Opening soiree SALON/Istanbul

Opening soiree SALON/Istanbul at the fabulous ADAHAN Hotel.

Photo's by JW Kaldenbach

ALL ABOUT ISTANBUL

After a successful first edition of SALON/Istanbul in the city of Amsterdam, the Turkish sequel is about to begin. SALON/Istanbul from October the 10th until the 12th of December as part of Istanbul Design Biennial organized by IKSV. 

After months of necessary preparations, SALON/Istanbul is shaping up. Artworks are trucked in. Designers and artists are flying into Istanbul Atatürk Airport. Building up the exhibition the next few days, will fuse all programme items together into one multidisciplinary event. 

The route, existing of over 30 locations, runs down the historic city centre. All locations are in walking distance of each other. The parcours will take you through old neighbourhoods and up-and-coming area's with loads of modern art galleries and lovely cafe's, bars and restaurants. From trendy to traditionally Turkish. 

For the next couple of weeks this blog informs you on the many events that make SALON/. Please look out for posts on the Istanbul Design Biennial, Istanbul's hotspots, fashion shows, exhibition openings, seminars and much more.

   

At Soepboer & Stooker you can still admire the graduation collections of Morta Griskeviciute, Poul Brouwer and Jolka Wiens of The Rietveld Academy 'MMXII' - mentored by Niels Klavers and Oscar Raaijmakers - UNTIL July 28th 2012

The Rietveld Art Academy in Amsterdam hasn't have a name when it comes to its fashion department and every year the number of graduates in fashion design declined, with probably this year as it's all-time low with just three fashion graduates. But better fashion times are coming. 

Since a year the fashion department has a new director, and not the least: fashion designer Niels Klavers. Together with another big fashion name Oscar Raaijmakers, Klavers trained and mentored the fashion graduates Morta Griskeviciute, Poul Brouwer and Jolka Wiens. These graduates told they had the best final year of their fashion education thanks to Klavers and Raaijmakers, because just being with three students you can get the most of attention and guidance, especially from two enthusiastic and professional teachers. 

The energy and quality of this years graduation collections is high and stood out in clear concepts, research process and experimentation. These three collections and having Niels Klavers and Oscar Raaijmakers on board give a new appeal to the Fashion Department of the Rietveld. Result: a dozen of future fashion students have chosen to apply for the Rietveld now instead of the better-known fashion academies out there.  

Although fashion week is over and everybody is enjoying their holidays, in the magnificent store of Soepboer & Stooker we can still admire the Rietveld graduation collections of Morta, Poul and Jolka until July 28th 2012. 
The store of Soepboer & Stooker is at Overtoom 9 in Amsterdam, open until 4pm and worthwhile visiting. 

POUL BROUWER's BLURRING GRIDS OF SHAME

Poul Brouwer's collection called SHAME, focusing on personal matters he feel or felt embarrassed by or struggled with, like being a red head or liking the Spice Girls as a young boy. The feeling of shame he translated in covering up true identity for the outside world using blankets as his starting point. What kinds of silhouettes take shape when folding, wrapping and layering stuffed blankets on the male body? His pattern design was formed by coincidence. Amazed by the pattern of common tiles, he draw with water-soluble black markers grids by hand on cotton shirts, and, again, by coincidence, discovered the black ink blurred in a thousand colours when dropping water on the thin lines. It fits his concept of SHAME and to resolve the shame, because instead of 'walking the line', Poul is more the kind of person to push the envelope and be different and colourful.  

  


MORTA GRISKEVICIUTE's COLLIDED FASHION RUINES

'Fashion has a pragmatic aspect that I missed in other art disciplines; it combines creativity, technical skill and 3D', Morta explains in an interview. She is not per se a fashion designer, more a creative director with an educational background in illustration and fine arts. 'My collection resembles the way I draw: expressive yet controlled'. For her graduation collection she was inspired by the photos of Robert Polidori, who captures the chaos of decaying and neglected interiors, ruined by disasters, wars or by the hand of time. Morta is fascinated by beautiful ugliness, combining 'trashy elements with contradictory elements; chaos after the chaos'. She focussed especially on the textures, the colours and the flaws of the interior and its materials: torn wall paper, moss on rotten wood, scaled off paint of former luxurious places like opera houses, ball rooms, cinema's or warehouses, and translated these images in textiles -like furry flocked plastic, paper and knitwear- and in shape - expressive and loose- but as a whole all well executed.  

