Helmut Lang 'Burry' Zine

Published in 2018
13 x 19 cm
28 pages
Black & White Offset Printed
Edition of 1000

This zine is the product of the Helmut Lang 'Burry' exhibition at the Dallas Contemporary, that featured sheepskin sculptures. 

“Burry”, a pastoral term which refers to a soft material being covered by protective barbs, is the exhibition’s title and reflects its predominant material – in this instance, sheepskin. The pelts, familiar in Lang’s work as designer are recontextualized through a heavily tarred and painted treatment in blacks and metallics. Taking a soft, warm fabric that has practical use, as well as shamanistic and mythological implications, demonstrates both Lang’s understanding of tactile texture as well as historical and alchemical connotations. Both in alchemy and in mining, sheepskin was used to separate gold from dirts and alluvial fluids. This notion runs true in Lang’s prolific body of work, by the creation of precious materials from the everyday and mundane, with the skin’s original function retained as an echo of memory. - Visionaire

'Helmut Lang still has an affinity for material, despite leaving fashion for art over a decade ago. For his current exhibition, 'Burry', on view at Dallas Contemporary until 21 August, the artist discovered a pile of sheepskin that he had lying around after purchasing it on a Manhattan sidewalk, from an organic farm in upstate New York. His curiosity started to draw him back to it: 'The material forced itself to be somehow used and I started to experiment with different ideas, not worrying about the outcome,' Lang explains via email.

Lang stretched the various sizes of the material out on to wooden surfaces, stapling them to the formations, 'to give it a movement it would not have had naturally'. He then coated the pieces with a layer of tar to add a coarse texture to each. The pieces took on lives of their own, becoming, what Peter Doroshenko – exhibition curator and Dallas Contemporary director – referred to as a 'second skin'. - Wallpaper