COLLECTION n°11 (Part.1)

The time we are going through is an uncertain experience, an impression that nothing would be the same again. We can only hope that this key moment is an awareness for the future. It’s difficult to restart without reinventing ourselves again. We had a vital need to exchange and share, to engage another format at the boundaries of art and non-art. Interior and the collectors changes its skin to become a second hand corner with artists’ clothes. Some showcase their own clothes and write a short text about it, a context, a memory, a process... Others turn it into artworks, close to a painting, a sculpture, a panoply or a performance suit. This exhibition takes place in two parts, as a free and experimental double view made of dialogues and encounters. In this first step, we host a vintage and zero waste clothing store. Artists’ clothes are showcased with vintage clothes without any hierarchy, both as decoration and a place of commercial exchange. Visitors can see, try on or buy all the pieces on display. This project is a form of deconstruction. At the end, what would be the value of this object? A ready-made? An artwork? Would a simple label with a text and a signature bring an artistic status to the clothes? Is it a way of questioning ourselves on the modes of production of a garment, its consumption and its future? Can the status of an art object be the only one that would prevent the infernal circuit of consuming, reselling, throwing away and exploiting poor countries? Assume vivid astro focus « T-shirt has always been an essential part of my wardrobe. It relates to different periods of my life, linked for the oldest to musical trends and the exploration of festive pleasures and, for the most recent, to the pleasure of wearing a garment of disconcerting simplicity but which can always show originality by its shape, colors or prints. The very first tee-shirts I wore date back to the late 80’s and early 90’s in Paris. With my friends from high school, I used to go dancing in «Sound System», kind of clandestine evenings where we smoked and danced on dub and dance-hall rhythms with MC’s who printed their voices on powerful basses. The T-shirts I wore at that time were not really a rallying sign and did not yet have any prints that could link me to the dance-hall or hip-hop culture of the time. They were just the perfect outfit for such occasions. I had fun customizing them myself, by drawing letters on the cotton, bleaching them, etc. I was also able to do it myself. Then, from the mid to late 90s, nightclubbing and rave nights took over, and with them a whole musical genre and aesthetics. I think T-shirts took on a whole new meaning at that time, and became a way to show that you belonged to a group linked to this new emerging counter-culture. The joyfully printed T-shirts carried certain messages that were understood by the insiders, but they were probably never more transgressive than when they were worn every day in my senior high school years, then in college, or simply with my family. T-shirts of those days were in some way an apology for music, partying and drugs, which was not really tolerated by the general public and gave us who wore them, perhaps, the naive impression that we were challenging the established order. I think that my taste for printed T-shirts was born at that time when techno and house music were shaking things up. But, beyond its aesthetic and graphic aspect, what I like about this garment is the way it ages. The more it is worn, the more the shirt transforms - like a second skin that has, despite multiple washes, accumulated the traces and blows of time passing. The fabric gets holes, frays; its colors, at first so bright, tend to fade; it ends up becoming another garment, sometimes shapeless, that I rarely have the courage to throw away. I usually wear my T-shirts until their natural decay forces me to turn away from them - sometimes with regret. I don’t necessarily attach sentimental value to them, but it can be difficult to part with a piece of clothing that I sometimes found by a happy coincidence and that I have worn so many times. That’s why I like vintage tee-shirts: I like their graphics, but I also like to know that they have already lived! The «Peintures Peintures» series thus transforms some of my tee-shirts, worn at different periods of my life, into explicit works stretched on frames, coated with a transparent acrylic binder and sometimes framed. This is how these tee-shirts, worn so many times over the years, end their life in a restricted immobility. But, beyond its aesthetic and graphic aspect, what I like about this garment is the way it ages. The more it is worn, the more the shirt transforms - like a second skin that has, despite multiple washes, accumulated the traces