 

MIMICRY DRESSES OF JOLKA WIENS

'I am not your typical fashion person being mostly excited by the psychological and social aspects of design', Morta Wiens explained and continued: 'What does a fabric like neoprene expresses and what kind of experience gives it when wearing it?' Her designs of laser-cut neoprene are flat 'dead' pieces and need a body to come alive and to reveal its identity. Although neoprene and laser-cutting is considered as 'done and dull' due to the popularity of the raw material on todays runway, Morta said it motivates her even more to prove neoprene and laser cutting can still astonish. For her graduation project she researched the anatomy of the human face, how the muscles are placed and creates different facial expressions, mimicry, because the face can communicate on many different levels. This concept she translated in her laser-cut graphics and designs. Like a face, a body gives new shape and therefore a new expression to her cobweb black and white fashion designs.

pictures and text by Marij Rynja

LAST CHANCE: SALON/istanbul at Museum Van Loon

One of SALON/s beautiful locations is Museum Van Loon on the Keizersgracht, a magnificent private residence built in 1672. The canal house was the home of Willem van Loon, co-founder of the Dutch East-India Company (VOC) and his family in The Golden Age. 

In the rooms on the ground floor of Van Loon, like the Blue and Red Drawing Room, SALON/ add contemporary design objects of Dutch/Turkish designers, unexpectedly places in between Van Loons possessions and artefacts.   

Star-rising photograph duo Petrovsky & Ramone have made two images especially for SALON/Istanbul; one of them is showed here at Van Loon, the other in Museum Geelvinck Hinlopen. What we see in Van Loon is a big enrolled red Persian carpet, two bare legs sticking out at the end: a body is wrapped, somebody wishes to hide himself for a moment? The picture is called ‘Embrace’, maybe it shows us to embrace the Turkish crafts, it’s culture, and it’s people. 

Turkish-Dutch Zeynep Altay makes intuitive and organic embroidery pieces, expressing her personal emotions. On her blog she confesses to feel uncomfortable talking about herself in words, so she uses her embroideries to communicate, but as well to digest misfortune and depression. In Van Loon SALON/ shows several objects Altay made – samples and little storyboards – and a top of greys and black yarns looking like scrubs.

NOMAN presents their research process for their installation OSMAN – showed in the Willet-Holthuysen Museum as part of the SALON/workshop – in the Red Room with its Turkish carpets. The traditional carpet is deconstructed and analysed by NOMAN, driven by the idea what direction and shape the evolution of the carpet could go to in the future. (see pictures below) 

Deniz Seyda Tunca designed the Euro memorial coin ‘Tulpen Vijfje’ representing the relationship between the Netherlands and Turkey: on one side of the coin (the Dutch side) shows a fully flowering tulip and the backside (the Turkish side) shows a young, still closed tulip as a metaphor for the origin of the tulip. This is just one of many metaphors Tunca integrated in the coin. 

Spread over the SALON/ locations are the videos of young Turkish Film students of the Istanbul Kultur University who have been selected for the 2012 TENT awards in Rotterdam. Here we can see the video of Kagan Ataseven. 

And in the diner room product designer Lizan Freijsen. Stains and mildews caused by leakage in the house fascinates her deeply. She shows a serie of carpets, inspired by the richness in variation and form of different kinds of lichens that live on walls, trees and stone surfaces. 
  

the evolution of NOMAN's OSMAN

NOMAN shows the research of carpet OSMAN

Zeynep Altay 

 Lizan Freijsen

video of Kagan Ataseven

detail of 'Embrace', by Petrovsky & Ramone 

In between Van Loons artefacts are Zeynep Altay's embroideries

'Tulpen Vijfje' by Deniz Seyda Tunca

Today at Meesteropleiding COUPEUR: JONGHLABEL's project 'Jongh geleerd oud Gedaan, at work'

crochet handpiece 

The Master Tailor Institute in Amsterdam-West re-establishes quality tailoring in the Netherlands since  2011. During SALON/istanbul at The Master Tailor Institute the designers of JONGHLABEL and their co-workers demonstrated how they master the tequeniques of traditional handcrafts. The co-production project 'Jongh geleerd Oud gedaan at Work', women from different cultural backgrounds and from different parts of the city of Amsterdam make jewelry by hand, with a little help of JONGHLABEL, because the woman proof to be skilled and have great ideas. 


Just like the Master  Tailor Institute, JONGHLABEL aims to renew the interest for old handcraft techniques. JONGHLABEL, founded in 2010 by the two sisters Meis & Anne de Jongh, distinguish itself by producing  products and accessories by hand: it is not only the physical appearance of a product that is important, the accompanying story and production proces is equally significant. 
The expertise of JONGHLABEL focus on reviving old handcrafts by translating them into contemporary designs and seeks the ability to propagate traditional techniques with the help of industrial production. With the project Jongh Geleerd Oud Gedaan twelve participating women still know how to practice Dantel (Turkish handcraft technique), tatting, lace and crochet. By turning them into modern jewelry, JONGHLABEL hopes to renew people's interest in these beautiful old handcrafts. 

   

Meis de Jongh of Jonghlabel consults with one of the makers of the jewelry. Here the woman in blue shows her own design proposal for a ring with Meis. Meis tells they all have great ideas for new jewelry design and applications of the chochet. 

 

Crochet: in the center they place the yarns in between the neadles, who are pinned in image of a fish, and than you have to switch two of the sticks from left .. to right...etcetera. 

example of a broche and a collar

At opening day of SALON/istanbul they had a demonstration in the Frozen Fountain shop.