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Skin and Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture at MOCA
Marti Bercaw, Socal.com Video Journalist |
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Across the world museums are under pressure to produce exhibitions that attract and engage the widest public audience while keeping to their own high presentation standards. Skin and Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture at MOCA, L.A. has held tightly to the excellence you expect from them, created a fantastic exhibition that has broad appeal and succeeded in proving that what appears parallel in practice is, in fact, a beautiful and provocative convergence. Everyone who has ever worn clothes and/or has ever seen a building will enjoy this show, thoroughly.
Those who are interested in contemporary fashion, even loosely, will find this show stimulating and fun. Those interested in contemporary architecture will find the layering of fashion and architectural skin and bones most fascinating. Disciplines can be blind and resistant to acknowledging interrelationships with "fields other than....." It is a kind of opaqueness that does nothing more than insulate and limit. Skin and Bones steps out of that box, silences the old spin and lets all sides show through to the other. It is a bold presentation that gives audiences a chance to see many complex layers that merge to cover us, support us and add to the definition of who we are in very surprising ways.
 The exhibition was proposed and curated by Brooke Hodge, MOCA Curator of Architecture and Design. It has taken over 6 year from inception to realization. Skin + Bones is a massive and wonderful exhibition that leads you through room after room of stellar couture, construction examples, multimedia displays, detailed models, experiments, comparisons, shared materials and techniques that wed fashion and architecture once and for all and all for the good.
Jeremy Strick, MOCA Director, Brooke Hodge,  MOCA Curator of Architecture and Design and the entire staff of MOCA have brought together a monumental collection of works from the finest, most creative and innovative minds imaginable. The list reads like a who's who: The featured fashion designers include Hussein Chalayan, Comme des Garçons, Alber Elbaz for Lanvin, Tess Giberson, Yoshiki Hishinuma, Elena Manferdini, Maison Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Miyake Issey, Narciso Rodriguez, Ralph Rucci, Nanni Strada, Yeohlee Teng, Olivier Theyskens for Rochas, Isabel Toledo, Dries Van Noten, Viktor & Rolf, Junya Watanabe, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto and J. Meejin Yoon / My Studio. The architects include Shigeru Ban, Preston Scott Cohen, Neil M. Denari Architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Winka Dubbeldam / Archi-Tectonics, Eisenman Architects, Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue / EMBT, Foreign Office Architects, Future Systems, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid Architects, Herzog & de Meuron, Toyo Ito, Greg Lynn FORM, Jakob + MacFarlane, Morphosis, Neutelings Riedijk Architecten, Jean Nouvel, Office dA, OMA / Rem Koolhaas, Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue, Nishizawa / SANAA, Testa & Weiser, Bernard Tschumi, and Wilkinson Eyre Architects.
My only advice is to plan on visiting Skin + Bones at least twice. There is so much to see and you will have so much to think about.
Skin and Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture
November 19, 2006 to March 5, 2007
MOCA, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Grand
250 South Grand Avenue,
Los Angeles, California
213-626-6222
http://www.moca.org
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