ABSOLUT - Helmut Lang
ABSOLUT LAUNCHES PIONEERING ONLINE ART PLATFORM TO EXHIBIT HELMUT LANG’S “ALLES GLEICH SCHWER”
ABSOLUT vodka is proud to launch a radical medium to view and experience art, as a new online virtual “gallery” goes live, showcasing Helmut Lang’s “Alles Gleich Schwer”. This, a bold new exhibition of artworks, will be brought to a global audience as part of the artist’s vision of an ABSOLUT WORLD, eradicating traditional barriers between viewer and art, consumer and gallery – accessible to all for a three month period through WWW.ABSOLUT.COM/HELMUTLANG.
To present “Alles Gleich Schwer” in a digital environment, ABSOLUT and Helmut Lang are working as a creative partnership to develop a uniquely innovative interactive platform, in which the art can live beyond physical space and outside the restraints of location. Here, users will be able to get under the skin of the art – move it, rotate it, almost virtually cradle it. Moreover, in a ground-breaking exploration of the Internet as a creative medium, visitors to ABSOLUT.COM/HELMUTLANG will be able to exclusively download and print limited edition high-res exhibition posters, with no requirements needed other than an Internet connection.
THREE 2008
MAHOGANY/TAR
VARIOUS DIMENSIONS
PHOTO: ELFIE SEMOTAN
VISUALS COURTESY OF HL-ART
Absolut’s Karl-Johan Bogefors adds, “the opportunity to create an environment in which participants, irrespective of where they might be, can have access to and interact with outstanding original material in an honest and forward-thinking way, has been a great satisfaction for us.”
“Alles Gleich Schwer” previewed at the prestigious kestnergesellschaft in Hannover as Helmut Lang’s first solo institutional art exhibition, curated by Frank Thorsten Moll and Neville Wakefield. The exhibition marks Lang’s move away from the physical body’s articulation through clothes towards an understanding and examination of the object. Drawing on references as diverse as the folkloric rites of maypole ceremonies and the exploration of surrogate skin, Lang has created a series of visual pieces that integrate an intimate knowledge of the human form with the personal mythologies and abstract arrangements of the world at large.
The collaboration between Helmut Lang and Absolut draws on a relationship that stretches back to Helmut Newton’s “ABSOLUT LANG” campaign (1995) and reflects Lang’s early adoption and appreciation of the Internet, which he used before any other designer to showcase fashion collections (Helmut Lang Scéance de Travail, A/W 97-98, online). Karl-Johan Bogefors explains, “Absolut as a brand has from the very beginning and throughout its well documented history communicated an innate creativity. Helmut Lang is a true Visionary, in all his output - fashion, art, even the communication of these disciplines, which is itself an artform. In this respect he is part of the language and culture of Absolut, and we are proud to be working together once more to help realise this, his new Vision.”
TOR, 2008
UNTITLED, 2008
SURROGATE SKIN #5, 2008
PHOTO: ELFIE SEMOTAN
VISUALS COURTESY
OF HL-ART
Absolut’s latest project with Helmut Lang is part of its larger ‘In An Absolut World’ Visionaries campaign’; an online-led brand program that engages both consumers and leading creative luminaries to express clever and daring visions of an ideal world and helps bring them to life on ABSOLUT.Com. Other recent Visionaries include Kanye West, uber-blogger Perez Hilton, comedian Zach Galifianakis, with upcoming visions expected later this year from Eddie Izzard and artist/eco-chef Jim Denevan.
ABSOLUT.COM/HELMUTLANG will be on view from September 30th – December 31st.
“Alles Gleich Schwer” will be on view at the kestnergesellschaft August 31st – November 2nd | . www.kestner.org
