University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria

AXEL BERNER-EYDE

CWK:DERBY, M.P.FORD, LALIQUE

This collection has been built upon details from botanical drawings and Egyptian pamphlets along with the work of goldsmith, de Bry and glass blower, Lalique. These have been blended through appropriations of 20th century couture techniques and the fabric development of Jacob Schlaepfer.

The result has a totemic quality. It is the product of the mind of a girl who is seeing but not looking for an explanation of what she is seeing; she sends herself to imagined scenes while ignoring the rooted reality of her stimuli. She perceives herself to be a sort of madonna in a foreign place but actually just plays in a backyard, on the dank, treacherous boulevards, or in her aunts closet wrapped in treasure.  Her sexuality and spirituality are not anchored to any specific experience but merely hinted at or played with through a flowing and bizarre archeology of disparate images, stories, and mystical clues gathered in her travels. She draws on memories from free internet at the library, magazines at the hairdressers, and those stylized late-night phone sex advertisements on T.V. when her mom is passed out next to her, cigarette fading out. She is bold beyond her years, but only in the innocent act of gathering images in her mind.