SAINT LAURENT X SHANE DARWENT

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Nocturnes is a collaboration between fashion house Saint Laurent and artist Shane Darwent.

Twenty-five site specific sculptures were commissioned for sites ranging from the Bergdorf Goodman windows in Manhattan, to Saint Laurent flagship stores worldwide including Paris, London, Milan, Dubai, Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, São Paulo, Toronto, Los Angeles, Costa Mesa, Miami, Nashville & New York. These works were installed throughout the fall of 2022 and reside in the permanent collection of Saint Laurent.

Nocturnes explore the sculptural potential of storefront awnings and their ability to function as harbingers for a tumultuous economic landscape. Wrapped in black vinyl and set into various scenarios of unlikely balance, these storefront awnings-turned-sculptures are monumental and precarious at once. The awnings are removed from their typical lateral position on an architectural facade and instead stood upright, turned sideways, backwards or upside down. In doing so, their construction is exposed. Their framework becomes a delicate rib cage, their prosaic, fluorescent illumination is revealed, and the underside of black vinyl is shown to be bright white. In this new paradigm, the awnings display a choreography of opposites: black and white, light and dark, simultaneously moving apart and coming together. The constituent parts reconfigure themselves based on a new logic that deviates from the original function of the form. This is a gravitational, almost celestial resurrection, a scattering of particles that reconvene in unexpected ways. Freed from function, Nocturnes become both a memorium and an overture, reimagining prior systems and illuminating possible futures.