As a new exhibition celebrates the centennial of Akris, creative director Albert Kriemler and Ruff reflect on their collaborative approach to melding fashion with art
What does the drama of a fashion runway show have in common with the wonder of a starry night sky? In 2014, when the Swiss fashion house Akris collaborated with German photo artist Thomas Ruff on their Fall/Winter collection, the models shimmered in sensual LED-studded black silk and tulle dresses that lit up the darkened room. Inspired by Ruff’s photographs of the sky, taken from the European Southern Observatory in Chile using special telegraphic tools, the striking celestial finale of the show represents a deeper artistic collaboration between Akris creative director Albert Kriemler and Ruff.
The two have been friends for over two decades, a relationship that is reflected in a new exhibition at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich that celebrates the one-hundredth anniversary of Akris, which remains family owned and based in the Swiss city of St Gallen to this day. Ruff has long pushed the boundaries of photography, exploring new technologies in his pursuit of a new type of image-making. In ‘ma.r.s.’, Ruff presented 3D-rendered images based on satellite images of the surface of Mars, a series for which he was nominated for the Prix Pictet in 2017. He is fascinated by the ways in which we perceive the world around us. Likewise, Albert Kriemler at Akris has constantly innovated in the field of fashion, drawing from interdisciplinary partnerships that span the worlds of art, architecture and cinema in order to create the house’s sleek minimalism and exploration of new technologies.
It was Ruff’s solo exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich that first inspired Kriemler, who was drawn to his experiments with the lens and fascination with the outer limits of our own world. For the FW14 Akris collection, Kriemler also printed images by Ruff directly onto wool double-face, introducing them as an alternative form of architecture upon the body. For Ruff, who works primarily in photography, the experience was eye-opening. ‘My images are two dimensional, and they are pretty stiff because they are behind glass,’ he says while in conversation with Kriemler, in a new video produced by ArtReview in partnership with Akris. ‘It was really crazy that my images went round the corner, they went round the leg, came down the shoulder,’ Ruff reflects. ‘It was something I’ve never seen before.’
The full conversation between Kriemler and Ruff, staged in Akris. Fashion. selbstverständlich at the Museum für Gestaltung, can be watched above.
Akris. Fashion. selbstverständlich at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich is on show through 24 September.
