During Paris Fashion Week A/W 2011-12, I visited a rather unusual exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery: “Rodin – Sugimoto”, an exhibition on sculptures by Auguste Rodin in confrontation with photography by Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Three monumental sculptures from Rodin: The Three Shades, a group study in which the standing figure of Adam from The Gates of Hell is repeated in shifting perspective. Monument to Victor Hugo, a figure composition that depicts the artist deep in thought and The Whistler Muse, an armless female figure that attempts to climb a mountain in an allegory of the challenge of artistic creation.

The images from Sugimoto’s series Stylized Sculpture are inspired by key 20th century fashions from the Kyoto Costume Institute. The photographs show garments from designers such as Balenciaga, Miyake, Comme des Garçons, Chalayan,… Shot in black and white and on headless mannequins, and thus removed from the context on the human body and its emotive associations, the garments reveal their pure formal qualities in terms of dramatic contrasts in form, volume and surface. Sugimoto captures the abstract, sculptural nature intrinsic to the history of clothing and in doing so depicts the eternity beyond evanescence. My favourite picture is the Yves Saint Laurent Mondrian dress, it was nice to see it in a whole new dimension!