Voici les images de la toute première oeuvre d’art réalisée par Thom Browne. Cette dernière sera dévoilée à l’occasion de l’Art Basel à Miami.
Thom Browne will unveil his first large-scale public artwork on Thursday, December 5th, at The Moore Building during Art Basel Miami Beach. Palm Tree I (2019)—a twenty-one-foot tall palm tree constructed from yellow, green, and pink seersucker, pincord, and gingham oxford—evokes the iconic and unmistakable palette of an American summer. The installation will be curated by Deana Haggag, the President and CEO of United States Artists. Artforum editor-in-chief David Velasco will host a discussion with Thom and the curator at 6:30PM on December 5th.
Thom Browne is known for his stagecraft, quietly inserting hand-made sculptures and performance art into his fashion shows. Uniformity is Browne’s muse, providing him with fertile ground for commentary on the pleasure and power in archetypal ideas. Taken as a whole, his body of work utilizes rigor and repetition to explore the tension between uniformity and individuality, constructions of femininity and masculinity, the monotony of everyday life, and the collapse of boundaries in contemporary society.
Palm Tree I conjures the American dream as a primarily aesthetic idea in the cultural psyche, questioning the value of success as it relates to rest and leisure. In this work, Browne summons the disembodied ensemble of Americans on holiday, investigating the disturbing similarities between the workplace and vacation with recognizable uniforms, tasks, and schedules on both ends. The sculpture looms large in the space, as does the iconography of the tropical plant in the collective imagination as a symbol of paradise and relaxation. Situated between a black mirror and sandpit, the piece gestures at the interiority of a vacation experience as well as the performative nature of it. While Palm Tree I operates as cheerful pop art, it is also a meditation on hegemonic ideas of work and play sublimated in notions of Americana.