Thomas Demand on photographing Azzedine Alaïa’s archive
Having beforehand thought of architects together with Hans Hollein and John Lautner, Thomas Demand now turns to the work of the late dressmaker Azzedine Alaïa for “Model Studies,” on view at Matthew Marks Gallery in Los Angeles by means of April 9, 2022. The exhibition consists of 4 giant pictures taken in Alaïa’s archive: patterns utilized by the French couturier and his studio to make and remake his clothes identified for his or her tight, exacting types. Our dialog spanned questions of craft, translation, and fashions each bodily and conceptual. We spoke over sandwiches in Santa Monica.
AFTER AZZEDINE ALAÏA PASSED AWAY in 2017, his basis invited me to return and {photograph} his desk. That wasn’t actually for me. I assumed I wouldn’t do it justice, as I couldn’t add something to what was there already. However I noticed these patterns hanging round. I had been taking a look at patterns of clothes for a very long time, in addition to clothes workshops the place they’ve these patterns hanging, particularly in leather-based fabrication. They remind me of Duchamp’s rulers in Three Customary Stoppages, the unintended curve. So these curving patterns in Alaïa’s workshop perform as a sort of ruler for his or her clothes. It’s very summary. You don’t see a T-shirt there or a costume or jacket, however you see the weather.
A particular factor with Alaïa was that he made all his patterns himself. He would make a sample with a mannequin and reduce them after which a member of his workshop would translate them to completely different sizes. However the first sample of the jacket he would do himself, and he would assemble the primary objects of clothes. It could all the time be very muted, black, perhaps crimson or with a little bit little bit of sample, however in the end it wouldn’t be about patterns or colour, it could all the time be about materials and the way a chunk of clothes may be constructed. In that sense it’s very architectural. The potential of this clothes was very intriguing to me.
I bear in mind once I noticed his designs in retailers, they’d be exhausting to get and really costly, however you’d by no means have the sensation of market-driven calculation. You could possibly inform that they have been objects handmade in Paris, coming from his workshop. It could be a tremendous factor, even for somebody who isn’t an professional in trend.
The method of translation is a crucial factor for me, as is the component of refinement. That’s, {that a} work isn’t derived from an arbitrary concept, one following the subsequent, however that it comes from a protracted means of mastership: on this case why a specific bow is the place it’s, why the seam sits right here and never over there, the place everyone else may put it. It’s invention and a really outdated type of expertise. However ultimately, you can not make a single costume from my pictures. It falls fully again into an summary picture of one thing you suppose you perceive.
What my pictures of interiors all have in frequent is a sure presence. The sensation that somebody has simply left the room, or that anyone will come again across the nook in a second. Like once you go in a store and there’s no person there, you suppose, “I may take every part I need.” There’s a sort of fragility to the second. On the core of that is the commentary that you probably have {a photograph} of any area, and you’ve got two individuals within the {photograph}, it’s all about these two individuals within the area. When you have {a photograph} of the identical area with out the individuals, it’s about you occupying the area, your thoughts, your mind, you your self imagining what it’s prefer to be there.
With these newer pictures, there’s the presence of Alaïa. He’s very current within the cutouts and the drawings and each mark on the objects. However on the similar time, the intention of those shapes is absent. I wouldn’t say you’ll be able to see an arm in it or one thing. However you’ll be able to see a little bit of progress, a purposefulness. You may inform that these are usually not shapes to construct a home. They’re not shapes to grow to be a chair. I feel individuals instantly perceive that this isn’t the technical drawing of an architect, due to its fluidity. There’s a way that every part is a sample for one thing greater to return.
— As instructed to Lucas Matheson
