After the success of the “Haute Couture” exhibition last April, which attracted many international collectors, Jean-Antoine Hierro continues his exploration of the dress form, expressed in various dimensions and materials. The same goes for the brand with accessories, and more specifically, branded bags…
“The dress is an ‘armor’; it allows one to identify, transform, and costume oneself. I flirt with fashion to observe humanity through a changing world, and I use the dress form as a lens to view and revisit an existing but also imaginary universe.”
This “PRET-A-PORTER” exhibition is based on a now classic process by Jean-Antoine Hierro, involving the destruction and reconstruction of existing works.
The canvases take the shape of dresses, some as tall as 2.5 meters, created by assembling and cutting up old canvases made over the past twenty-five years, augmented by sketches, drawings, and writings developed throughout his travels… but also by sculptures, ceramics, cardboard, or in very different formats.
These works make room for the imagination, a space of freedom in which the artist can freely include writings and drawings.
Jean-Antoine Hierro’s painting draws from the heritage of classical painting and then enriches itself with more contemporary practices, such as montage, collage, and cutting, thus drawing inspiration from various influences, like Action Painting and Pop Art, etc.
“There is a double meaning in ‘PRET-A-PORTER’: what can be taken away immediately and what is ‘ready to transform’, hence an invitation to don another costume, another image of oneself,” explains Jean-Antoine Hierro, who from the start of his creations has transformed, destroyed, and reconstructed the works he had made, when they remained in his possession.
The work presented by the artist in this exhibition follows his reflection on art: it adheres to his impulses as a painter in the most classical sense of the term, revisited while taking into account all the contradictions of today’s society regarding art, its ephemeral nature, subject to transformation, recycling, criticism… a reflection on the position of minor and major arts in our society.
