FAKE IS JUST AS GOOD

If there’s an artist whose work is at the origin of this collection, it is undoubtfully the American painter-photographer Boo Ritson and her intimidating pictures of thickly painted bodies. Instead of structuring and modelling the body, Ritson’s artistic intervention involves liquid pigments dripping on the skin of her models, turning them into flabby, somnolent and yet colourful and scandalous body shapes. Now to create her living sculptures, Ritson focuses exclusively on the (epidermal, photographic) surface of various bodies which, in return, offer their own shapes and volume to the artist’s material creations. The project I am submitting here is a response to Ritson’s essential focus on the surface and its confrontation with the human body.

So here is the surface; there is the body; now let the two entities meet! Because it is pure shape, the body imprints; it emerges slowly from the smooth surface, gives an ephemeral shape to the adaptive piece of fabric, and then disappears. Purity and simplicity are the words.

More than a simple citation of Ritson’s work, my project also echoes the parallel obsession of Pop Art with flat painting and mimetic plastic reproductions of everyday objects and bodies. Boo Ritson’s work itself isn’t devoid of a general “plastic” feeling. But behind the diverse artistic approaches lies the same critique of the modern tendency to seek perfection – or perfected versions of ourselves – in extreme aestheticization practices often leading to horrifying results: plastic faces, fake bodies, the production of identically perfect objects, polished surfaces rejecting any imperfection. But since imperfections are human, aesthetic perfection becomes somehow inhuman. And almost inhuman will indeed look the silicon masks included in my collection. Aestheticized replicas of each model’s face, they illustrate the repeated will to stand out and the lost of identity, a certain form of depersonalization (the 8 identical pairs of boots and glasses also worn by the models will serve the same purpose). Furthermore, the unavoidable disappointment and frustration caused by this extravagant quest for beauty and perfection will also be given a material form in the collection, through the transformation of matter itself and its movement from solid to liquid, from hard to mellow, from shell to cloth.

At last, not a stranger to the Pop Art world, Kim Gordon (the frontwoman of arty New-York band Sonic Youth (cf attached file)) is the inspiring muse of this project. Encouraged by the musician’s punk attitude, the collection will dare strong contrasts of fabrics and colours and won’t hesitate to use leopard prints. A raw carnal energy will anchor the collection to the ground and hopefully help to prevent the dangers of a too conceptual approach. 

Future plans….
 I want to work (of course!) in big houses, i hope for an intership at margiela. 
About the fabrics                                                                                                                                                                            I used a lot of synthetic fabrics: mostely lycras and neoprene.

Photography Pierre Debusschere