Week 3- Hussein Chalayan

1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference? Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?.

Every significant piece he created a story of movement, travel, flight, even loss, from the clothes that fold into airmail envelopes to those famous pieces of “portable architecture”. And I think the ''Afterwords(2000)'' is kind of architecture combine with fashion, the skirt is made by wood with many layers. He choose different material to challenge how people define fashion and create new art. The wood is different from the fabric, the wood skirt on the model looks really attractive and reasonable, and the wood also enhance the whole dress. Another work ''Burka(1996)'' which challenging ideas such as modesty, identity and feminity, Chalayan presented models wearing different length burka inspired creations with nothing underneath them, with some of the model's being completely naked except for a mask and sandals. The burka is the one of the important thing Muslim womem should dress. It also shows women to appear to be all the same with their faces covered, like the burka or length of the mask. Clothing is a medium to make people accept that how he turned the fashion into art . I think that why Chalayan's fashion works looks fashion and creative.

2.Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces likeThe Level Tunnel(2006) and Repose(2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?

'The level tunnel' is a 15m long, 5m high installation that can be experienced from the exterior or blindfolded on the inside. The different from Chalayan's original work is this work is kind of art. Chalayan has developed an experience of the senses, working with a number of different materials and playing with scent, touch and sound. The viewing is blindfolded and led into the installation, where they are confronted with sound created by a flute made from a vodka bottle. I do not think the art become selling product will not be art any more. Because if the art can turn into the part of our life or another simple idea can mostly people understand, that make art work more successful. Further on, a breeze carries the scent of lemon and cedar as the visitors moves along the leather coated railings. a heart monitor is fitted onto the visitor and a display on the outside projects their heartbeat to external viewers.

   



3.Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?

Exclusively produced for Venice Biennale, The Absent Presence, is an enigmatic story based on identity, geography, genetics, biology and anthropology. Chalayan opens the argument on how certain identities can or cannot adapt to new environments and generates a research based narration for his cross-disciplined installation with filmic images and sculptures. There is a serious research behind the end product displaying the interplay of the real and the imagined with a series of collected clothes and deformed crystallized garments. A DNA extraction process from the clothes collected from unknown people, an anthropological evaluation, and a 3 D manipulation all treated through the London sound-scape as the environment reveals the approach of Chalayan to the dilemma of identity

4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?

Chalayan's greatest skill may be his ability to use colors and graphic prints so dramatically, and yet allow the woman wearing them to seem elusive, even chilly. Women who buy his clothes pay dearly for that image. He is the rare designer whose commercial line is priced higher than his own. Each artist or designer have their own personal style, and the personal style is the essential part of the artist. The viewers can see the different story or thinking of the artist, and personally made artist to make different piece.

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/read.php?CATEGORY_PK=&TOPIC_PK=2858
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/review-23626540-hussein-chalayan-is-fashions-techno-wizard.do
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_Chalayan
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/blog/