Iris van Herpen’s couture gowns unbound by gravity

Mon 12 Aug 2024

Intrigued as Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen is by the infinitely small and microscopic, she is also fascinated by the vastness of the cosmos and its boundless mysteries. As a space without limits, the cosmos acts as a metaphor for the designer’s practice — a place of unrestrained creativity and experimentation.

‘Everything originated from stardust. Our body is a microsphere in which the macrocosm, the universe, is reflected’ Iris van Herpen

Iris van Herpen ‘Fractal Flows’ dress 2020

Iris van Herpen ‘Cosmica’ gown 2019

In ‘Cosmic Bloom’, one of the nine themes in ‘Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses’ at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) until 7 October 2024, levitating bodies, unbound by gravity, float through seemingly infinite space, signifying a state of elevation to which the designer aspires. Their colours and forms synthesise the latest scientific discoveries with artistic innovations.

DELVE DEEPER: Journey through ‘Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses’

The Fractal Flows dress (illustrated) worn by supermodel Kate Moss, a collaboration with artist Perry Hall, is based on the visualisation of soundwaves. Hall’s practice explores painting as a time-based medium, in which paint moves and transforms over time. He exploits natural dynamic forces — such as gravity, turbulence, magnetism and chemical reactions — in real-time improvisations. For this garment, Hall’s live-paintings of soundwaves were printed onto transparent glass organza. In motion, these dendrites vibrate and dance to create a fractal and rhythmic silhouette around the body.

The result of a collaboration between van Herpen and NASA engineer-turned-artist Kim Keever, the Cosmica gown (illustrated) worn by actor Gwendoline Christie at the season 8 premiere for Game of Thrones in 2019 featured a motif of paint droplets hitting water, but on Christie the pattern of golden bursts took on the illusion of smoke and fire, central to the plot of the fantasy series — dragons.

This exhibition — a first for Australian audiences — features 130 garments and accessories from across the designer’s career in conversation with contemporary artworks, natural history specimens and rare manuscripts. The entrance to ‘Cosmic Bloom’ features a prismatic work by Japanese artist Haruka Kojin, Contact Lens 2023 (illustrated) is imagined as an intermediary space in which a new sense of perception is influenced through subtle optical illusions. It comprises a complex array of acrylic lenses of varying sizes, behind which van Herpen’s levitating figures can be glimpsed. Exploring reflections, refractions, distortions, as well as double and troubled vision, the installation suggests a threshold onto multiple dimensions, encouraging visitors to embrace new ways of seeing and perceiving the world. The artist’s inspiration for the work came from considering alternate experiences of reality.

Iris van Herpen ‘Oceanix’ dress 2023

Developed around the principle of asymmetry, the Oceanix dress (illustrated) opens outward. Based on bionic architecture, its polygons are made from laser-cut microfibre and woven with silk organza and crepe. Attached by hand to fine fibreglass rods, they create a subtle interplay of fluidity and fragmentation thanks to an ingenious cantilever system. Encapsulating the duality of our existence, as the body sways, it creates an explosion of order and chaos.

Iris van Herpen ‘Aeriform’ dress 2017

For Aeriform (illustrated), van Herpen explored the immaterial force of air in order to create an infinitely airy dress, composed of light more than textile. Resembling a halo floating weightlessly around the body, the piece comprises an ensemble of geodesic spheres made from water-jet cut galvanised steel and delicately shaped in three dimensions using a wooden mould. The body, surrounded by bubbles that appear to be hovering in mid-air, defines a new space for itself. Van Herpen notes: ‘In my process, I often search for a seeming absence of matter, creating an ethereal femininity through just the reflection of light’.

Watch | Journey through ‘Sculpting the Senses’

Watch | Iris van Herpen in conversation

‘Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses’ / Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) Brisbane / 29 June to 7 October 2024, across the ground floor in The Fairfax Gallery (1.1), Gallery 1.2, and the Eric and Marion Taylor Gallery (1.3).

The exhibition is co-organised by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris and QAGOMA, Brisbane, based on an original exhibition designed by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.