A BLOG Curated By - Riccardo Tisci - Nike x Marc Turlan



As Tisci's very own designs seem to embody a sense of didacticism and contrast, his gifted eye for art and all related seems to appreciate a juxtaposition of disparity as well. For issue A#8 of A Magazine Curated By (previously also curated with some of the most respected names in fashion-- Yohji Yamamoto, Kris Van Assche and Martin Margiela), Tisci brought artist Marc Turlan onboard to work with Nike to create a spread of images for the latter's Nike Air. The resulting product was somewhat uncharacteristic of Nike, marching dark undertones with the label's ingrained image of sunshine and sportiness; but nevertheless, of substantial impact.

Marc Turlan is known for working with the ready-made, especially magazine images. His work thrives on a didactic of conceal and reveal, and often involves cutting out portions of a magazine, contrasting the top image with the revealed bottom one. He plays with a sense of lack, and seek to create a apparent tension and anxiety through it. With his work in A#8, Turlan sculpted away everything but two model's soulful gazes from their portraits to reveal Nike's famed Swoosh logo and "Just Do It". The models' portraits were burnished and rendered in monochrome, already dictating a sense of loss and frozen time. This sense of stillness collocates with Nike's image of movement, of life and energy, producing a sense of disruption parallel to the work's physical execution. It is slightly strange that a deliberate void found in high fashion portraits is filled by an unexpected jolt of Nike, but this is the exact program which Turlan often operates on-- creating words of no meaning, images with no representation, and art with intention, but no gratifying resolution. After all, it is the sense of abrupt distortion that draws people's attention to Turlan's work and make it unforgettable. via: A Blog Curated By