Sarah Sitkin

Clothes are a carapace, a shell in which we meet the world and so are our bodies and skin, we are judged on them all.

Above: Sarah Sitkin trying on one of her suits from the exhibition at Superchief Gallery LA open until 31st March.

Sarah Sitkin in her first solo exhibition, 'Bodysuits' is giving people the chance to step into someone else's skin.
'Bodysuits'  allows us to experience someone else's physicality and to remind us that the skin is not the self, we are more than our packaging.

As if the hyper realism of the suits were not amazing enough, the interior spaces of these suits are the hidden beauty, inner beauty homages and wisdom.

"The concept for this show was born when my grandmother asked me to make a mold of her toes. This led to a specific conversation about the physical attributes we personally remain insecure about. However, this quickly expanded beyond the personal, into the nature of the human condition as a meditation on the self. Our universal detachment with our bodies leads us through a lifetime of serious divides, between fantasy and reality for what our bodies should and could be. I do not believe the body defines who we are. It’s not really the essence of “us,” but functions more like a garment than a persona. The bodies in the show are direct molds from actual people. They have been recreated with extreme detail. Each suit carries it’s own weight, intended to communicate a burden or lack thereof for that particular body, such as the softness of youth, the stiffness of scar tissue, or the fragility of aging skin. I wanted “Bodysuits” to be an experience of the burden or pleasure of somebody’s physicality. The universal experience of insecurity is painful and often private, consolidated to a temporary solution and quick fix mentality that ignore the impending difficulties of age and breaking down. “Bodysuits” is a reminder of our impending mortality, allowing us to experience another's being with curiosity and empathy, remembering our skins are not the self." Sarah Sitkin

Michael Kotin

Michael Kotin a young fashion student from St Petersburg often creates statements on his clothing to be viewed from behind.   

Liz Payne

Liz Payne is an Australian textile artist who combines bold coloured paint with stitch and bead textures.

"I get a lot of inspiration from historical influences, for example the beautiful textiles and beaded artefacts from countries such as Nigeria, Guatemala and Uzbekistan - where pieces were not only decorative and functional but also told a story of the many hours and hands that worked on it.

I'm also immensely inspired by contemporary influence and trends in fashion, culture, media and design. I think it's this blend of the old with the new that I find really appealing." Liz Payne 

Marian Bijlenga

I have been fascinated and inspired by the work of  Dutch artist Marian Bijlenga for sometime.

Marian Bijlenga creates installations and wall sculptures from delicately worked elements of horse hair, viscose, paper, glass and fish scales. She studied at the Rietveld Art Academy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her work is like flight maps of birds or organisms under the microscope, detailed, magical and organic.

“I am fascinated by dots, lines and contours, by their rhythmical movements but also by the empty space they confine. Instead of drawing on paper, I draw in space by using textile as a material. I work with thread, fabric and horsehair, materials that are soft, light, flexible and open to endless development. The suppleness of textiles gives me the greatest possible freedom to achieve my goal: the discovery of new forms.

Be guided by what happens around you. Don’t try too hard to direct, plan, master everything. For me, it is more important to be led by what crosses your path, the accidental encounter, things that happen outside yourself. Marian Bijlenga

Tobias Gremmler

"Fabric and skin is translated into a digital mesh that acts like a dynamic membrane between body and the surrounding space. Like fashion, it constructs/deconstructs identity and becomes a media that propagates information in form of textures, patterns and shapes. The work visualizes this underlying forces in forms of threads weaving together and tearing apart fragments of cloth and skin. Exhibited as scenographic media installation at Osage Gallery during HK|Runway." Tobias Gremmier

Walter Oltmann

Above: Razor wire and wire armour 2007

Above: Caterpillar suit II 2007 and Below: Caterpillar Suit III

South African sculptor Walter Oltmann weaves and stitches incredible forms by using wire like a handicraft medium, constructing amazing suits of armour from 1mm diameter wire.
Walter studied fine art at the University of Natal, his art works focused originally on the flora and fauna of the area. A growing interest in crystalis, silverfish and insects lead to the creation of some amazing armoured forms, metallic exoskeletons which combined with research into the regalia of 15th century explorers and conquistadors explored the impact of colonisation of South Africa.

“My Caterpillar [and Metamorphosis] Suits explore a hybrid crossing-over between insect and human. They look like empty shells that remain behind following larval molting processes. At the time of weaving the suits I was also interested in looking at the elaborate suits worn by the first Europeans who arrived on African shores. A key influence on my caterpillar suits was a Benin carved ivory salt cellar which represents the foreigner in a conquistador-like garment, giving it an air of masculine power and authority. The African carver’s interpretation of the foreign European represents an inversion of the relations of power which characterizes the representations of ‘exotic’ people by colonial artists, and I liked this ironic inversion of the depiction of the exotic ‘other’ where the gaze is reverted back onto the European explorer as something foreign and alien.” Walter Oltmann

Thank you Robyn Gordon

Karin Bucher

Wonderful stretchy amorphic costumes by Karin Bucher for Theater Stadelhofer's production of Alice in Wonderland 2017.