and blows of time passing. The fabric gets holes, frays; its colors, at first so bright, tend to fade; it ends up becoming another garment, sometimes shapeless, that I rarely have the courage to throw away. I usually wear my T-shirts until their natural decay forces me to turn away from them - sometimes with regret. I don’t necessarily attach sentimental value to them, but it can be difficult to part with a piece of clothing that I sometimes found by a happy coincidence and that I have worn so many times. That’s why I like vintage tee-shirts: I like their graphics, but I also like to know that they have already lived! The «Peintures Peintures» series thus transforms some of my tee-shirts, worn at different periods of my life, into explicit works stretched on frames, coated with a transparent acrylic binder and sometimes framed. This is how these tee-shirts, worn so many times over the years, end their life in a restricted immobility. » Julie Béna The T&T Boat-keeper « I bought the top a few years ago in NYC. I often buy clothes with the idea that they’re going to be a costume, for a performance or a movie. Sometimes the clothes even precede their character. At the same time, still in NYC, I was setting up the exhibition «T&T Consortium, curated by Flora Katz at the French Institute Alliance Francaise. For this exhibition I had edited pins that people working in the place, were invited to wear during the time of the exhibition, as if they were becoming members of T&T, this strange travel agency. For the invitation of Interior and the collectors, the two joined to form a potential costume, a T&T uniform. The pins have never been put on sale, so it is one of the only ones in circulation so far. Any journey made difficult these days, T&T and his character take us elsewhere. » A Potential Pink Jester « A stylist friend of mine gave me this blouse she had picked up a few months ago. It stayed for a long time next to me, on my work table. During this period its color impregnated my retina. I was then preparing an exhibition in my Prague gallery. There I made a new Jester. This Jester became fuchsia, the color of the blouse. Now that the fuchsia Jester is there, I can free myself from the garment, but it has remained attached to it. » Luca Bosani « I do not known who I am. I linger between the versions of myself. Today I am rapper, tomorrow a matador, the day after a rockstar. Or a footballer? A scarecrow? All the versions of oneself, all the versions of one man. Or a woman? I do not know my gender. I forgot the taste of pleasure. One day I am gay, the day after I am straight, later on I am confused. Together we bend the binaries, alone I am lost. I just wanna be a loser but my mind doesn’t accept that. I would like to touch her sex, but I can only touch myself. This is an ego trip, please do not continue to read what it is written here, you will only end up more confused then when you entered this space. You would be better off buying something, I bet that would make you happier. Like some clothes. Always the best deals in the second hand store. I am being an hypocrite now, but well if I tell you that ecology and being green now it’s only branding will you get upset? Upcycling is a trend now, you should surf that wave darling. All in or nothing. But you know what, I do swim in confusion to make a sense of it all, I embrace not knowing, the mystery and the untold. I dreamt of dreaming to be something that I am not. I thought I had to be something because you told me. But not. I confuse you to confuse myself. Not knowing as a point of departure. Not knowing as a curse. I do not want to know what I am. » Aline Bouvy « Four or five years ago, I was given this jacket for Christmas. I have never been able to put it on, for the same reasons that it has become impossible for me to contemplate the stillness and peace of the sea horizon.» Vava Dudu « A human being like you is fragile as porcelain. » « Don’t be afraid of my glance. » Julie Escoffier Soeur, ma soeur et moi, 2020 « My sister is a fashion designer and works for the brand SOEUR (« SISTER »). One day, she offered me a prototype of shorts. Recently, I’ve found the same shorts in an online second hand store. Duality is an integral part of my own work. The opportunity was too good. I wanted to link the copy to the original with prints of salvaged leaves from the nearby forest. The ones who will wear them will also be linked forever. » Le Gentil Garçon (The Nice Guy) « Sometimes I use clothes in my work, in two main ways: either, for performances or videos, by hijacking them to create costumes as assemblages, or, as in this case, by integrating them directly into a sculpture for what they are: powerful signs of cultural belonging. The work is very freely inspired by a strange musical