Contemporary Art Gallery

You reach out – right now – for something : Questioning the Concept of Fashion

February 22 (Sat.),2014,to May 18 (Sun.),2014

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COSMIC WONDER“COSMIC WONDER RESTAURANT” 2013
Photo by Takashi Homma

“Fashion is conceived as a system that supplies the newest information about trends, season by season. Due to the overwhelming amount of new collections and information about what is en vogue today, people tend to automatically stop creating their own ideas. However, fashion can still be the trigger for people to talk about diverse things.” Nakako Hayashi (excerpt from Expanded Fashion)

Nakako Hayashi, who was working as an editor of Japanese fashion/culture magazine “Hanatsubaki” published by Shiseido, has been enthusiastically committed in culture including fashion and art for many years. Her editing independent magazine here and there is admired all over the world. In her book titled Expanded Fashion (Space Shower Network, 2011), which received a great response, she introduces the work of artists who explore unique and contemporary approaches towards the concept of fashion.
This exhibition, which is based on Hayashi’s book, invites artists besides the ones she introduces, and who are representative for new tendencies in the fashion scene since 2010. The show reveals fashion as a cultural crossroad, bringing together the various genres of art, fashion and literature.
Reaching from Haute Couture over Prêt-à-porter to Street Wear, fashion itself, in coherence with the change of people’s lifestyle and concept of values, has successfully evolved and could be viewed as a sensitive mirror of our day and age. At the same time and also influenced by globalization, humans constantly produce new desires and fashion has evolved into an economic tool for consumerism. Hayashi did coverage on the Paris Fashion Week during the Nineties, however putting emphasis on artists and designers with a critical awareness for fashion in consumer industry. In her work she documents a creative activity which differs from conventional fashion design, which she observes and describes from a unique point of view.
Visitors will encounter a selection of works by artists who make use of fashion to cultivate the aesthetic senses in modest everyday life and to communicate a lifestyle and mindset to others. Further focus lies on activities carried out by fashionists who incorporate performance and workshops, as well as the works of photographers and visual artists involved with them.
At the venue new works by Takashi Homma, who executed fashion photography in a documentary style, are on display and a showcase by Kazunari Hattori Design gives insight into tendencies of independent publishing as Purple, here and there or Nieves. Works include the first film by novelist and director Miranda July, installations by Ryoko Aoki, Yurie Nagashima, Susan Cianciolo, COSMIC WONDER, BLESS / Takehito Koganezawa and Keisuke Kanda×Masashi Asada. Additionally a workshop held by FORM ON WORDS will offer participants an inspiring environment to make their own clothes.
Without showing draped mannequins and set apart from past fashion exhibitions, this show aims to trigger a rethinking the concept of “Fashion” and to explore alternative relationship between fashion and us.