NRW-Forum Düsseldorf

»Oddly enough, Düsseldorf is housing the most exciting fashion exhibit up anywhere in the world right now«, schriebe das Fachmedium Fashion Week Daily über die Ausstellung Catwalks im NRW-Forum.

and in the magazine Kunstforum Martin Seidel describes the activities of the NRW-Forum thus::

»With Vivienne Westwood, Guy Bourdin or Alexander McQueen the NRW-Forum has, in the last few years, staged exhibitions are intended to strengthen the status of fashion as a serious and culturally emancipated phenomenon. The current exhibition “Catwalks,” also shows with 19 video installations how fashion and its orchestration on the runway is more than tailoring; showing affinity to an art form and how it sheds itself of the constraints within it’s genre, portraying that it is much more than oil and acrylic paint on a canvas or a casted bronze.«

The NRW-Forum claims, that in the general mind set of our contemporary culture, fashion has taken a central place. This is not self evident as it super seeds such visually powerful media as film and video-clips. Fashion now competes against the ubiquitous and truly global prestigious standing of architecture. It is enjoying a not previously known presence in the media and is ascertaining like no other visual medium the metropolis of life. Added to this, fashion has a strong “idol-following” character – it makes an impression as a media phenomena for the masses and ensures via it’s own circulation a visual omnipresence. A system with which fashion chains such as H&M and its collaborators, as for example Karl Lagerfeld, virtuously know how to play.

On the theoretical level, fashion also gains relevance. Essays in influential trade magazines such as “Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture” or “Costume and Dress” as well as the preoccupation of fashion by the art historically trained theorist Ulrich Lehmann have prepared the path to make fashion accessible for “cultural studies” and analyse it within the contexts of theatre, journalism, advertising and film.

In between these stand points the NRW-Forum spins the tension between the themes of fashion – such as when we show Alexander McQueen as he presents his conceptional videos; shoe fashion with which we have presented works of art (Charles Jourdan and the advertising of Guy Bourdain; Manolo Blahnik and his sketches; or Andy Warhol’s shoe drawings and the original shoes), or the flooring made up of 1,900 photographs, that Martin Kippenberger produced for Claudia Skoda, and that we restored and exhibited.

further information in english

• The NRW-Forum Düsseldorf
• Address, opening hours, ticket prices
• Informations for visitors with disabilities
• History of the Exhibition Building
• Convergence
• Photography
• Advertising
• Caffe and library