2009
ALTER/MODE: A world in between, fashion beyond clothes
Artists: Andrea Ayala Closa, Bogomir Doringer
Curator: Tomas Rajnai

The exhibition ALTER/MODE was a way to investigate the meaning of fashion separated from trends, shopping and the functionality of clothes.

I have always been captivated by artistic fashion, but the idea for this exhibition wasn’t born until the summer of 2008. Working on it has meant gaining some very different, but very interesting perspectives: for one, I got to discuss the borderline between fashion and art, which fascinates me. This notion became the foundation of this exhibition. But more importantly, I was given the opportunity to get to know two amazing artists, Andrea Ayala
Closa and Bogomir Doringer.

ALTER/MODE is a redefinition of our view on fashion in an era of globalization, influenced by different times, spaces and media. This exhibition is motivated by ideas drawn from practices not widely associated with fashion, crossing between anthropology, history, science, philosophy and art.
The German sociologist Georg Simmel once wrote that fashion derives from a basic tension, specific to the social conditions of the human being. On the one hand, each of us has a proneness to imitate others. On the other hand, we also have a wish to distinguish ourselves from others. ALTER/MODE plays with these two contradictory tendencies, both of them necessary in fashion.

According to the futurist movement, the academic dimension of art as the public normally thinks of it, such as paintings, sculptures, graphics, architecture, is anachronistic: for the futurists there is only creativity. There have always been border-crossing collaborations between artists and fashion designers, but in today’s globalized world, a new generation of fashion artists is emerging. This new group comment and critique both their own trade and the rest of the world. They use fashion as one of many ways of expression and blend video, music, sculpture and paintings with silhouettes to communicate with their audience.

In ALTER/MODE, Andrea Ayala Closa and Bogomir Doringer represents this new group of fashion artists who work in distinct interdisciplinary directions and do not have beauty as their main goal. It’s not about discussing fashion as an art form, but rather realizing that fashion on its own can be simply fashion, but by that same token reach the same status as any other form of artistic expression.

ALTER/MODE: A world in between: fashion beyond clothes 
Andrea Ayala Closa & Bogomir Doringer 
Arkitekturmuseet – Galleri Jonas Kleerup – Weld 
21 May - 31 May 2009