Helmut Lang: Alles Gleich Schwer

Alles Gleich Schwer–which translates in English to Everything Has an Equal Weight–presents the first institutional solo exhibition of work by the influential Austrian designer-turned-artist Helmut Lang. Having given up fashion design in 2005, Lang views his transformation not as a break but a continuation of his essential preoccupation with the combination of evocative textures. From the physical body and its social and sculptural articulation through clothing, Lang has progressed to a material-led art in his sculptural objects, which address the intersection of public and private experience. The 40-foot-long sculpture “Arbor,” for example, with its intertwined poles and circles of metal, evokes the maypole rituals of Lang’s European roots; in another, similarly sparse work titled “Life Forms,” two oak boxes are filled with sheepskin and covered with tar, triggering the sort of psychoanalytic resonances found in the work of his friend Louise Bourgeois. Drawing on such diverse references, Lang has built up a series of installations and objects that integrate his intimate knowledge of the human form with the personal mythologies and abstract arrangements of the world at large.