HOLZER - LANG: ALPHABET

“I SAY THE WORD/I SAY YOUR NAME/I COVER YOU/I SHELTER YOU” - Jenny Holzer for Helmut Lang.

Central to the 1990s, Helmut Lang belongs to a generation of effacement. Seeking to abolish fashion, he began by disappearing. No spectacle: clothing. No shows: seances. Technical materials, countless pockets, a sliver of skin: utilitarian and erotic. Transparent and invisible, Lang reframes clothing, atomizes fashion.
In its fine meshing, the brand realizes its most striking act of communication with the artist Jenny Holzer: a radical declaration.
Ex-Collab, celebrated for occupying Times Square, Jenny Holzer is read everywhere and seen nowhere. Her material is text: orders, epiphanies, slogans - Truisms, Inflammatory Essays, Laments.
A truism is a truth so obvious, that it needs no author.

4 dates, 1 movement.

1996, Venice - Vienna meets New York.
The artist Jenny Holzer and the designer Helmut Lang fill a white cube with one fragrance and three sentences.
“YOU ARE THE ONE/YOU ARE THE ONE WHO DID THIS TO ME/YOU ARE MY OWN”
Declarations of love? of ownership? the start of a fruitful partnership.

1998, SoHO.
The duo redefines the shop as space. Clothing gallery, art shop - the tills are hidden, there is nothing - nothing but clothing.

2000, 80 Greene St.

Large-scale perfume campaign: no model, no slogan - a black poem on white paper: “I BITE YOUR LIP/I BREATHE YOUR BREATH.”
Lang makes fashion a text, Holzer a text, fashion.

January 7th, 2015, Sperone Westwater Gallery.
Lang left fashion ten years ago - his first art show opens tomorrow. In the prodigious space lie masses of “fabric confetti”, a cluster of the archive the designer shredded upon his departure.
Helmut Lang destroyed clothing - only forms remain.

“I RUN FROM YOU/I SLEEP BESIDE YOU/I SMELL YOU ON MY CLOTHES/I KEEP YOUR CLOTHES”.