Fetishes of the gaze
Fashion and Seduction
Today, fashion – also as a result of increased prosperity – has long since gone beyond our purely functional needs and is deeply interwoven with our everyday lives. The strategies of seduction in design and marketing are becoming more and more sophisticated and are giving clothing and accessories an emotional quality, making them much more than just a means to an end.
The term “fetish” has become a key term for understanding the complex relationship between people and their material culture. It was originally developed around 1750 in a religious-ethnological context to describe rituals in African tribal cultures. In the 19th century, it was then transferred to a new context and located in the web of desires and projections that became inscribed in the consumer world when department stores became cathedrals of goods. Karl Marx warned of their seductive illusions in Das Kapital (1867).
Today, the term primarily characterizes the way in which people are fascinated by mystically charged objects from their everyday lives. Because it is the mystification and emotionalization that make things so special and "experienceable". The exaggerated meaning attributed to them in the sense of exclusivity, beauty or power has long since become a key driving force of consumer society and has also become a theme in the visual arts since the 1960s. Artists appropriate the object culture of the world of illusion that promises fulfillment and take its worshipful character to the extreme, they decipher the strategies of marketing and seduction, create symbols or confront their audience with their own excess.
The exhibition, conceived and curated by Wiebke Hahn, addresses mystification and cultic exaggeration as a great playground of the fashion world. It questions the tension between the history attributed to things and their owners, explores how objects constitute meaning and makes fashion tangible as a central element of our theatrical culture. With a few exceptions, the exhibition focuses on works from the ahlers collection. Using works from the early modern period to the present day, it enables a diverse examination of everyday fetishes from the areas of religion, superstition, commodity and monetary culture, as well as eroticism and sexuality. Works of object art, photography, drawing and painting provide food for thought with regard to the theatricalization of the world of goods and our entanglement in it.
The event is taking place in cooperation with Marta Herford, which is simultaneously highlighting other facets of this complex topic with the exhibition "Look! Revelations about art and fashion". With your current ticket for our exhibition, you will receive a discount on the entrance fee at Marta Herford.
(1st row from left to right) Clegg & Guttmann, Chanel, 2015, © Courtesy of the artist and KOW, Berlin. Tim Walker, Lily and Spiral Staircase, 2005, ahlers collection, © Tim Walker. Jan Henderikse, $-Shirt, 2017, ahlers collection, © Jan Henderikse. (2nd row from left to right) Germany, 19th century, men's fashion around 1850, ahlers collection. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, variety dancer, 1911, ahlers collection. Mario Testino, Madonna, 1996, ahlers collection, © Mario Testino.