93. JIL SANDER - A SPACE BETWEEN COMPASS AND COURSE.
Jil Sander by Jil Sander - Prestel.
Jil Sander photographed by Francesco Scavullo, 1980.
Covered with a Warholian screenprint - off set to reveal the multiple layers of self. As screens or shadows suggest the many mirrors to Jil Sander's gaze - Part elusive Garbo, part pragmatic engineer.
- A gaze that stares out to an unseen horizon line, as to be lit by the luna haze of a Hiroshi Sugimoto seascape. Calm yet witness of a space between storms, to chart a course where a map remains closed, and the compass is self: Jil Sander by Jil Sander.
To trace a finger across these pages is to sense a pulse, a vein beneath the skin as a scored fold gives choice to adapt this chronicle of time, this surface of still - A book of feeling over instruction - where images are chosen by the beat of a heart - the pink matter over the need to be understood by the grey.
As in the architectural spaces depicted in print, so too does this object convey an intention of space. On opening the cover or door to a volume on a life lived through the appreciation of the sparsely furnished. The light-filled atriums of Sander’s stores - allowed for contemplations of identity to take flight and perch before purchase. So too do the minimally furnished pages in Irma Booms’ monograph on the German designer - blurs as plasma paused - more flat screen than full bleed. As borderless pages open - allowing the viewer to select combinations of colour, akin to the quiet act of physically contemplating Sander’s expansive collections - as client collaboration - in the 'We' over the 'I'.
Archival film footage - paused to remember amorphous - to focus - as edges soft as pastel impressions smudge gentle memories. Cropped in as evidence - to study the erogenous of a design through glimpses caught - of elbow, nape of neck, undulation of throat.
Softly printed portraits reminiscent of Gerhard Richter paintings form an emotive focus felt - clearer than the digital, richer for the saturation of hue - allowing the eye to glaze upon a past lived - An ode to silence - presented as art - where to fall in love stills the world from its crashing chaos - signals from the noise - within this printed atmosphere - all makes sense and equilibrium is achieved.
A kindness of colours pigment a ream of pages - which occasionally jolt for a warning shot of lapis, cobalt, ruby or gold. The body bare of faceted stones and yet is touched with an artist's palette, tender and private. As with Josef Albers, whose colour block paintings are sensed within the occasional wide borders of white, generous as a foulards edge, to a block of egg yolk yellow or vermillion.
Clothes cut as paper planes stitched in felted sheaths - hover on angular limbs - as Naum Gabo cuts expanses of metal - Sander selects poplin, leather or wool to fathom flatness to form.
Solarised images occasionally blink from pages as to signify the exactitude of a surface understood as blueprint - as garment - as plans become construction.
The sensual surprise of touch of an occasional page of printed plastic breaks the mass of porous papers - as the cellophanes of Peter Lindbergh's film strips - a processing in between moments caught - wet from a dark room before the solidity of permanence. As with her clothes, Sander knows that celluloid lasts longer than a season - and so these pages are further testament of a directorial knowledge of cinemas’ ageless lasting.
And so Sander protects her uniformed following with a knowing pragmatism that beckons to eras long passed - in the precision of cut and construction, reassuring the wearer with an instilled knowledge. There is a maternal manner in the way ideas are proposed - both on the body and off - in the no-nonsense approach to her work as a designer and in impeccable translation into book form - of gesture over instruction. An offering to those who speak through garments engineered to appear simple for the predilection of the complex. Cuffs hover knuckles - coats swathe shoulders, knees break through double-faced plackets with the rhythm of walking to beguile the viewer and empower the wearer.
The science of seduction, cooly invisible, even impenetrable to the most yet yielding and lucid to the few - whose loyalty is in realising the self.
'The designer is not one to shy away from such classic erotic cues as transparency and the color red. The cut, by contrast, is anything but provocative. Succinct in its approach, it gives the female body the freedom to go unconcealed without making itself vulnerable to expectations.' J.S.
Jil Sander by Jil Sander published by Prestel
Special Thanks Kate Luxton - Prestel.