Monday, June 12, 2017

NYC - MET Exhibitions – Adrian Villar Rojas – Rei Kawakubo – Come des Garcons – Irving Penn

 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Exhibitions
The Roof Garden Commission

Andrian Villar Rojas -The Theater of Disappearance

Argentinian artist Adrian Villar Rojas has transformed the Cantor Roof garden with an intricate site-specific installation that uses the Museum itself as its raw material. Featuring detailed replicas of nearly 100 objects from The Met collection, The Theater of Disappearance, until October 29, encompasses thousands of years of artistic production over several continents and cultures, and fuses them with facsimiles of contemporary human figures as well as furniture, animals, cutlery, and food. Each object—whether a 1,000-year-old decorative plate or a human hand—is rendered in the same black or white material and coated in a thin layer of dust.



Andrian Villar Rojas - The Theatre of Disappearance
To realize this extensive work by featuring detailed replicas of nearly 100 objects from The Met collection the artist immersed himself in the Museum and its staff for many months, holding conversations with the curators, conservators, managers, and technicians across every department who contributed to the realization of this installation.



 Andrian Villar Rojas - The Theater of Disappearance




Andrian Villar Rojas - The Theater of Disappearance


The Metropolitan Museum of Art / The Costume institute
Rei Kawakubo / Comme des Garcons
Art of the In-Between

I like to work with space and emptiness.”
Rei Kawakubo - 2000

The Costume Institute's spring 2017 exhibition examines the work of fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, known for her avant-garde designs and ability to challenge conventional notions of beauty, good taste, and fashionability. The thematic show features approximately 140 examples of Kawakubo's womenswear for Comme des Garcons dating from the early 1980s to her most recent collection, many with heads and wigs created and styled by Julien d'Ys

http://www.metmuseum.org/



Things that have never been seen before have a tendency
to be somewhat abstract, but making art is not my
intention at all. All my effort is oriented towards giving
form to clothes that have never been seen before.”
2015
Abstraction / Representation


Rei Kawakubo / Comme des Garcons
Art of the In-Between
I never give myself any boundaries or let them
interfere with my work.”
2011
Bound / Unbound

The galleries illustrate the designer's revolutionary experiments in "in-betweenness"—the space between boundaries. Objects are organized into nine aesthetic expressions of interstitiality in Kawakubo's work: Absence/Presence, Design/Not Design, Fashion/Anti-Fashion, Model/Multiple, Then/Now, High/Low, Self/Other, Object/Subject, and Clothes/Not Clothes. Kawakubo breaks down the imaginary walls between these dualisms, exposing their artificiality and arbitrariness.

 


There is value in bad taste.”
Good Taste / Bad Taste




“ The right half of my brain like tradition and history, the left wants to break the rules.”
2005
Past / Present / Future


“I want to rethink the body, so the body and the
dress become one.”

1997
Object / Subject


Am I an anarchist? In the sense that anarchy equals freedom,
yes. Anarchy means freedom, but it also means chaos.”
2016
Order / Chaos

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Irving Penn – Centennial
The most comprehensive retrospective to date of the work of the great American photographer Irving Penn (1917–2009), this exhibition, until July 30, marks the centennial of the artist's birth. Over the course of his nearly 70-year career, Penn mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, and detail.

Copyright Conde Nast – Courtesy MET


Irving Penn – The Twelve Most Photographed Models
1947
Owing to his evident talents with both still-life arrangement and portraiture, Penn was tasked with Vogue’s group portraits. These bravado feats of choreography were tough assignments, and given the competitiveness of many fashion models, this one could have been harrowing. Yet Penn relished this particular job, not only for its challenges but also because it was here that he met Lisa Fonssagrives (back row, center left, in profile). They were married in London three years later.

  
  Copyright Conde Nast – courtesy MET


Irving Penn - Still Life with Watermelon, New York
1947 – printed 1985

  Copyright – The Irving Penn Foundation – courtesy MET

Irving Penn - Salvador Dali - New York
February 20 – 1947

 
Irving Penn – Centennial
The Studio Backdrop
Penn’s portraits sessions involved an extraordinary measure of control in the deliberations of pose and the long, slow dances of psychic accommodation.  They required time and a dedicated space, a studio. In Paris in 1950, Penn used this old theater curtain as a neutral backdrop for his fashion work and his portraits of celebrities and tradespeople. Penn took the curtain with him to London and then to New York, where it was moved from studio to studio over the next half century.  From the start, the cloth was imperfect, with soft stains and frayed edges, but its flaws served Penn’s purpose. 

 
 Copyright Conde Nast – courtesy MET


Irving Penn - Rochas Mermaid Dress
(Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn) – Paris

1950- printed 1980