BLESS N°41 : BLESS design and fashion duo retrospective at Kunsthaus Graz, accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue

In 1997, Ines Kaag and Désirée Heiss set up design and fashion duo BLESS, which has been active in Berlin and Paris ever since. In the last few years, they were regulars when it came to igniting the fashion world with crucial impulses. They worked with designers such as Martin Margiela, Markus Wente and Samuel de Goede.

They expanded on the rigid ideas of style and fashion and went from the traditional forms of branding of every day objects to ‘de-branding’, in order to design ‘good’ fashion and objects from a tenable position.

Things from everyday life, such as a computer cable are tested for their usability, only to be decorated with an ornamental effect and be redefined in a self-contained form. Clothes bear illustrious titles such as Allroundwear, Uncool or O.Kayers and reflect their purpose.

Over the years, the team has constantly been working in artistic contexts and in the orbit of museums, such as the Bojimans van Beuningen or the Neuen Museum in Nuremberg, where they promoted the discussion of form, function and motivation. Their work is concerned with metamorphoses and adoptions of everyday objects into the specific, and specific objects into the sphere of everyday life.

The two artists utilised the upper level room and collection items of the whole Joanneum Museum as a point of origin for the confrontation within their works.

BLESS N°41 is part of the nucleus series ‘So lebt der Mensch’ (this is how man lives), of the art space, in which circumstances of humanity are put into the context of a museum environment. The curators are Katrin Bucher Trantow and Peter Pakesch.

A comprehensive catalogue, published by Sternberg Press Verlag, accompanies the exhibition. GoSee presents some first impressions.

22 May – 29 August 2010, 10:00 – 18:00

Kunsthaus Graz, Space01
Lendkai 1, 8020 - Graz
Austria
www.museum-joanneum.at