Portrait of an Artist

In a rare interview, Helmut Lang opens up about his experiments in art and finding meaning in ordinary materials.

- Esha Mahajan

THE INCIDENT OF A FIRE IN 2010 at Helmut Lang’s space in SoHo, New York City, where he stored his archive of clothing designs, is a good starting point to understand his oeuvre. Lang, who stopped designing in 2005 to focus on art, destroyed whatever the fire didn’t claim, in an industrial shredder. He then mixed the resultant scraps with resin and white pigment, and fashioned them into pillar-like sculptures. The end of fashion, a beginning in art. The transformation of material into something that bears no resemblance to its original form. It is this thought that informs Lang’s work today.

“I don’t have a preference of the materials I use. Some are found when I am interested in their scars from a previous life, which I want to implement in my work. My starting point is most often the material itself. I start quite brutally with the idea that I have nothing to lose, and that recklessness often works,” says Lang. Later this month, he opens an exhibition at Sperone West water in New York City, followed by key shows at museums Sammlung Friedrich shof and Stadtraum in Austria in May.