Installation view of 《Iconclash:
Contemporary Outfits》 ©Ilmin Museum of ArtIlmin
Museum of Art presents a special exhibition 《Iconclash:
Contemporary Outfits》 through July 20. This exhibition
focuses on fashion which is the most sensitive medium when it comes to
documenting the contemporary era.
Much
like the changes that art has encountered amid currents in contemporary visual
culture, the fashion of today has become a complex environment surrounding a
more diverse array of subcultures than ever before. Cities serve as bases for
participants who produce, consume, and redefine the complex fashion entity.
Installation view of 《Iconclash: Contemporary
Outfits》 ©Ilmin Museum of Art《Iconclash:
Contemporary Outfits》 is an exhibition that presents
the work of three studios―JiyongKim, POST ARCHIVE FACTION, and HYEIN SEO―that
are each sharing Seoul’s contemporary fashion in their unique ways.
JiyongKim
(f. 2021) boasts a collection where each edition carries its time frame, based
on sun-bleaching techniques in which fabric is exposed to natural conditions
such as sun, wind, and rain. JiyongKim’s outfits can be described as diligent
translations of the organic relationship between nature and time as something
that cannot be achieved through the factory model of mass production.
POST
ARCHIVE FACTION (PAF, f. 2018) is engaged in a process of assembling and
reconfiguring various factors that turn the wheels of the city’s material
culture. The designs of PAF are reminiscent of software that is constantly
updating unseen information, with outfits that vary like an archive
incorporating natural changes. As it breaks down typical ideas about clothing
as a finished product, PAF gives form to something that has not yet been
realized―the unnamable fashion of the future.
HYEIN
SEO (f. 2015) draws its far-reaching inspiration from images out of fiction and
cinema and from anonymous narrative fragments discovered in the city. HYEIN
SEO’s clothing is media that transports abstract or undefined images and
stories onto the wearer’s body, with fashion functioning like an allegory
closely woven into day-to-day life.
Installation view of 《Iconclash:
Contemporary Outfits》 ©Ilmin Museum of Art《Iconclash: Contemporary Outfits》 aims to
facilitate the cultural landscape shared by these two realms as a medium for
representing a contemporary era that cannot be examined through fashion alone
or represented through art alone.
As it creates subtle friction with the prevailing notions of an
art exhibition, this exhibition sheds light on the forefront of the senses that
has taken shape as fashion holds its own within the art museum. In the process,
it weaves together the Ilmin Museum of Art’s research into contemporary visual
culture while meticulously documenting the contours of an uncertain era.
Participating
Artists: JiyongKim, POST ARCHIVE FACTION (PAF), HYEIN SEO
