Viva Valencia

The relationship established between fashion and art is a long and fertile relationship, we can find many examples in the past, in its historical background, marked by the pluralism of senses and links between genres. Coco Chanel designed the costumes for Diaghilev’s Russian ballets; Balenciaga drew inspiration from  Velázquez; Zurbarán and Goya, and even Christian Dior drank from the sources of Art Déco. Recently, museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Cartier Foundation or the Victoria & Albert in London have organised important exhibitions showcasing the work of designers such as Giorgio Armani, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent; Gianni Versace or Jean Paul Gaultier. As we can see, this is not a recent phenomenon, although maybe its popularisation is what is actually recent, because in 1970, almost forty years ago, The Metropolitan Museum of New York devoted an exhibition to Spanish designer Cristóbal Balenciaga. In this manner, and following these valuable precedents, I am of the opinion that we must  continue thinking about the phenomenon of fashion in the artistic domain as an expression of society and a reflection of the contemporary culture it emerges from. That is the reason why it is extremely interesting to come as close as possible to a  collective proposal in which today’s designers and artists who belong to the IVAM collection participate, a proposal where we can interpret new correspondences in this fruitful interrelationship. In this manner, and by means of visual dialectical comparisons we  revise the poetics of fashion and its relationship with art in order to know its contribution and grandeur. The dialogue between Devota & Lomba, Jordi Teixidor and José Sanleón; Miguel Palacio, Pablo Palazuelo and Sophie Taeuber-Arp; Duyos, Antoni Tàpies and Pic Adriàn; Francis Montesinos, Natividad Navalón; Dolores Cortes, Sigmar Polke and Caio Fonseca; Teresa Helbig, Esther Pizarro and Elena del Rivero; Nicolás Vaudelet, Aurélie Nemours; Juanjo Oliva, Per Kirkeby and Anni Albers; Victorio & Lucchino, Lucio Fontana and Jean Pierre Bertrand; Alvarno, Jean Arp and Mompó; Elio Berhanyer, Sean Scully and Dieter Roth; Ana Locking, Tony Bevan and Bart Van der Leck; Ailanto, Linda Karshan and Huang Yan; Jorge Vázquez, Ralph Steiner and Carl Buchheister; Lydia Delgado, Claude Cahun and Pierre Soulages; Ágata Ruiz de la Prada, Julio González and Gerardo Rueda; Maya Hansen, Manolo Gil and Richard Hamilton; Hannibal Laguna, Ximo Lizana; Amparo Chordá, Ana Peters; Mompó, Lucio Fontana and Ángeles Marco; Alex Vidal, Andreu Alfaro and Miquel Navarro; Valentín Herráiz, Carmen Calvo and Eusebio Sempere; Gilles Ricart, Gilles Aillaud and Richard Lindner; Ángel Schlesser, Ad Reinhadt and László Noholy-Nagy; Pedro del Hierrro, Eduardo Chillida and Ana Peters. At the exhibit hall, space is organised as if it were an invisible stave that helps us write a surprising melody, where musical notes are placed with great precision: designs and works of art. The fifty dresses offered by the twenty-five participating designers strike up a beautiful dialogue between two opposite and  yet closely connected  emotions.: nostalgia for the past and hope for the future. The black curtains, which conceal what is behind the scenes, will take us on this unusual oneiric journey; they will make us imagine the future depicted by the designers in their creations, and once we reach that tomorrow,  we will float on the nostalgia for a past which doesn’t seem to fade away, because it is our root.