Since retiring from fashion design in 2005 after Prada acquired his self-named minimalist luxury label, Helmut Lang ventured into a career as an artist, presenting his first solo show at Kestnergesellschaft, in Hanover, Germany, in 2008. Last summer, Lang destroyed and repurposed 6,000 pieces of his clothing archive to create a series of columnar sculptures for an East Hamptons exhibition at the Fireplace Project. His latest offering, “Helmut Lang: Sculptures,” will open on May 5 in New York City at 24 Washington Square North. The show is timed to coincide with Frieze Week.
Co-curated by Mark Fletcher and Neville Wakefield, the exhibition will feature more than 20 new sculptures by Lang. The artist continues with themes of destruction and renewal, this time leaving his clothing collections in tact and opting for found objects made of materials like rubber, foam, tar, sheepskin, and plaster.
Lang utilized white or black monochromatic color schemes – covering the pieces in tar or paint, or leaving them untouched in their original shade – and stacked the objects into vertical totem-like structures whose “softened edges record both the process of erosion and their progression from industrial object to gallery artifact,” states the press release. Not around New York during Frieze? The exhibition will run through June 15.
“Helmut Lang: Sculptures” will be on display at 24 Washington Square North from May 5 through June 15.