HANNOVER GOES FASHION
helmut lang | alles gleich schwer

31 August - 2 November 2008 at the kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, Germany
Curated by Frank-Thorsten Moll and Neville Wakefield

»The continuity is that I’m expressing what’s important to me with the appropriate form, content and context through different mediums and other dimensions.« HL

fig.: Helmut Lang, self portrait 2007, © hl-art

Hannover celebrates fashion under the title "Hannover goes Fashion" with 10 exhibitions in the city's museums and art institutions. One of the exhibitions present the work of former fashion designer Helmut Lang "Alles gleich Schwer" about a theme, contrary to fashion: by turning away from the physical body and its social articulation through clothes, Lang has created a series of objects that address the intersection of public and private experience as it is recorded through mythologies both personal and shared.

The kestnergesellschaft exhibits throughout its exhibition space new works that explore and develop the social and physical membranes between interior and exterior identities and spaces.

Drawing on references as diverse as the folkloric rites of maypole ceremonies and the exploration of surrogate skin, Lang has created a series of installations, objects and possibilities that integrate an intimate knowledge of the human form with the personal mythologies and abstract arrangements of the world at large.

Originally conceived for »Louise Bourgeois. Jenny Holzer. Helmut Lang« (Kunsthalle Wien, 1998), »Scéance de Travail 1993-1999« combines elements of reflection and projection to confront the viewer with an image of protean identity constantly reformed in the space where individual desire plays out against a background of societal norms. Helmut Lang works in New York and Long Island.

fig.: Helmut Lang, installation detail 2008, © hl-art

The kestnergesellschaft (founded 1916) in Hannover is one of the largest German art organisations with the aim to present important contemporary international artists from the fields visual arts, architecture, fashion, design, ...

Accompanying catalogue in German/English with a greeting by the Minister-President of Lower Saxony Christian Wulff and texts by Veit Görner, Jenny Holzer, Frank-Thorsten Moll, Ulf Poschardt, Alice Rawsthorn, Gisela Vetter-Liebenow and Neville Wakefield; available at www.kestner.org.

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