In the gallery’s project room, Marcus Appelberg shows a series of paintings with the overall title ”Prêt-à-porter”. These paintings in various formats contain multiple layers of references, to Renaissance paintings of biblical scenes as well as to the contemporary avant-garde in fashion. The paintings feature textiles and fabrics that fold and undulate across the image surface. In the history of art, depictions of draperies, costumes and folds have always been carefully studied for their symbolic meanings, but also to discern signatures and identities of different artists.
Appelberg’s imagery links the Renaissance interest in drapery with contemporary avant-garde fashion. He reveals connexions to qualities such as exterior and interior, surface, and depth, but also to metamorphosis and transformation. He describes the discovery of clothes and fashion as a way to acquire a new identity that rises above the pettiness of everyday life. In the largest of the paintings, the drapery of the fabric emerges in violet and orange, in a mass of different folds. It can be reminiscent of details from a religious ritual as well as from an extravagant catwalk; two not entirely dissimilar contexts. In Appelberg’s painting, they converge.