Week 3- Hussein Chalayan

Chalayan is an artist and designer, working in film, dress and installation art. Research Chalayan’s work, and then consider these questions in some thoughtful reflective writing.

1. Chalayan’s works in clothing, like Afterwords (2000) and Burka (1996) , are often challenging to both the viewer and the wearer. What are your personal responses to these works? Are Afterwords and Burka fashion, or are they art? What is the difference?

Not all clothing is fashion, so what makes fashion fashion?

when i first time look at his work, i feel very comfused,i am try to ask myself is this "fashion", could be fashion, i think his work almost like art. or even design. his fashion way really different as nomal fashion show. 

 

hussein chalayan's design, one of his fashion show catwalk.  All above are his design, he designed cloth not just for wear, also a tool, a variety of use. it is art not fashion.

Hussein Chalayan, Burka, 1996

                                                                 Hussein Chalayan, Afterwords, 2000

2. Chalayan has strong links to industry. Pieces like The Level Tunnel (2006) and Repose (2006) are made in collaboration with, and paid for by, commercial business; in these cases, a vodka company and a crystal manufacturer. How does this impact on the nature of Chalayan’s work? Does the meaning of art change when it is used to sell products? Is it still art?

 

 

 fashion design hussein chalayan has teamed up with level vodka to produce a new installation which will begin a

world tour beginning this month in mexico city. 'the level tunnel' is a 15m long, 5m high installation that can be

experienced from the exterior or blindfolded on the inside. chalayan has developed an experience of the senses,

working with a number of different materials as well as playing with scent, touch and sound. the viewing is

blindfolded and led into the installation, where they are confronted with sound created by a flute made from a

vodka bottle. further on, a breeze carries the scent of lemon and cedar as the visitors moves along the leather

coated railings. a heart monitor is fitted onto the visitor and a display on the outside projects their heartbeat to

external viewers. after mexico city the installation will move to athens and paris.

3. Chalayan’s film Absent Presence screened at the 2005 Venice Biennale. It features the process of caring for worn clothes, and retrieving and analysing the traces of the wearer, in the form of DNA. This work has been influenced by many different art movements; can you think of some, and in what ways they might have inspired Chalayan’s approach?

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Hussein Chalayan, still from Absent Presence, 2005 (motion picture)

 

 

4. Many of Chalayan’s pieces are physically designed and constructed by someone else; for example, sculptor Lone Sigurdsson made some works from Chalayan’s Echoform (1999) and Before Minus Now (2000) fashion ranges. In fashion design this is standard practice, but in art it remains unexpected. Work by artists such as Jackson Pollock hold their value in the fact that he personally made the painting. Contrastingly, Andy Warhol’s pop art was largely produced in a New York collective called The Factory, and many of his silk-screened works were produced by assistants. Contemporarily, Damien Hirst doesn’t personally build his vitrines or preserve the sharks himself. So when and why is it important that the artist personally made the piece?

 

 

I think every artist at the beginning of his artistic career when, there is always some work is not the concern, and perhaps the occasional meaning behind a work by the general public of all ages. Each piece the artist is very important for them, we see, imagine, understand, just think of our own meaning. The birth of each piece has a story. I think this is art, and between understanding and not understanding

http://www.husseinchalayan.com/#/home/
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/chalayan.html 
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/blog/