 2011. She is the co-author of Pradasphere (Abrams Books), and her writing about art, architecture, and other forms of material culture has also appeared in publications such as Flash Art, ARTnews, Vogue Italia, Smithsonian, Metropolis, and The Architect’s Newspaper. A graduate of Harvard, Stephanie has lectured on the history of art and design at institutions including New York’s School of Visual Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
-
With Bird, Andrea Arnold has created a whole new style of cinema
The director’s latest masterpiece has confounded critics, but only she could have created a social magical realist film that soars so high above dogmatic thinking
By Jordan Bassett Published
-
A bicycle made for two: MOD’s Easy SideCar Sahara e-bike gives your pet a place to perch
Have sidecar, will travel: MOD Bikes have drawn on iconic motorcycle style to create the new desert-themed Easy SideCar Sahara
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Inside Jack Whitten’s contribution to American contemporary art
As Jack Whitten exhibition ‘Speedchaser’ opens at Hauser & Wirth, London, and before a major retrospective at MoMA opens next year, we explore the American artist's impact
By Finn Blythe Published
-
Brutalism in film: the beautiful house that forms the backdrop to The Room Next Door
The Room Next Door's production designer discusses mood-boarding and scene-setting for a moving film about friendship, fragility and the final curtain
By Anne Soward Published
-
'There’s an anxiety under all of it': Violet Dennison in New York
Violet Dennison debuts abstract paintings with new show 'Damaged Self' at Tara Downs Gallery
By Mary Cleary Published
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West
‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Mark Armijo McKnight’s bodily landscapes capture the tactile serenity of the American West
The artist’s new exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which is organised by the museum curator Drew Sawyer, offers a succinct window into his contemplative suggestion of queering a landscape
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
Dark, glamorous and hedonistic: a photography book captures New York in the 1990s
New York: High Life, Low Life, by Dafydd Jones, goes behind the scenes of New York society
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Derrick Alexis Coard’s portraits are a sensitive, positive testimony to Black men
The late artist Derrick Alexis Coard’s retrospective ‘I Am That I Am’, at New York’s Salon 94, honours his ‘symbolic expression for possible change for the African-American male community’
By Tianna Williams Published
-
Intimacy, violence and the uncanny: Joanna Piotrowska in Philadelphia
Artist and photographer Joanna Piotrowska stages surreal scenes at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
By Hannah Silver Published
-
First look: Sphere’s new exterior artwork draws on a need for human connection
Wallpaper* talks to Tom Hingston about his latest large-scale project – designing for the Exosphere
By Charlotte Gunn Published