comedy, The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. The film tells the far-fetched adventures of a child confronted in a nightmare with his piano teacher in the guise of the demonic Dr. T. With this sculpture I do not seek to illustrate the film but to restore its zany spirit by making it drift towards gore, as an extended homage to the cinema bis for its way of mixing death, eroticism and bizarre. Since Degas’ scandalous little fourteen-year-old dancer, the sculpture has been dressing up without complex as real pieces of clothing. Here it is no longer a question of adding an effect of reality as was the case with the tutu placed on the hips of the famous bronze dancer. The sock that affixes this aluminum leg, moreover molded on a plastic leg of presentation in store somewhat customized, refers to the kitsch aesthetics of derivative products for music lovers. An outdated gadget that accentuates the grotesque character of this improbable vanity. » Shaun Gladwell « It’s actually Greek ideas and the deep connection between Athletics and aesthetics that engage me at the moment, as well as greek spatial theory of the Agora and the Stoa. We have had two almost fear social interaction and interpersonal exchanges within the contemporary agoras in favour of their digital (online) equivalents from the stoa. But I am also interested in the philosophy of stoicism and the exchange of ideas in the corridors and private spaces now, outside the open public spaces.     But speaking of public spaces,  or open spaces,  I am perhaps working a little against lockdown as my studio has become the streets as a long distance runner.  I always run alone and strongly resemble Forrest Gump :) But this is a version of the flaneur and also the Letterist dérive whilst running, sometime all day and half of the night. I formulate ideas for essays and works, listen to audio books and podcasts plus many genres of Music but the running is actually the work or project itself. So that’s my current working methodology-a long distance, ultramarathon lockdown, more like a geographical break out in many ways. It has proved a challenge for me to shift my practice into a post-studio and post-object well before the Covid 19 crisis but now even more challenging to maintain such a rigorous and dare, I stay stoic in this sense that the ultramarathons runner is largely indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain. But I am now working on a composite Forrest Gump, Karl Marx, ZZ top, Phidippides character for this next video work. As with so many former works, I have to participate within the activity I perform, rather than just act as a runner, I become a runner and also enter the addition of ultramarathon running. There is something so primal about run-in that we have been evolved to do so well that is extremely powerful. The latin on the singlet is a play on the more typical statement for a running top tempus fugit. But instead of time flying, I made a varriation with tempus figit, which is very awkward latin for ‘time fixes’ but the issue is that time possibly fixes by eroding and erasing as much as regenerating. » (extracts from a conversation bewteen Shaun Gladwell and Fabien Villon) Ella Mievovsky « On a cold and sinister winter day, I came across a leopard coat. It was there, all alone in the middle of the others of its species, black or gray and I immediately liked it. I bought it without thinking, almost automatically very happy to have taken the only one left and I brought it home, proudly, like a trophy. Kate Moss is one of those remarkable people with a rather empty life, but when she appears it’s unanimous. Her iconic outfit: jeans, T-shirt, black boots and leopard print coat. Later in the evening, I thought about my spontaneous consumption gesture. I had absolutely no need for this coat. Maybe adopting an outfit worn by a famous person is a way to become part of her? Having a crumb of his aura? The fashion industry is trying to make us believe it. Can a coat make you stand out? On me it was a dismal failure. » Robert Wilson « Since the early 70s, I have fortunately been given the opportunity to perform internationally, with performances in the Far East, Middle East, including China, Korea, Russia, Scandinavia, and throughout Europe, the US, and Latin America. Some years ago, I simplified my wardrobe. I would wear jeans, a black t-shirt, and black leather loafers or flip-flops. I travel with seven or eight t-shirts and six or seven pairs of black socks, seven pairs of underpants, two white cotton dress shirts, a dark blue, black, or grey necktie, a dark blue, classical, tailored suit, and, on occasion, a dark grey suit. That comprises my entire wardrobe. I can wear it on all occasions, whether it is rehearsal, an informal gathering, or a formal occasion. »