This is Martin Margiela’s first solo exhibition as a multi-media artist. The artworks were created in the workshops of the venue. It took two years to achieve the final result.
As requested by Margiela himself, you enter the gallery through an emergency exit. As you walk from one changing room to another, you are invited to interact with the artworks. The artist engages you to rethink your own vision of the inevitable aging of the human body, disappearance, and absence.
The very idea of a final ending is sheer fantasy and non-completion is a fundamental state of mind.
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The exhibition confirms Martin Margiela as an artist. It is designed as a whole artwork, which enables him to carry on with his obsession for transformation.
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In a way quite similar to his upending of the conventions in the fashion world, Martin Margiela pushes art beyond its boundaries by constantly reinventing new zones for experiment and extending further the limits of his work. It is the occasion for him to celebrate the abstract beauty of mundane, fragile, and fleeting moments of our human condition while referring to Masters of Darkness such as Caravaggio and Rembrandt. Banality and triviality are both turned into opportunities for discovery, wonder, and surprise. A must-see.
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Martin Margiela (born 9 April 1957) is a Belgian fashion designer and the founder of French fashion house Maison Margiela. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Antwerp) in 1979, a year before the avant-garde fashion collective the Antwerp Six. A very private person never having given an interview or had ho photogra[h taken, he left his business in 2009 and eventually his role as chief designer was taken over by John Galliano.
Martin Margiela 20 October 2021 - 2 January 2022 Lafayette Anticipations – Fondation d'entreprise Galeries Lafayette 9 rue du Plâtre 75004 Paris
Brigit Mettra and Richard Gilles are slightly past their prime, but still vivacious true Parisian spirits, They have worked as journalists in the spheres of the arts and luxury for the last few decades and are now the happy correspondents for QueerGuru in the City of Lights.
