Iris van Herpen explores sensory crossovers in fashion

Tue 16 Jul 2024

The human brain has always fascinated Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen, who seeks to capture its ongoing state of ‘becoming’ — enabled by an ever-evolving network of neural connections — in her work. We delve into Synesthesia, the phenomenon that causes sensory crossovers in ‘Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses’ at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) until 7 October 2024.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal ‘Neuroglia of the layer of the pyramids & stratum radiatum of Ammon’s horn’ 1913

The Spanish neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) whose drawings (illustrated) are featured in ‘Sculpting the Senses’ was the first to observe neurons forming new labyrinthine connections with one another in the brain, referring to the cerebral cortex as ‘a garden filled with innumerable trees’. His pen-and-ink drawings illustrating the brain’s remarkable neuroplasticity inspired van Herpen to examine the role of perception in her work, with the creation of hypnotic garments animated by rippling patterns of line and form.

‘When I am overwhelmed by music, I start seeing patterns that I sometimes draw into my designs. I think of our senses as an illusory multiverse, & that we all live in our own unique sensory bubble’ Iris van Herpen

By exploring altered states of consciousness and the illusory nature of perception, van Herpen extends the experience of fashion beyond the purely visual or tactile into something less tangible. Synaesthesia refers to the cross-stimulation of the senses, whereby one might ‘hear’ colour or ‘see’ music. Lucid dreaming is a state of semi-consciousness while asleep, in which, according to the designer, ‘you are aware that you are dreaming and can partly control and steer your dream’.

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

Watch | Who is Iris Van Herpen

Van Herpen both troubles and amplifies the senses by exploring motion, transparency, superimposition, layering and optical artifice in her work, including the radiating energy generated by the wavy moire pattern. The Hypnosis cape–dress 2019 embodies the designer’s process of interrogating how the brain alternates between conscious and unconscious worlds. As the black kaleidoscopic pattern moves, it creates an optical illusion that deliberately blurs the boundaries between body and garment.

Iris van Herpen ‘Hypnosis’ cape-dress 2019

Created in collaboration with Philip Beesley for the ‘Hypnosis’ collection, the eponymous cape-dress (illustrated) interrogates the brain’s different capacities, and how it alternates between the world of the conscious and the unconscious. The black kaleidoscope pattern is printed on duchesse satin, heatbonded to mylar, then laser-cut into thousands of little waves, that transform the dress with each movement of the body. The pattern changes too quickly for the human eye to register, which creates an optical illusion, troubling the boundaries between body and clothing.

Iris van Herpen ‘Dichotomy’ strapless gown 2019

Like the Hypnosis cape-dress, the Dichotomy strapless gown (illustrated) uses artifice and optical illusion to tease and disrupt our sense of perception. Inspired by the Japanese paper-marbling technique of suminagashi, whereby swirling patterns are created by dropping ink onto the surface of water, fine white lines have been printed onto silk and then heat-bonded to mylar and laser-cut into waves. These wave patterns were heat-pressed to hundreds of black silk panels and meticulously layered and hand-stitched to fine tulle. Notably, in this process, the silk panels were sewn together in a reversal of the usual direction of fluidity, so the Dichotomy gown appears to be moving backwards even when it is, in fact, in forward motion.

Iris van Herpen ‘Radiography’ dress 2014

Van Herpen was profoundly inspired by her visit in 2014 to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which operates the Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Founded in 1954, CERN is located on the French–Swiss border near Geneva. The Radiography dress (illustrated), designed in collaboration with Philip Beesley, represents invisible forces of energy, and forms a delicate halo of laser-cut polymer hexagonal cones around the wearer. These transparent cones have been interlinked by hand using soft, laser-cut silicone joints and sewn onto a contrasting black microfibre bodice. Creating a play of light, shadow and translucency around the body, the Radiography dress resembles a complex network of atoms and molecules, or a cloak of visible radiation.

Iris van Herpen ‘Bene Gesserit’ gown for musician Grimes 2021

Drawing inspiration from Frank Herbert’s bestselling and much-loved Dune (originally published in 1965), the Bene Gesserit gown is named after the fictional sisterhood whose powerful members use physical and mental conditioning to nurture superhuman abilities, such as mind control and kinesis.

The dress is composed from silver liquid silicone with a mirror finish, with 3D silicone textures individually cast by hand. Numerous roots of gradient-dyed silk organza are interwoven into the silicone form of the dress and extend into a long, vaporous cape. Described by the designer as being ‘inspired by distant futures’, the gown was worn by musician Grimes to the Met Gala in 2021 — the annual fundraiser for the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — the year that Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s blockbuster Dune film was released.

Kohei Nawa

Inspired by the Japanese concept of ‘Seijaku’, which signifies serenity and tranquillity amidst the chaos of life, the ‘Seijaku’ collection 2016 embodies van Herpen’s own quest for finding stillness in motion, these garment recall the work of Japanese artist Kohei Nawa’s sculpture PixCell-Double Deer #4 2010.

Kohei Nawa’s works fuse the natural and virtual realms through exquisite studies in form and perception. In PixCell-Double Deer #4 (illustrated), two taxidermied deer in identical poses have been sliced together to produce an optical doubling, which the artist likens to the effect produced when holding ‘Ctrl+C’ on a keyboard. The outer surface of transparent beads approximates the thousands of pixels that make up digital images, as Nawa attempts to recreate the visual experience of the computer screen in sculptural form.

Coining the term ‘PixCell’ — a combination of ‘pixel’ (the digital) and ‘cell’ (the living) — Nawa meshes a virtual aesthetic with tangible forms. The silhouettes of the deer become unstable and dynamic as the viewer moves around the sculpture, and this elasticity of perception suggests a disjunction between visual perception and bodily experience in the internet age.

Kohei Nawa ‘PixCell-Double Deer #4’ 2010

Ferruccio Laviani

Designed for Italian furnishing company Fratelli Boffi by Ferruccio Laviani, the Good Vibrations Cabinet 2013 (illustrated) is a striking piece of furniture that appears to glitch and catch before our eyes — like a distorted digital photograph or an image caught in the static of an old television. The Fratelli Boffi company is renowned for producing classically inspired furniture, and this storage cabinet recalls bygone eras, even though it has been made using contemporary digital processes.

Playing with the vagaries of human perception, Laviani’s cabinet is disorienting in that it physically manifests a solid form that has been bumped, jolted or vibrated by a tremor or quake. In capturing this precise moment of instability, this innovative work questions the principles of classical design – purity, cleanness and symmetry; however, it also evokes a comforting sense of deja vu in the familiarity evoked by its traditional features, form and fine craftsmanship.

Ferruccio Laviani ‘Good Vibrations Cabinet’ 2013

Yayoi Kusama

Taking inspiration from rippling waves viewed from above while on a flight from Tokyo to Seattle, Yayoi Kusama began her ‘Infinity nets’ series in the late 1950s. This example from later in her career comprises tiny crescent shapes repeated in ever-expanding arches on a monochromatic ground.

Kusama’s artistic output is driven by a compulsive and therapeutic relationship to the activity of painting. She suffers from rijin’sho, or depersonalisation syndrome, which causes feelings of disconnection from one’s self, and a dreamlike or visually distorted experience of the world.

Infinity nets (illustrated) conveys the sensation of the hallucinations — perceived as a veil of dots — that the artist has experienced since she was a child. Through infinitesimal variations in the whiteness of the paint, Kusama creates a surface that undulates and vibrates, dissolving distinctions between positive and negative space and implying the idea of infinity through rhythmical repetition.

Yayoi Kusama ‘Infinity nets’ 2000

Watch | ‘Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses’

‘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.