! Processes and Techniques: Yohji Yamamoto X V&A

Next spring the V&A will open the first UK solo exhibition celebrating the life and work of Yohji Yamamoto, one of the world’s most influential and enigmatic fashion designers. This installation-based retrospective, taking place 30 years after his Paris debut, will feature over 80 garments spanning Yamamoto’s career. The exhibition will explore the work of a designer who has challenged, provoked and inspired the fashion world.

Yamamoto’s visionary designs will be exhibited on mannequins amongst the treasures of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). Placed in hidden corners of the Museum, the silhouettes will create a direct dialogue between Yamamoto’s work and the different spaces in which they are displayed. Items will be found on the Leighton corridor, in the Norfolk House Music Room and looking out onto the John Madejski Garden from an alcove in the Hintze Sculpture Galleries. Other pieces will be sited on marble staircases, adjacent to Renaissance sculptures in the Renaissance City Gallery and within the Tapestry Gallery...

Yohji Yamamoto's custom-made textiles use a variety of traditional Japanese techniques and other more common weaves such as gabardine and tweed. All his fabrics are made in Japan to his own specifications, making them unique to his designs.

'Fabric is everything. Often I tell my pattern makers, "Just listen to the material. What is it going to say? Just wait. Probably the material will tell you something."'

- Yohji Yamamoto

Fabrics

The importance of the fabric is tangible in every Yamamoto piece. From deciding the exact balance between the warp and the weft of the fabric and dyeing it the ideal hue to establishing the number of washings required to achieve the perfect balance between new and old, every fabric Yamamoto uses is specially created for him in Japan. Yamamoto's preference for exceptionally heavy fabrics and textiles not generally utilized in womenswear, high fashion or even clothing in general lends a particular slant to his sartorial language.

Embroidery

Yohji Yamamoto often uses embroidery, both hand and machine-made, particularly for his menswear designs as can be seen in Autumn/Winter 2006-7, Spring/Summer 2009 and 2011 collections. These intricate decorations contribute to Yamamoto's underlying desire to subvert people's perceptions of what men and women should wear.

 

Knitwear

The use of knitwear in Yohji Yamamoto's work often emphasises his wish to create space between the garment and the body. The heavy knit featured in both his Autumn/Winter 1998-99 womenswear and Autumn/Winter 2006-7 menswear collections, give the wearer the possibility of inhabiting the garment naturally, without being restricted by a predetermined form. 

Shibori

Shibori is a particular method of dyeing cloth by binding small areas with either silk or cotton thread and using a wooden bucket to isolate areas to be dyed. Due to its intricate nature, it is one of the most work-intensive and expensive ways of dyeing. Yohji Yamamoto used this technique in his Autumn/Winter 1994-5 and Spring/Summer 1995 womenswear collections. 

Yuzen

Kyo-yuzen is a dyeing technique which originated in Kyoto in the 1700s and is traditionally used for Kimonos. It consists of over 20 steps including design, drawing, gluing, dyeing and decorating. Yohji Yamamoto uses this dyeing method frequently, often through non-traditional motifs as can be seen in his Autumn/Winter 2009-10 menswear collection.

! Nothing Yet Everything

! Nothing Yet Everything

illustration by hiuyin

For design, the original concept should be emptied ...

otherwise, how could learn the next new thing?

! Penelope Umbrico: Number is beautiful

Image: Penelope Umbrico, 5,537,594 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 5/30/09 – for BAM(detail). Courtesy of the artist and LMAK Projects.

Penelope Umbrico is an artist best known for appropriating images found using search engines and picture sharing websites. Her project "Suns from Flickr " started in 2006 when she found 541,795 pictures of sunsets searching the word “sunset” on the photo-sharing web site Flickr while looking for the most photographed subject (which the sunset turned out to be). She took just the suns from these pictures and made snapshot prints of them. For each installation, the title reflects the number of hits she gets searching "sunset" on Flickr at the time.


And since this number only lasts an instant, its recording is analogous to the act of photographing the sunset itself. Umbrico says: “I think it's peculiar that the sun, the quintessential life giver, constant in our lives, symbol of enlightenment, spirituality, eternity, all things unreachable and ephemeral, omnipotent provider of optimism and vitamin D… and so ubiquitously photographed, is now subsumed to the internet, the most virtual of spaces equally infinite but within a closed electrical circuit.”

In her work, Umbrico explores the connection between the virtual and the natural, the private and the public, the distinctive and the superfluous.

Her work has recently been featured in the New York Times Magazine, on the cover and inside spreads accompanying "Ghosts In the Machine", on January 9, 2011. Her first monograph, "Penelope Umbrico (photographs)", will be published in the spring of 2011 by Aperture.

! Mean what? : Yves Saint Laurent L'Amour Fou

Mean What?


This is the question i first thought when i came out from the theater in the 35th Hong Kong International Film Festival last night. Behind the bright stage is a fragile sensitive soul and infinite loneliness. The fashion guru Yves Saint-Laurent was also the ordinary person...he needed a full bed while he tired...

