Helmut Lang: All Equal Heavy

The first solo exhibition of influential Austrian designer-turned-artist Helmut Lang, Alles Gleich Schwer, or Everything Has an Equal Weight, is presented at an institutional level. Lang, who gave up fashion design in 2005, sees his transition not as a break but as a continuation of his essential focus on the combination of evocative textures. Moving from the physical body and its social and sculptural expression through clothing, Lang has now progressed to a material-led art with sculptural objects that explore the intersection of public and private experiences. For example, the 40-foot-long sculpture "Arbor", with its intertwined poles and circles of metal, evokes the maypole rituals of Lang's European heritage, while in another similarly spare work titled "Life Forms", two oak boxes are filled with sheepskin and covered with tar, eliciting psychoanalytic resonances akin to the work of his friend Louise Bourgeois. Drawing on such diverse references, Lang has created a series of installations and objects that integrate his intimate understanding of the human form with personal mythologies and abstract arrangements in the world at large.

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