Contemporary fashion designer Helmut Lang exhibits his challenging art sculptures within a sleek, contemporary residence in Los Angeles
Helmut Lang, the renowned Austrian creative, has unveiled a captivating new exhibition at the Schindler House in Los Angeles. Entitled "Helmut Lang: What remains behind", the show consists of a series of thought-provoking sculptural works made from unexpected materials like mattress foam, wax, resin, shellac, and latex.
The sculptures, which include pieces like 'Fist I' (2015-17) and 'Prolapse II' (2024), are contorted into forms resembling closed fists and other bodily elements. They exist in a liminal space between past and present, reflecting the tension between the weight of the past and the promise of renewal.
The Schindler House, designed by Rudolph Schindler, is a storied repository of the many social, sexual, and intellectual experiments that connected the new architectural forms to the lifestyles of those who built and inhabited them. The domesticity of the old mattress foam and its contortion in the sculptures symbolises Schindler's radical rethinking of the nature of the home with the Schindler House, designed as a propositional, communal structure.
Arranged across five rooms, the sculptures and their amber-brown hues reflect the home's redwood frame, wooden panelling, and striking copper fireplaces. Two small wall pieces accompany the sculptures, with the materiality of shellac, plastic, and wax being centred, exalted, and framed.
The works were not created for the Schindler House, but their curation by Kerstin Honeit powerfully connects them to the setting. The artworks and architecture in the Schindler House "exist in a liminal space that is a threshold between past and present", according to Neville Wakefield.
The sculptures have a visceral quality, recalling sticky cake or wet sponge, and oscillate between the sensual and the deformed, toying with desire and disgust. Ideas of memory, absence, and presence, particularly in the domestic context, have taken on new poignancy in the context of Los Angeles due to the devastating wildfires that ravaged the city in January.
'Helmut Lang: What remains behind' is on show at MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, Los Angeles until 4 May 2025. For more information about the exhibition, visit makcenter.org.
The reformed material in Lang's sculptures speaks to the tension between the weight of the past and the promise of renewal. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to explore this theme in the context of the Schindler House, a blend of radical modernism with ancient Japanese design and traditional wood with innovative concrete.
