fabrics interseason, surface: tapisserie no.  1

Inova/Kenilworth
2215 North Prospect Ave., (414) 229-6310  
www3.uwm.edu/arts/about/inova_exhibits.html

Sept.  8 – Oct.  14.

Reviewed by Ashley Cook


The Viennese fashion designers Wally Sallner and Johannes
Schweiger combine performance art, high fashion, and
installation art, to challenge the conventions of traditional
boundaries within the arts.  Sallner and Schweiger toy with the
division between high art and low art, runway fashion and
pedestrian fashion, performance art and gallery installation to
create an experience which comments upon society, fashion,
and art.  Their exhibit, fabrics interseason, surface tapisserie
no 1, was held from Sept.  8 to Oct.  14 at the Peck School of
the Arts Inova/Kenilworth Gallery.

The gallery space at Inova/Kenilworth consists of three
irregularly shaped rooms with tall ceilings.  Four oversized,
multicolored rag-rugs cover the floor of the first and largest
room.  A fifth rug hangs over the wall, connecting the first room
to the second and third spaces.  The walls in the second and
third rooms serve as screens for three video projections.  The
video projections replay fashion “performances” produced by
Sallner and Schweiger from 1998 -2006.  These
“performances” function as runway fashion shows, but the
artists stage them in unconventional spaces.  One performance
was held in a hotel room, another was in a warehouse, and in a
third performance each model had a french fry stuck up her
nose.  The artists also invite progressive and outrageous
musicians to perform as a part of the show, creating an entire
experience of the senses.  Sallner and Schweiger play a key
role in the arrangement of every aspect of these
performances.  In this same way, the two artists traveled to
Wisconsin to install the show themselves.  Curator Nicholas
Frank commented on how particular and involved the artists
were in this process.  The night of the show’s opening mimicked
one of  Sallner and Schweiger’s fashion performances with
Milwaukee musician Juicebox spinning throughout the event.  

Sallner’s and Schweiger’s fashion is featured in all of the major
fashion centers—Milan, Paris, London, etc.  Their art differs
from other high fashion because each collection is intended to
provide some type of commentary on politics, class, gender,
and identity.  Their work is, in a way, suspended between
fashion and art.  This exhibit also comments on the division of
high art and low art.  The traditional woven rugs are
constructed out of the fabric remnants from Sallner’s and
Schweiger’s fashion shows.  In this way, high fashion is
converted into low art.  The rugs, although a mutated
expression, sustain characteristics of both high fashion and low
art or craft.  The luxurious fabric, still distinguishable, is
strangely twisted into the form of a rag-rug.  The rugs, although
oversized and irregularly shaped, are woven in the traditional
manner, maintaining all the essential elements of a rag-rug.  

Frank explained that Sallner’s and Schweiger’s work is pertinent
to Milwaukee.  He pointed out the growing trend amongst
Milwaukee artists to freely combine media in pursuit of an end
result.  Rather than working with one medium only—paint,
photography, ceramics, film—artists are more interested in the
best way to achieve their idea without bothering to adhere to
the constraints of one tradition.  One might accuse such artists
of laziness or assume a lack of mastery within a medium.  When
done properly, however, the end result can be conceptually rich
and visually provocative.  The installation of Sallner’s and
Schweiger’s art at Inova/Kenilworth should serve as an example
of multi-media achieved.
Full Moon Edition No. 1  10.26.07
All photographs from fabrics interseason, surface:
tapisserie no. 1 this page by Ashley Cook.  
Copyright 2007 Art History Chicks LLC
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