FABRIC/K
Yukihiro Taguchi & Vladimir Karaleev
October 23 – November 29, 2008
FABRIC/K video
Fabric(k) is an architectural exploration of construction and production processes. The German word “fabrik” means “factory,” the setting for standardization and mechanized mass production that played host to the industrial revolution two centuries ago. The English “fabric” is rooted in this word, a protective material that greatly benefited from faster-paced, “fabrik” production.
A PROGRAM-initiated collaboration between Japanese artist Yukihiro Taguchi and Bulgarian fashion designer Vladimir Karaleev resulting in a syncopated installation spanning five weeks, Fabric(k) reconsiders the seemingly diffuse relationship between fabric and the site of its manufacture. A slowed-down construction and dismantling within the gallery space takes into account the interlacing or weaving processes that typically result in fabric in the form of clothing, which we drape over our bodies. The programmatic weaving between the two collaborators constitutes an architectural moment, extending this conceit to the scale of a room, in which new problems and potentialities for dwelling arise. Fabric(k) sharpens our sensibility for the tension between strictly defined structures and more loosely configured spatial enclosures.
Despite standard sizes or patterns, inhabiting fabrics over time forces them to yield to our limbs, to our personalities; until we eventually wear them in, dissipating former indications of the mechanized fabrik. Fabric, then, can be thought of as a structure for habitation, a material enclosure at the level of the individual person. Can space be intimately inhabited and appropriated in a similar way, through architecture? During the course of five weeks, Taguchi and Karaleev work along the seams of this question, retooling and refashioning the installation fabric as it unravels over time.
Yukihiro Taguchi was born in 1980 in Osaka, Japan. He studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and now lives and works in Berlin. His work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Galerie Space, Tokyo, Japan; Sarajevo International Culture Exchange 2004, Bosnia Herzegovina, Sarajevo; Galerie Nord, Berlin; Het Plafond, Rotterdam, Holland; Galerie der Künste, Berlin; galerie air garten, Berlin; Tokyo Wonder Site Hongo, Tokyo; International Art Triennale 2007 Osaka, Japan; SAKAMOTO contemporary, Berlin; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan. [www.yukihirotaguchi.com]
Vladimir Karaleev (born 1981) grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria. At the age of 19 he moved to Berlin, Germany, to study fashion design at the University of Applied Sciences (FHTW Berlin). In 2005 he founded his own clothing label and presented his debut conceptual project «Vladimir Karaleev CUT 210» in Berlin the following year. This collection included clothing fully completed from 210 re-constructed T-shirts. Vladimir Karaleev’s first foray into fine art was during Berlin Fashion Week in July 2007, when he took part in the Friday 13th art exhibition, showing "Black Chaos in a Symmetry." Since then, he has collaborated with Chicks On Speed. He worked as visual art director of “Rio” nightclub during 2006-2007. [www.vladimirkaraleev.com]