L'Amour Fou is a documentary on the relationship between fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent and his lover, Pierre Berge.

L’Amour Fou

14 September, 2010 | By Lisa Nesselson

Sensitive and tortured soul Yves Saint Laurent and clear-eyed businessman Pierre Bergé  met at Christian Dior’s funeral in 1957 and moved in together soon after, embarking on a symbiotic 5 decade long relationship that pretty much lasted until YSL’s death in 2008. Pierre Thoretton’sL’Amour Fou is the moving and informative story of Saint Laurent and Bergé’s love for each other and for beautiful things - tens of millions of dollars worth of beautiful things, most of which were dispersed via a breathtakingly momentous Christie’s auction, preparation for which provides the excuse to revisit the power couple’s creative partnership.

One needn’t care about fashion to enjoy this elegantly constructed look back at half a century of trail-blazing as described by a lucid survivor who was there for every moment.  Interestingly, Bergé’s name has been dropped from the official international title of the Toronto-and-San Sebastian-bound September 22 French release called Yves Saint Laurent - Pierre Bergé - L’Amour fou. (If viewers don’t know what a Pierre Bergé is when they enter the theatre they certainly will by the time they leave). Bergé held forth in six interview sessions spread over four months and the director plucked the cream of 100,000 still photos and hours of vintage footage, augmented by his own thoughtful images to arrive at a dense, classy joint portrait.

That said, this doc may be too “European” in its sensibilities, neglecting to identify some key talking heads on the theory that “everybody” will recognise them. And there’s no doubt that Bergé had an active hand in how things are presented, but the man has excellent taste and refrains from painting YSL as a saint. Films Distribution sold multiple territories at Cannes.

Following clever opening credits, flash bulbs pop as Yves Saint Laurent, exuding his trademark melancholy, announces to the press that he is ending his career in haute couture: “I’ve decided to say farewell to the metier I’ve so loved.” Cut to Bergé delivering a lovely eulogy a few years later at YSL’s star-studded funeral. The implication is that haute couture died twice.

Bergé says he doesn’t believe in the concept of souls: “Not my own, not these objects” and so has chosen to disperse the valuable wonders he collected in tandem with Yves and turn them over to “the undertakers of art” to raise money for their charitable foundation and AIDS research.  Skilled technicians pack up the paintings, sculptures and objets d’art and Thoretton’s camera films the forlorn bare spots left behind on the walls.

YSL was only 21 when he took over the House of Dior and started to revolutionize women’s clothing. When Yves was fired from Dior, Bergé found an American investor and the two lovers, flying by the seats of their bespoke trousers, opened what would become an empire on January 29, 1962.

YSL was only 21 when he took over the House of Dior and started to revolutionize women’s clothing. When Yves was fired from Dior, Bergé found an American investor and the two lovers, flying by the seats of their bespoke trousers, opened what would become an empire on January 29, 1962.

Interviews, archival illustrations and borderline pompous looks at their various magnificent homes flow together like a nicely draped piece of fabric with perfect accessories. Saint Laurent, who was precocious and dutiful for much of his life, discovered drink and drugs in 1975 and indulged in both so heavily that his health was permanently compromised.  It is both sad and funny when Bergé describes the handful of times he left Yves - moving to four-star hotels just a few blocks away  from their splendid Paris home. “I only saw him happy twice a year, “says Bergé. “At the end of each collection when he was acclaimed by the room.”

Bergé admits that fashion design “is a horrible calling because it requires you to present your collection on a specific date.”  The controversy surrounding the launch of Opium perfume seems oddly quaint at this remove.

YSL has been fortunate in the doc-makers who have chronicled his achievements.  David Teboul filmed his last collection, resulting in two complementary 2002 docs, the excellent Yves Saint Laurent - Time Regained and Yves Saint Laurent 5, Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris. Bergé, who shows a rare flash of anger when noting how the fashion world changed in the 1990s and fell into the hands of vulgar merchants, says that Saint Laurent was a genius who “understood his era perfectly - and didn’t care for it one bit.”

It is a measure of the film’s effectiveness that YSL’s mark on the 20th century seems indisputable and that his loss is felt even for those of us who never met the man.

! Sonthar Gyal: The sun beaten path

太陽總在左邊 - 電影詳情 :: 第三十五屆香港國際電影節

A film will be watch in the 35th hong kong international film festival.

Pema Tsedan's cinematographer on The Search (34th HKIFF) makes his directorial debut with this spare but affecting work about companionship and redemption. Groom-to-be Nima sets out on a pilgrimage to Lhasa after a freak accident in which the young man's mather was killed. But sorrow and guilt continue to haunt him, and even after reaching Lhasa, he cannot find a way to forgive himself. On his trip back, he meets an old man, and together they cross into Tibet's vast no man's land.

! Setareh Mohtarez: The celestial vision

With a vision embracing innovation and fantasy, the NYC-based young designer Setareh Mohtarez‘s work combines shape, movement, texture, and color. She nurtured her creative vision while attending the fashion department at the Antwerp Royal Academy.  After delivering her award-winning “Brightness Dawn” collection in 2009, she started her eponymous label, while keeping a strong respect for classic elegance. She is drawn to the mysterious and her work tells a distinct story that is close to her heart.

