A BLOG is happy to announce a new exhibition from contributing photographer & artist Marina Faust, in her hometown for Vienna ArtWeek. Marina’s theoretical approach to art practice requires the viewer to absorb much more than her raw, spare aesthetic – to look through her abstract objects in order to understand a challenging, critical exercise in empathy, timing, opinion & perspective.

Marina presents a series of several units entitled Shelf, containing 28 images. Shelf can be seen as an extension of the images hanging or leaning on the walls next to it. It as an image stock and allows the possibility to choose and exchange images as one wishes. Shelf is a transparent structure and therefore all images stocked in Shelf are seen from both sides, from their backs as well as from their fronts. The images are based on a collection of anonymous drawings of shoes, a technical imagery used as a recognition tool in the shoe industry. They are inkjetprint enlargements of various dimensions.

Shelf is Marina’s second outing at the Song Song gallery – a progressive space fostering the more obscure, artisanal links between fashion and art. Previously the gallery has hosted exhibitions by the Maison Martin Margiela & Dirk Van Saene, and will soon showcase the works of Walter Van Beirendonck.

As in her first exhibition with the gallery (wherein a group of second-hand chairs equipped with wheels for rolling at once asserted themselves as a total artwork, and refused to offer up any rules for engaging them as such) Shelf returns to the problematic boundary-zone of what constitutes a ‘state of art’.

This time the project addresses a moment in the object’s life that is not it’s ‘art’ moment, that is some place perhaps just before or after art, an off beat wherein the ways by which we identify the object are made unstable, called into question.

In Shelf, the frame (or apparatus of support) skews the object against the context, opening a rift in the space of the gallery through which another identity of the thing can be seen, equally true though not at all appropriate to the moment.

As much storage device as means of exhibition, Shelf uses the space of artworks as the platform for a question of what a before-art or after-art work is, of what an artwork becomes if it is in no position to be looked at.

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Vernissage for Vienna ArtWeek, 7pm on Tuesday November 16th, 2010.
Exhibition runs until 20th November, 2010.

Song Song is located at Praterstrasse 11 A-1020, Vienna.

www.marinafaust.com
www.songsong.at

In a concise and inspirational series, Lurve magazine have approached several artists and asked: What does success mean to you?

Lurve’s editor Lyna Ahanda posed the question to A#1 contributor Marina Faust, and here are her thoughts:

What does success mean to you?

Marina Faust: It certainly has the quality to increase audacity.
It might bring you down and not up if you have the talent to be more miserable than happy.
The desire for success today is somewhat an epidemic disease making it more interesting to be unsuccessful.
And the term is utterly relative.

All images courtesy of the artist, © Marina Faust.

1. (above) self portrait with dots, photo relief, 2009

2. self portrait after marcel duchamp, 2008

3. lust, self portrait, 2004

www.marinafaust.com

In our second contribution from the wonderful Paris-based photographer and artist Marina Faust, we present an article that she wrote on the history of the Maison Martin Margiela in 1996 for Purple Magazine. Many thanks to Marina and to Purple Magazine for their support.

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MARTIN MARGIELA, INEVITABLY HERE AND NOW

October ’89. Paris. People talk about Martin Margiela who has presented his collection on a terrain vague. I am intrigued and attracted. Sounds alternative or underground. We hadn’t had that for a while.

Fall ’90. I visit the showroom. Everything is painted white, even the TV. Assimilation of a place as he found it. Don’t destroy what has already been lived through, introduce yourself. An attitude he applies as much to objects as to clothes. I feel at home.
Else, one of the members of the tight group around Margiela leads me in. I plunge into the collection, up close, and lose myself in the details. Forget the superficial. Respect it all. The linings are a fundamental part of the whole. Inside/outside. Men’s vests for women, dresses and skirts are long. Rectangles are tied around the hips. You wear them over your jeans. Folded they are the size of an envelope. The folds are part of the piece. Any shape of body can do it. Invent yourself. Show the fringing fibers of the material. No need to hide a cut in a hem. The five buttonholes on the sleeves are real. Play with them. This is not about pretending. It is about being. I am impressed.

