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Trousers (#1, #2)
2011
Steel, varnish, concrete, tracksuit pants
110 x 85 x 40 cm each


TROUSERS (#5)
2012
Steel, varnish, concrete, tracksuit pants
120 x 105 x 40 cm


TROUSERS (#6)
2012
Steel, varnish, concrete, tracksuit pants
165 x 80 x 40 cm


Trousers (#3)
2011
Steel, varnish, concrete, tracksuit pants
154 x 70 x 40 cm


TROUSERS (#4)
2012
Steel, varnish, concrete, tracksuit pants
245 x 40 x 40 cm


TROUSERS (#7)
2012
Steel, varnish, concrete, tracksuit pants
175 x 100 x 40 cm

With the sculpture Trousers (2011), abstract geometrical patterns and shapes encounter constructivist structures. With Trousers, two creased pairs of tracksuit trousers designed in purple-green-white-black patterns are each hung over white, triangular frames which are flattened downwards and at first sight seem to resemble gym machines. The tracksuit trousers, their colours contrasting the frames, evade their potential utility value. The choice of colours suggests references to studies on abstract painting, suprematistic compositions or modernistic designs as well as to the functional aesthetics of sports equipment or to abstracting national emblems to formations of stripes. Here customs of the world of fashion, questions of street style, of look, of outfit, defining style as abstracting aesthetics and proclaiming a kind of “everybody’s fashion” beyond the dictates of fashion groups refer to the social principle of fashion. Structurally, the world of art comes ever more closer to the world of fashion, as it becomes obvious by the celebrity principle of bienniales or gallery weekends. Here, choosing tracksuit trousers confront the family relations between fashion industry and the eld of art as well as democratizing, which has repeatedly been mentioned in this context, with street trends. The social principle interfering with our lives by way of fashion has the potential to indicate social changes in advance and to influence individuality policies, as the sociologist Fréderic Monneyron explains. Kay Walkowiak confronts the individualizing effect of fashion with another effect, the desire to increasedly including specific ways of life into the observation of art as well as the direct confrontation with obviously staged aspects. The setting works against the dictates of fashion industry by the desire of elegant discplining as it is expressed by fashion, at the same time supplying the genre of sculpturing with a neurotic/psychotic sub-text. Formal-aesthetically, the strict structure leads to iconization, and by combining the space-producing frame and the tracksuit trousers a kind of stylization is produced, the thus produced distance and aura giving the setting the nature of an altar. By hanging the trousers over frames Kay Walkowiak emphasizes their nature of being consumption fetishes, in an altar-like way the unique sculptural composition presents them as strange trophies, as accessories of a superhero. Precisely the thus produced “in between situation” creates tension with the observer, at the same time provoking some funky swing. Here, the ephemeral is placed next to the solid. Kay Walkowiak’s formal vocabulary shows references to minimal art, by connecting anlytical, phenomenological and physical ways of experiencing space. Kay Walkowiak confronts the minimalists’ strict non-objectivity, their emotionlessness and alientation of objects with a structure of desire which does not meet expectations. Just as with the minimalists, also with Kay Walkowiak’s works the colourfulness of the material is decoded and recoded.



Text: Ursula-Maria Probst
Photos: Studio Kay Walkowiak