! Garry Fabian Miller : The color of time

The blue clearing, August 2008, installation: ingleby gallery, Edinburgh November 2009 - January 2010

White in blue, late Winter 2009, water, light, lambda c-print grom dye destruction print.

Year Two, Batholith 4, November 2007, Oil, light, dye destruction print

Year One, Samonios, the seed fall,3. 2005, Oil, light, dye destruction print

The Birch Wood, Summer reaching toward Autumn, Homeland, Dartmoor, September - October 2004
Leaf, light, unique dye destruction prints

Garry Fabian Miller, 'Breathing in the Beech Wood, Homeland, Dartmoor, Twenty-four Days of Sunlight, May 2004', 2004.

Tipped Holly Winter  ,Garry Fabian Miller, 2000, unique light, plant, dye-destruction print

A Golden Day,The Tiltyard Dartington,Autumn,1999,Leaf,light,unique dye destruction prints

Red Swim Late Summer, Garry Fabian Miller, 1986, unique light, plant, dye-destruction print

"I'm interested in that moment of peace which descends when someone is reading a book,

or observes flowers in a vase, and a certain quality of light comes into the room,

some transcendent instant - and then it passes.

 I want to preserve a space for those special moments - the pictures are embodiments of them."

- Garry Fabian Miller

It is tempting to read Garry Fabian Miller's art as standing in this tradition. his methods of working with simple elements combined and re-combined over time bear strong analogies with musical compositoons.His vocabulary of the circle, square and divided square, using rich reds, yellows, oranges, blues, and blacks, does not overtly link to the visible, except, perhaps, via allusions to the sun, moon and horizon...

Fabian Miller's sensitivity to the patterns of light on the moors, the changing seasons, the clouds, rocks and vegetation all implnge on the work he makes today, but the representational link to the viewable world has become more oblique.

"The pictures I make are of something as yet unseen, which may only exist on the paper surface, or subsequently may be found in the world. I am seeking a state of mind which lifts the spirit, gives strength and a moment of clarity...

Making something which is other, which seems to have come from an unknown place, is what i am aspiring to do. making things visible that have never been seen before.”

In Fabian Miller's art, we can see its deeper meanings, though, were brought about by the vibrations of the soul, an inner resonance, rather than by any tie to the world as Will. All in all, what Fabian Miller seek is the half- forgotten world...the making of beauty is an act of redemption...

Garry Fabian Miller was born in Bristol, England in 1957. His works are in the collections of major art museums internationally, and he is currently featured in the Victoria and Albert's much anticipated show on contemporary cameraless photography, "Shadow Catchers" (along with Susan Derges, Adam Fuss, Pierre Cordier, and Floris Neususs). One of Britain's best known contemporary photographers, Fabian Miller's work has been the subject of several monographs, including Illumine (2005), Year One (2007), and The Colour of Time (2010).

! Yelling at Trees

inspired by Taare Zameen Par(2007)

The natives in the Solomon Islands

 when they need land for cultivation

they dont chop down trees

 they just gather around and curse it

then eventually the tree becomes weaker

and then eventually dies and falls over

! Taare Zameen Par(2007)

Ishaan Awasthi is an eight-year-old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate; colours, fish, dogs and kites are just not important in the world of adults, who are much more interested in things like homework, marks and neatness. And Ishaan just cannot seem to get anything right in class. When he gets into far more trouble than his parents can handle, he is packed off to a boarding school to 'be disciplined'. Things are no different at his new school, and Ishaan has to contend with the added trauma of separation from his family. One day a new art teacher bursts onto the scene, Ram Shankar Nikumbh, who infects the students with joy and optimism. He breaks all the rules of 'how things are done' by asking them to think, dream and imagine, and all the children respond with enthusiasm, all except Ishaan. Nikumbh soon realizes that Ishaan is very unhappy, and he sets out to discover why. With time, patience and care, he ultimately helps Ishaan find himself.

Written by Anonymous

Official website:  http://www.taarezameenpar.com/

! Passage : collage by hiuman

maybe we can see our past

our future

in the picture

but...

now?

! Melissa Jordan: body as metaphor

Slighting Finds
print of paper collage
2008

Long Lyings
print of paper collage
2009

 

It's a metaphor!  Melissa Jordan's collage is call to mind the feeling of the body.

Linguists said: "The world is attached to a whole world is not set by the one formed unit." however, in Melissa Jordan's collage, it is separated with the ambiguous language of images in order to facilitate understanding of the world. He likes cutting and pasting the images of human's body parts to reconstruct a image so as to create a new language. You need imagination to understand.

Melissa Jordan grew up in Cambridge before moving to London to study fine art. She graduated from Chelsea College of Art and Design (BA Sculpture) in 2006. In July 2009 Jordan received her MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art (awarded distinction for research). She is now living and working in London.