An exhibition entitled "EXHM" (standing for "exhumation") celebrated last March in London Los Angeles-based visual artist Sterling Ruby, whose main works revolve around issues linked to modern life and society with a special focus on American domination and decadence.
The event included installations of works and materials that the artist himself dug out of his studio and focused on a sort of cathartic process that allowed Ruby to recycle and recreate a series of pieces and objects that were lying around in his studio.
Among the pieces exhibited there was also "CDCR", a red, white and blue urethane sculpture reconfiguring the artist's "Monument Stalagmite" sculptures, and a selection of collages - cardboard pieces covered in urethane, dirt and footprints - that were actually employed by the artist to protect the floor of his studio while working on "CDCR". Completed with pictures of burial grounds, correctional facilities, prescription packages and other assorted bits and pieces, the cardboard pieces were reinvented as post-modernist compositions.
Ruby employed more or less the same technique in his "BC" series, collages of fabric scraps and clothing applied to a ground of bleached black denim. That exhibition also featured Ruby’s soft sculptural works like his trademark gaping vampire mouths in an American flag fabric.
Belgian designer Raf Simons has known Ruby for almost ten years, but he must have seen that specific exhibition since his Autumn/Winter 2014 collection was not simply inspired by Ruby's works in general, but incorporated most of his pieces from "EXHM".
The collection, showcased in a setting that also featured Ruby's American flag soft sculptures hanging from the ceiling and falling into piles on the floor, focused a lot on outerwear with Simons' trademark oversized and voluminous trenches and coats, parkas and anoraks turned into the paint splattered garments donned by artists, or replicating Ruby's cardboard pieces layered with packages of medicines and slogans such as "Fathers".
Simons mainly employed Ruby's cardboard and fabric collages with bleached spots to put emphasis on textures and accumulations, while the vampire-shaped soft sculptures were reinterpreted as images of shark jaws.
There were also references to Ruby's "SPC" works in the garments characterised by images of night skies and planets, and the space mood was reinforced by the shoes that accessorised the looks, oversized and bulky like astronauts' boots and creating at times a bit of a Frankenstein's monster effect on models.
Critics spotted a punk ethos and music references to band icons wearing patches on their clothes, but, if you knew Ruby's works, it would have been easy to see where the real inspirations for the emblazoned slogans, vivid bands of colours, images and patches came from.
Though desirable, the collection actually deeply criticised fashion: Ruby's works have indeed precise meanings and his vampire-like soft fangs (reinterpreted here as shark jaws or as a pair of woman's hands with nails painted in bright colours aggressively grabbing at things) are not objects of comfort, but they are employed by the artist to criticise capitalism, consumption and insatiable consumerism.
In the same way the fabrics in Ruby's "BC" series reference the playful patterns of traditional quilts hinting at craft and painting, but also reminding how these forms of art and disciplines have been destroyed by industry and waste.
Though luxurious, the garments deriving from Ruby's artworks are therefore not objects of comfort: cocooning coats feature indeed threatening images and visuals, as if Simons was raising two fingers to the fashion establishment (even though the fashion establishment didn't get the final message but appreciated the final looks on a purely aesthetic level...).
This cross-pollination between art and fashion makes you ponder about a few issues: critics stated this wasn't the usual collection in which a prominent fashion label takes an artist and asks them to produce a print for a T-shirt. If you think about it, though, the collection was not just heavily informed by Ruby's practice, but it incorporated his works, proving that art can easily be transformed into fashion (and used to criticise it), even though not all fashion is art.
A couple of dilemmas remain, though, highlighting also a certain degree of schizophrenia at the bottom of this fashion/art collaboration: where is the novelty in actually borrowing a work of art and applying it more or less as it is to a coat, and what happens when an artist commenting upon consumerism becomes the subject of that same consumption he is criticising?
Maybe time will provide us with proper answers, but so far one thing is certain: fashion and art not just nurturing each other, they are feeding off each other in an almost cannibalistic way.
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