Until last year, Belgian Christophe Coppens was among those rare designers interested in breaking the boundaries between various disciplines by creating pieces suspended between art and fashion for his own label and for other designers as well (Yohji Yamamoto and Guy Laroche among the others).
After being in business for more than 20 years, in 2012 Coppens decided to stop all his activities connected with fashion, close his label and continue as an artist.
The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen opened on Saturday an exhibition featuring brand new work by Coppens, commissioned by Han Nefkens Fashion on the Edge (as some of you may remember, Coppens was the recipient of the Han Nefkens Award in 2008).
The pieces Coppens made for this new exhibition reflect an entirely new identity and career. Everything started in April last year when Coppens took a lesson from a master ceramist, Hugo Meert, with the hope of learning how to make things with his own hands using ceramic.
After his first class and his first piece - a mountain - he decided to close his business, file for bankruptcy and move on with his life. While his learning process continued, he proceeded to destroy all his clothes by cutting them up, then got rid of his archive and his household effects and simply moved on.
For three months he carried on making ceramic mountains, then, spellbound by Los Angeles, in December 2012 made his last mountain and decided to start from scratch in LA.
The pieces exhibited at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen reflect in many ways the process that brought Coppens to his decision: a mirror edged with Neapolitan cards features a mountain made with a collage of Coppens' own credit and ATM cards that hint at debts and bankruptcy, but also at a different future reached through the cathartic process of physically producing contemporary artworks.
Though ceramic prevails, quite a few pieces are made using fabrics or stuffed parts of Coppens' clothes. In some cases his ceramic pieces seem to be dressed in or literally swallowed up by stuffed fabrics.
All the pieces are mounted on wooden stands that may be references to theatre stages (Coppens trained as a theatre director and actor) or they may be hinting at the fact that Coppens' own psychological mountains and financial difficulties can be moved around and are therefore not insurmountable.
Fans of Coppens who were sorry when he decided to close his label will be delighted to see that he still retains in many ways a strong link with fashion at least through artworks that incorporate textiles, but they will be even happier to realise that, after all, the loss of the fashion industry, may be the gain of the contemporary art world.
Christophe Coppens - Everything is Local is at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Museumpark 18-20, 3015 CX Rotterdam, The Netherlands, until 2nd June 2013. Note for all the fans of the art and fashion connection: in 2014, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will present a follow up to the "Art of Fashion" exhibition organised in 2009.
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He possess a unique idea that no one else can't think. Very creative and I really love the design. Great job!
Posted by: littleton patios | March 22, 2013 at 03:21 AM