Inspiration comes from everyday life
Austrian Cultural Forum New York
15 May to 25 September 2024
new York
The double exhibition of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, Inspiration comes from everyday life: works by Elfie Semotan and Nina Holleinaims to bring together “fashion, photography, (fine) art, and architecture,” according to the show’s press release. Although the show as a whole does this, this versatility is expressed more directly in Semotan’s photographs than in Hollein’s garments. The subjects and styles Semotan captures range from angular models in clean, commercially polished scenography to nebulous images of rusty rooms and misty outdoor wilderness scenes reminiscent of F. Holland Day’s pictorialism. In these latter works, Semotan uses restrained chiaroscuro, atmospheric hues, and soft, blurred focus. Although the photographer is most identified with the runway, such images offer viewers a glimpse into her underappreciated stylistic range. Hollein’s work, however, is more confined to the world of fashion and ultimately has little to say about architecture, photography, or fine art.
Hollein’s garments draw from a range of historical textile traditions. The most interesting pieces on display are her 2024 “Colorfield Dresses,” which feature billowing, multicolored elements that inflate from the wearer’s hips. With their color theory-inspired panels and concave, cape-like protuberances, these dresses recall the designs Sonia Delaunay designed and sold in her Parisian “Boutique Simultanée.” A pair of long, pleated, ruffled dresses, on the other hand, lack this experimental approach to aesthetics or material. Hanging from beams rather than mannequins or live models, Hollein’s dresses do not strike the viewer as transformed artifacts that become art objects. This odd choice of presentation detracts from their visual appeal while weakening their ability to act as anti-fashion provocations or challenge our categorical assumptions. An upcycled dress Skirt/Top (2024), made from vintage anorak, latex and plastic, uses a box frame, suggesting that Hollein isn’t necessarily interested in emphasizing the contours and shapes of the body either. Many of her ensembles therefore seem unfinished, showing only the beginnings of a dramatic silhouette that ultimately fails to deliver on its baroque promise—compare these works to those of Rick Owens, for example, who uses towering shoulder pads and gossamer capes to create cohesive, otherworldly garments.
Although she has a penchant for “upcycling,” it is unclear whether Hollein’s work belongs more to the history of appropriative deconstruction (e.g. the Antwerp Six and Martin Margiela) or the material research and imaginative disguises found in designs by Rei Kawakubo, Junya Watanabe, Hussein Chalayan or Iris van Herpen. A select few dresses are on display, including a piece made of plastic vermilion and stretch tulle with an oval hole along the torso—the same dress that was used as a costume for Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Intermedia installation. Shadowstalker (2018–21)—demonstrates Hollein’s interest in the latter tradition. But consider Hollein’s contemporary Austrian compatriot Carol Christian Poell, whose collections include object-dyed leathers and prosthetic-fitted, meticulous suits. Poell creates and exhibits work outside the fashion industry’s seasonal cycle, drawing on esoteric medical history in his investigation of material and silhouette. The results include harrowing, fantastical garments—pieces that, even when presented and not worn, effectively embody the designer’s ideas. Hollein’s designs are not always materially detailed enough to justify their standalone presentation, nor are they compelling as expressions of conceptual goals.
Semotan’s photography fares better here, however. Outside of fashion, she is perhaps best known for her collaborations with her late husband, Martin Kippenberger. These include the Théodore Géricault-inspired The Raft of the Medusa (1996), in which Semotan captures Kippenberger in her studio, with the husband mimicking the various gestures Gericault had depicted on the raft. In this series of works, Semotan captures Gericault’s dramatic poses in stark black-and-white prints. Semotan’s understated, mid-grey portraits of Willem Dafoe, Sylvie Liska, and Vanessa Beecroft—all of which are included in this exhibition—demonstrate Semotan’s skill as a sober genre photographer with a penchant for the austere and formal. Also included here are Semotan’s late exercises in capturing sparse and fabric-filled outdoor spaces (e.g. Untitled, (Division Street) (2008); Untitled (Still Life) (2017)). At first glance, these seem to have no connection with the other works on display, but they show a similar formalist interest in the question of how the material possibilities of a photographic motif influence its visual appearance in the environment.
Semotan’s atmospheric works also testify to interests that go far beyond commercial pomp. The artist repeatedly returns to the leitmotif of the membrane-like fabric that looks like gauze between bare trees and cold security grilles of parking garages. It drapes and weaves these structures, with occasional perforations letting light through. In a 2017 work photographed in Burgenland, Untitled (Still Life)dances a series of tree-like shadows across a shiny, silver fabric folded in on itself. In works such as this, Semotan’s camera suppresses transitional tones. Her frontally lit, fabric-wrapped objects often show shadows pushed to the edges. Using fabric where Victorian photographer Henry Peach Robinson used hired actors, Semotan illuminates the way fabric draws its surrounding structures into a web-like dance, effectively staging a drama of still objects. Although the clearest unifying theme of this two-person exhibition is fashion, such works are worlds away from “fashion photography” as we usually understand it.
