This website uses cookies. (own site + third party, mostly socials) Privacy Policy
The first works the visitor encounters in the exhibition are piles of mainstream French magazines of the 1960s and 1970s such as Jours de France or Le Soir illustré, specializing in celebrity news, among other things. Each item has been carefully wrapped in transparent plastic, like a rare or precious object that one aims to preserve from the wear and tear of time. Here Martin Margiela takes up magazines that have built up the extraordinary (exceptional existences) and contributed to its infiltration into everyday life, notably on the tables in every doctor’s, hairdresser’s, and dentist’s waiting room.
Martin Margiela Vanitas 2019 silicone, natural dyed hair 90 x 255 x 50 cm
Antwerp City Collection, on long-term loan at MoMu, Fashion Museum Antwerp and M HKA Antwerp
Redhead is a tribute to the colour red, its power, and historical ability to stir up confusion in our cultures. Comprising a silicone sphere of imitation skin on which natural hair is implanted strand by strand, this work is an anonymous portrait that focuses on the evocative, seductive, and sometimes threatening aspects of this very special colour. Indeed, red hair has always been a subject of fantasy and superstition. As the colour of wild animals, it symbolizes strength and vigour; as the colour of fire, it is often associated with a passionate temperament. In the Middle Ages, the colour red was linked to witchcraft and supernatural abilities, but also to prostitution. Through an inversion of values, it was celebrated by Botticelli in the sixteenth century, and then more particularly in nineteenth and twentieth century painting through the works of Modigliani, Manet, ao.
Martin Margiela Redhead 2022 polyurethane silicone, synthetic dyed hair, metal stabilisation screw base 27 x 27 x 27 cm
Martin Margiela Film Dust 2021
The Film Dust works are taken from 1960s film leaders shot on Super 8. Focusing on the part of the film that no one watches, when traces of dust accidentally appear on the film, Margiela paints the infrathin, the barely visible that has invited itself onto the medium of representation. He is interested in the intrusion of these fragments of matter and hair and the way they leave a silent imprint and become, in their own way, characters in the film to which no one pays the slightest attention. To make these dust portraits, he developed a technique of diluting oil paint like watercolour in an attempt to produce a kind of 'trompe l’oeil'.
Cartography arose from Martin Margiela’s project to replace a head of hair with fake fur. Unlike natural hair, which spreads out in a multitude of directions, fake fur only has one. This project involved multiple experiments, including the construction of patterns to reproduce the circular movement of hair that is so difficult to imitate. Cartography is thus a study of movements, an enlargement of a photocopy on a wooden panel. The drawing applied to this hairstyle reveals the artist’s attempt to trace this enigma. The arrows drawn in pastel indicate the directions observed and capture the dynamics of this new form of cartography. Here we see the curves and diagonals of the top of the skull. Once again, Martin Margiela looks at a phenomenon that seemed to be self-evident. Here he takes up the tradition of the study of movement, a history of decomposition.
The Lip Sync series is based on images taken from videos of lip reading, a method of communication for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Each of these works corresponds to a syllable, a sound, the verbal expression of an inner thought. These mouths, which try to express something but, in their fragmented state, remain indecipherable, bear witness to the complexity and difficulty of formulating inner intentions. Martin Margiela has developed a very unusual technique here: the mouths are laser tattooed with blue ink on silicone plates whose colour resembles skin. They are thus engraved on an epidermis, a territory into which they are inextricably integrated and whose inner activity they attempt to reveal.
Martin Margiela Dust Cover 2021 137 x 170 x 77 cm skai and wood
Martin Margiela Bodypart b&w 2018-2020 123 x 222 x 8 cm oil pastel on projection screen
The Torso works hark back to a long tradition of sculpture that goes back to the ancient Greek statue and its male ideal. More broadly, Torso refers to the tradition of the nude, an obsession in Western culture that museums have established as a genre in its own right. Historically, the nude makes the Beautiful an ideal that refers to the vision of physical and intellectual excellence the Greeks intended to represent through a muscular and powerful man, but also to his heroic or divine status.
The TORSO works hark back to a long tradition of sculpture that goes back to the ancient Greek statue and its male ideal. More broadly, TORSO refers to the tradition of the nude, an obsession in Western culture that museums have established as a genre in its own right. Historically, the nude makes the Beautiful an ideal that refers to the vision of physical and intellectual excellence the Greeks intended to represent through a muscular and powerful man, but also to his heroic or divine status. Naked bodies are radiant and splendid. They express life, youth, speed, strength, and virility; they idealize the real. In Martin Margiela’s work, the strength expressed is also reconfigured, no longer to achieve the Beautiful, but the enigmatic. This masculinity does not respect the scale of the body: it sculpts a being with mutant forms and an unidentifiable body that looks more like a collage.
Martin Margiela Bus Stop 2020 metal, dirty plexi and synthetic fur 215 x 300 x 155 cm
Martin Margiela Interior 2021 oil pastel on velvet-laminated canvas 185 x 250 x 30 cm
Martin Margiela Body Part colour 2019 oil pastel on vintage projection screen, photo on plexi and curtain variable dimensions
Martin Margiela Mould(s) (blond) 2020
Martin Margiela Kit (black) 2020 silicone, polyurethane foam core and steel 79,7 x 62,8 x 12,7 cm edition of 3
Martin Margiela Light Test 2021 HD video (filmed in 4K), 7'2" variable dimensions
Δ
Martin Margiela Hair Portraits 2015-2019 vintage magazines, steel, plastic Magazines : 34 x 26,5 cm ; Stacks: 90 x 30 x 40 cm
Martin Margiela Redhead 2019 silicone, natural dyed hair 119 x 40 x 35 cm
Martin Margiela Film Dust oil on microbead-coated canvas
Martin Margiela Film Dust 2021 oil on microbead-coated canvas 160 x 284 x 3,5 cm
Martin Margiela Cartography 2019 print on PVC, wood, polyurethane foam 210 x 200 x 90 cm 119 x 40 x 35 cm
Martin Margiela Lip Sync 2020 laser tattoo laser-engraved silicone, silkscreen ink and steel frame 42 x 61 x 4 cm each
Martin Margiela Bodypart b&w 2018-2020 2 x (123 x 222 x 8 cm) oil pastel on projection screen
Martin Margiela Torso II (plaster) 2018-2021 acrylic plaster, wood core 145 x 38,7 x 29,4 cm (edition of 3)
Martin Margiela Torso III (dark) 2018-2021 silicone, polyurethane foam, wood core 145 x 50,5 x 39,4 cm (edition of 3)
Martin Margiela Mould(s) (blond) 2020 plaster, wood and acrylic variable dimensions
Martin Margiela Kit 2020 silicone, polyurethane foam core and steel 80 x 62,7 x 11,4 cm edition of 3
Martin Margiela Light Test 2021 HD video (filmed in 4K), 7'2" variable dimensions edition of 5