March ’91. Presentation of the winter collection. Come over and have a drink. Women are dressed, prepared and made up all day long. They walk, stand, converse, come and go. There is a wide range of age and morphology. It feels human. I photograph. I fall in love with a deconstructed sweater. Upper body, hips and sleeves. Wear any of it separately if you want to. Ribbons are dropping from the central piece. You tie them around your torso. Ribbons are on skirts, inside jackets, on jabots. They decorate hands, are braided around fingers. Their function as elements of garments has evolved into ornaments for the body.

October ’91. Basic material: vintage scarves. Chosen, assembled, in their original shape they are sewn together, become skirts, shirts, tops knotted around the body. Touch anything and make it into something. The blue jeans painted all in white or all black (’91). Deviate the functions. The plastic bag T-shirt (’89), the sweater made of military socks (’91). While people are walking into the candle-lit metro-station to see his next performance Margiela continues the motifs and colors of the scarves onto the women’s bodies. Stripes, spots, squares, triangles are painted on arms, hands, legs, shoulders and chests. Don’t be limited by a fabric. Transgress and go further.

October ’92. Two different scenes. Same time. Concept (one of many): Jenny Meirens, the second, essential and one heart and mind of the company. Disorientation. People are angry. They can’t have it all. Color: white. The women walk barefoot through the crowds. A small branch of fresh green box leaves is hanging from their necks. Even their eyelashes are white. It is peaceful and strange. They look like Renaissance hippies of the future wearing dusty antique velvet and brocade jackets. The sleeves are too long as always, the shapes tight. The bodies seem totally at ease in their costumes. Woodstock revisited with Ophelia. Heavy metal bracelets decorate the upper arms. Later I hear the other show was all in black.

Spring ’93. New York. Downtown Manhattan. I walk into a coffee shop. A young man is leading me to the table. “Is this a Martin Margiela jacket?” “Yes it is.” “Oh, it is wonderful!” That was swift and sensitive, especially among a rushing crowd of hungry people. America. Undoubtedly he has become the hero. As for myself it adapts harmoniously to me and what is mine, which actually provokes occasional encounters with Margiela fans as if we were complicit mutants from that very special planet.

October ’93. Choose the best of five years, dye the whole thing, put it in an ex-supermarket and show it again. Interrupt the flux. Don’t go with it. Don’t feed the ferocious hunger. Resist. It works. I want a second set of every piece in grey. There is a structured thought behind every presentation. It is always intelligent.

March ’94. Barbie and Ken. Everything is proportionally enlarged from the holes in the stitches, the metal buttons to the seams, the hems and the zippers. Compose a collection of Barbie clothes, make them big, put them on human-size dummies, wrap a transparent plastic bag around their heads and stick black tape over their eyes. Barbie hardcore, refined version. Perfectly harmonious with pieces from any of the previous collections. Astonishing. It is rolling. No show. Only clients. Privacy. I feel good in the new showroom. Looks like an old hangar.
Additional group: an edition of old garments. Chosen, exactly reproduced and labeled. My favorite: the tailored jacket for men, Germany 1970 by Martin Margiela 1994. Double identity. First and second. Style reference: Serge Gainsbourg in the ‘70s. The collection will only be shown to the press and public six months later when it arrives in the shops. Courageous. Permanent attempt to break the routine and the established.

March ’95. Veils cover the women’s faces. They are walking between benches. The circus is packed. The record is scratched. Disorienting interruptus aspect of the show. The colors of the outfits change very subtly from black to brown to pink and hyper fuchsia. Zip an overall up your body from the ankle to the neck. Throw a fur collar over your T-shirt. Slide long leather sleeves up your arms. They were gloves before but the hands are gone. Music switch. Sixty-nine women take their veils off. Hundreds of fuchsia balloons travel on the wind back home with me.

Spring ’96. I am wearing a photographed coat, a coat of my photograph… Margiela recycles the recycled and himself. A picture of a vintage or a Margiela dress, of a jacket or a shirt is printed on a different fabric and on a different pattern. Self-appropriation. A woolen sweater becomes a nylon T-shirt. A heavy coat becomes a light one. A dress becomes another dress. The dress of a dress. If you have the original dress and the photographed dress, you have the same dress two times but not at all. Confusion. People want to touch the buttons but they can’t. Illusion.

