Second Skin, 2024
A pile of vintage clothing is made available to the public, invited to take one item in exchange for another that they are wearing at that moment. A few simple rules circumscribe the modalities of this exchange that must happen on one’s own skin. Second Skin is a performative device that triggers a reflection on the traces of experience we leave through clothing and the dynamics of ownership and identification we establish with them. Hannes Egger isolates this instant, encodes its gestures and highlights them with the essentiality and sharpness of his performative language, which here confronts the vintage market system, explored during a residency at Lottozero in Prato and investigated as a phenomenon of economic history of the last fifty years.
Completing the exhibition project is a collection of found objects, retrieved from the pockets of clothes then placed in the vintage circuit: concretions of past lives that tell by fragments personal stories and social habits, testifying how much the garment is, essentially, a vector of existences.
Iron ring, coat hook, second hand clothes, various objects
250x250x300 cm
2024
Photo: Toast Studio / Aprto
Hannes Egger 