Bernhard Willhelm 3000 – When Fashion Shows the Danger Then Fashion is The Danger is an exhibition currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles. It is artistic designer Bernhard Willhelm’s first time showing in an American museum. German born Bernhard Willhelm graduated from the Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts and presented his first collection in Paris in 1999. During the same year, he also founded his own fashion label with his partner Jutta Kraus after which his career has continued moving forward.
Willhelm has a talent for combining fashion design, visual art and social reflection all in one. As a designer, he is known to be conscious of what is happening around him and to critically reflect on this. The concept of fashion and art has long been debated. Fashion is often trivialized into a mere surface but exhibitions like Bernhard Willhelm 3000 showcase the complexity behind the surface by introducing a conversation between art and fashion in both a critical and intriguing way. In such displays art becomes more than just backdrop a frame, it becomes part of a wider context. In fact, a closer look at the title of this particular exhibition indicates an ambiguity of both talking about the general concept of “fashion”, but also the notion of fashion show as in runway shows, expresses the fact that fashion always needs a second glance.
The exhibition features sculptural installations, photography, video and other objects all selected and curated personally by Bernhard Willhelm, generating his unique point of view. His newest collection, referencing and discussing ecological disaster and climate change, is also to be presented as a part of the exhibition. In fact, Bernhard Willhelm sees this exhibition as : “a response to the uniformity of fashion in the 21st century and a forecast of the fashion experience in the 22nd century.”
Bernhard Willhelm 3000 – When Fashion Shows the Danger Then Fashion is The Danger is on display at MoCA in Los Angeles until the 17th of May 2015.
Victoria Edman – Images courtesy of MoCA
