Punk and pop - there's nothing more dichotomic than these two cultures, as the former represents rebellion and a rejection of all rules, while the latter points at a more commercial and superficially ebullient sensibility. Yet punk and pop perfectly reunite and combine in Aldo Lanzini's disquieting crocheted works with a fun twist added.
Born in Sondrio, based in Milan, but a citizen of the world, Lanzini studied at the Brera Academy, got a Master in Multimedia from the Rijsakademie in Amsterdam, and developed his designing techniques in New York.
Here he spent indeed around ten years working as a stylist and designer for the protagonists of the underground scene, creating costumes for example for Kevin Aviance, American drag queen, musician, nightclub personality and vogueing legend.
From his experiences as costume designer, Lanzini developed a unique way to create crocheted designs and masks: his process starts almost casually, with a small crocheted piece (created with no precise plan in mind) that he then adjusts on the body.
The artist and designer (and Fashion and Textile lecturer at Milan's NABA) then lets it grow, hijacks it and incorporates it in a bigger configuration and structure, coming up with pieces that seem designed to morph the body and hide the face.
These are key aims of Lanzini's works as the artist is reluctant to show his own face, reminding us in this way that we ourselves are works in progress and constantly change our looks and appearances and that anonymity is the greatest luxury in our overshared world.
The results of Lanzini's "outsider crocheting" can be puzzling but fun: a piece that started as a wrestler's mask becomes a dress in the style of a flamenco dancer; a granny's chemisier sprouts bizarre monstrous tentacles ready to poison, strangulate or maybe just tickle someone, while some bodysuits call to mind the elaborate ritual dresses of masquerades in Africa as shot by Phyllis Galembo. Fashion is a masquerade with a highly transformative power after all, and that's why Lanzini's works have often appeared in runway presentations such as Missoni's (S/S 2011, menswear collection) and why a few years ago he has also collaborated with the historical Italian knitwear house to create textile installations during Milan Design Week.
Where did you learn how to crochet and do you consider yourself a textile artist or a designer?
Aldo Lanzini: In a way I never learnt to crochet, I just figured out a way to do it! My first hook handling was in Milan in the late '80s; later on in the mid '90s in New Yor I took the technique into my daily life. I do not consider myself an artist or a designer, those labels can help people to understand the work of somebody, but often they are misleading.
What inspires your crocheted pieces?
Aldo Lanzini: Crochet is a very time-consuming and slow technique; it is a receptacle of all sorts of thoughts and matter that happen in my daily life. Personally, I make references to the field of research that explores the construction of the self, using the crochet hook as a tool for building identities. How does your creative process work: do you usually know what you want to create or do you let your instincts guide you?
Aldo Lanzini: It is awkward for me to explain my creative process; it usually happens with no witness but myself, it is a dance between willing and guiding. It is a quite philosophical and aesthetic voyage! Some of your pieces look like benevolent monsters or fun masks: do you conceive them as independent creatures or as items that we can wear to transform ourselves or to protect ourselves from the negativity of the world surrounding us?
Aldo Lanzini: It can surely be all of this, this work avoids characterization, but, at the same time, invites all definitions.
Your pieces look very radical and they are often assemblages of colours and stitches: do you interpret them as vehicles to transmit a sense of much needed fun in our bleak world?
Aldo Lanzini: They come from a place of joy: when you create something you always make choices - a series of choices. I make sure that the last one is always pure joy.
In the past you have also created pieces on commission or for runway shows: which is the most bizarre piece you ever created?
Aldo Lanzini: Making things for Kevin Aviance (a duty passed onto me by Jean Marc Arnaude) I would spend many hours or days making the pieces. The designs often lasted one night, sometimes just few hours. They were ephemeral not in the sense that they were fragile, but because they would create a temmomentary scenario, ephemeral yet very powerful.
In your opinion, is the crochet needle mightier than the sword?
Aldo Lanzini: I actually think the opposite; after all it is a hook.
Would you ever launch a personal collection of crocheted clothes and accessories or would you ever do sculptures for an exhibition?
Aldo Lanzini: Sure! That would be wonderful!
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