Looking Glass

2024

At the invitation of Moncler, Richard Wilson has collaborated with Fujiwara on the design for the interior of the FRGMT Pavilion, part of Shanghai Fashion Week.

At the threshold of a 17m x 17m dark square room are three entrances. Lit from behind in the approach corridors, light spills through the doorways and into the space, revealing a sinister and hard-to-discern environment. Three narrow, waist-high, steel-clad jetties lead from each doorway to a 12-metre circular tank, ringed by a walkway, all centrally positioned within the square room. The spectator becomes a performer.

Three additional steel tanks sit between the ringed walkway and the four walls of the room. Each has its own shape, defined by the entry jetties dissecting them within the boundaries of the dark square. Every tank is flooded to the brim with black silicone, forming a symmetrical black plane that reflects the upper part of the room and expands the sense of space. The line between reality and reflection dissolves in a vertiginous fusion, creating an implausible space where one sees both moving black and static jackets suspended in real and reflected space — mimicking the effect of a black and white photograph.

The black, oily, reflective liquid neutralises gravity, turning the floor into a ceiling. Some jackets move up and down, almost touching their own perfect surface reflections — a spectacle within a spectacle.

This display of art and object becomes a play of surface and depth, a counterpoint of garments and movement... fashion, art and architecture communicating within collapsing perspectives.

Details:
Steel, dyed black silicone, Linolium, Garments, Lighting