October ’96. Men carry devices on long sticks to throw light beams on the women who walk in front of them. Illumination of the precious in the dark. Rhythmical motion in harmony. Black shadows are painted on the faces. Red lips smile along to show Hollywood-white painted teeth. Nylon stockings cover the shoes. Stocking outside, shoe inside. A plastic garment bag is recycled into a transparent raincoat. Don’t bother with the garment, wear the bag. Transparency. Protection? Emphatic sense of freedom and consideration for the body and its fragilities.

Sign: the first one in the zodiac. Persona: discretely very present, nearly never not working, tender, obsessed. Concern: Don’t look at me. Look at my work.

Martin Margiela, inevitably here and now.

Marina Faust, 1996.

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www.marinafaust.com

In an A BLOG exclusive, we invited photographer and artist Marina Faust to offer her personal contribution to this month’s exploration of A#1. We offer our thanks for revisiting her contribution to the magazine and reminiscing on her work with the Maison Martin Margiela, sharing her story with us all.

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“Martin Margiela gave me carte blanche for A Magazine in 2004.

I remember it having been inspiring and encouraging. I was moved by his trust in my work.

I worked with Martin Margiela since 1990 making videos of the presentations of the artisanale collections and, as a photographer, shooting backstage, diverse subjects like series for magazines, photos during the preparations of the new collections, photos for the printing on materials for outfits, as well as shooting the ‘icône’ images which are the black and white postcards that represent each collection.”

“the full cycle of the coat:

1. my photos for Margiela of a wintercoat

2. the negative of the image for printing on a light fabric

3. backstage image of the finished photoprint trompe l’oeil summercoat

4. self-portrait wearing the photoprint summercoat

In 2007 I had an exhibition/installation at the MMM project space in their Ebisu space in Tokyo. The title was Mohair. I also showed my film The park in the projection room.”

“Among fashion series for magazines I recently shot a series on MMM for the Austrian A Guide Magazine for which I chose together with stylist and Taiwan magazine maker Gene Ching-Ku pieces from over 20 years of the Artisanale collection. It is a sequence on gestures between a woman and a man.”

“In 1994 I put a story on Martin Margiela together for Purple Fashion magazine. It is a series of backstage photos and a text I wrote on Margiela. The issue is out of print today.”

[Full text online here].

www.marinafaust.com

www.gallerandethefilm.com

www.songsong.at

Returning to the early days of our journey we are delighted to present A#1, curated by Maison Martin Margiela in 2004 –  the first in the numerical series of A after the founding issues by Dirk Van Saene (NºA), Bernhard Willhelm (NºB), Hussein Chalayan (NºC) and Olivier Theyskens (NºD).

Maison Martin Margiela is known for a subversive, intellectual and often satirical style that permeates through a signature white-washed world, becoming famous in the 90′s for its deconstructed garments and guerilla fashion shows – the antithesis of populist fashion of the times, and a vein being explored in parallel by Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo in Japan. All garments are labelled with four white top stitches in a rectangular form – a “response to the tyranny of the logo” – a design originally created for easy removal that has evolved into one of the most distinguishing, visible labels one may wear today.

Born in Belgium in 1957, the designer Martin Margiela graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in 1979, and later spent some years assisting Jean Paul Gaultier before opening his own house. The collective moniker of ‘Maison Martin Margiela’ has signified the work of Martin and his team since 1988, cultivating an anonymity and the effect of a group mentality ever since the first defilé for womens Spring Summer 1989. Martin has remained entirely invisible to the public in the past twenty years, and the house answers all interviews via fax or email.

Throughout the month of February and beyond, A BLOG explores Maison Martin Margiela’s truly iconic magazine – an organic and interpersonal study of the brilliant people who have touched the house in weird and wonderful ways over its two decades in operation. Centred on both Antwerp and Paris, the contributions within the title include handwritten notes, typed working documents, collages, photography, interviews and installation art from the likes of Mark Borthwick, Marina Faust, BLESS, Ronald Stoops, Nigel Bennett and Patrick Scallon. Many contributors have not only been associated with the house externally, but have worked behind its closed doors as designers, models, photographers etc.

Please click here to see A#1 online at WWW.AMAGAZINECURATEDBY.COM, with another back issue released each month. A#2 by Yohji Yamamoto, A#3 by Haider Ackermann, A#4 by Jun Takahashi, A#5 by Martine Sitbon, A#6 by Veronique Branquinho, A#7 by Kris Van Assche and A#8 by Riccardo Tisci are also all available to view online now.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMp4FZzgCSw[/youtube]