Jean Paul Gaultier is coming to Rotterdam!
In the spring of 2013, the Kunsthal Rotterdam will proudly present the exhibition ‘The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk’. Gaultier has shaped the look of fashion over the last 35 years with his avant-garde fashion creations and cutting-edge designs. The first international exhibition of this celebrated and famed French couturier’s work provides a spectacular overview of his extensive oeuvre. Initiated and produced by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with the Maison Jean Paul Gaultier-Paris and in Rotterdam, with the Kunsthal, the exhibition brings to life the world of Gaultier and gives a unique opportunity to visitors to have access to haute couture, stage and movie costumes. The show bears his personal signature in design and perception.
Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts started the project with the ambition of creating an exhibition about Jean Paul Gaultier because of his great humanity, his open minded vision of society where everyone can be proud and distinctive because of his/her own identity, as much as for his technical virtuosity.
Street Culture, Craftsmanship and Haute Couture
Since his first ready-to-wear collection was presented in 1976, Jean Paul Gaultier has become an integral part of the fashion and pop culture scene and an international icon. Provocative and bold, he has been designing the quirky and the offbeat almost forty years and through this work questions established conventions. Gaultier takes inspiration for his collections from world cultures, from Africa and India to Russia and Greece. He effortlessly combines Hussar and Mongol influences with those of the Hasidic Jews, the Chinese and even the Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo. By twisting, transforming, transgressing and reinterpreting existing codes, Gaultier erases not only the boundaries between cultures but also between the sexes, creating androgynous shapes and playing with hyper-sexualized conventions in the fashion industry. With his flawless awareness of the zeitgeist, he taps into existing cultures and subcultures such as the world of sailors, punks, glam rock and graffiti.
From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk
‘The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier’ is more of a contemporary installation than a retrospective. Over a hundred and forty original creations from the early 1970s to the present day, and from both his haute couture collections and his ready-to-wear lines, can be seen at the Kunsthal. Most of these pieces are being exhibited for the first time in the Netherlands, with exceptional loans from Madonna and Pedro Almodovar to name a few. Fashion show recordings, television programmes, films, videos, sketches and photographs by leading photographers complete the world of Gaultier. In this multimedia exhibition, thirty unique mannequins wearing remarkable wigs and headdresses by Odile Gilbert, founder of the Atelier 68 in Paris, come ‘alive’ with interactive faces created by technologically ingenious audiovisual projections, surprising visitors with their lifelike presence. Poetic and playful, the production, design and staging of this dynamic audiovisual element has been produced by Denis Marleau and Stéphanie Jasmin of UBU/Compagnie de création from Montreal, Canada. A dozen celebrities, including Gaultier himself, have lent their faces –projected on to the mannequins – and often their voices to this project. Jolicoeur International from Canada have designed all the mannequins and the design of the exhibition was created by Projectiles from Paris.
“Jean-Paul Gaultier, Rétrospective”, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Museumpark, Westzeedijk 341, 3015 AA Rotterdam. Du 10/02 au 12/05/13.
