HELMUT LANG

Born Peter Scepka on March 10, 1956, in Vienna, Lang had been involved in the arts since his youth and opened his first boutique, Bou Bou Lang, in Vienna at the age of 23. As part of an exhibition in Vienna, he presented his first collection at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1986 and founded his fashion label under the name Helmut Lang. Over the next two decades, he gained worldwide recognition as a fashion designer. From 1993 to 1996, Lang taught at the fashion class of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He moved to New York in early 1998. In 2000, he became the first non-American fashion designer to be accepted into the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CDFA). In 2005, he retired from the fashion world to devote himself entirely to art. Helmut Lang had his first solo exhibition as a sculptor in 2008 at the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover. Throughout these years, he remained in constant contact with the art world and collaborated with Jenny Holzer and Louise Bourgeois, among others.

Lang's starting point is the material itself. His most recent works straddle the boundary between abstraction and figuration, presenting an exploration of space beyond the limitations of the human body in sculptures, reliefs, assemblage paintings, and collages. His fashion designs can be found in leading museum collections worldwide, including the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Kyoto Costume Institute (Japan), the MAK Museum of Applied Arts (Vienna), and the Musée de la Mode et du Textile (Paris).

Awards (Selection)
2009 Austrian Decoration of Honour for Science and Art
2004 Fashion Group International’s The Imagineers of Our Time Award
2000 CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year
1996 CFDA Best International Designer of the Year

Solo exhibitions (Selection)
2019 Smile. McKay, East Hampton
2018 Untiteld (Twenty-Two). LongHouse Reserve, East Hampton
2017 Various Conditions. Sammlung Friedrichshof, Burgenland; Stadtraum Wien
2017 New Work. Sperone Westwater, New York
2016 BURRY. Dallas Contemporary, Dallas
2015 Helmut Lang. Sperone Westwater, New York
2012 Sculptures. Mark Fletcher 24 Washington Square North, New York
2012 Wall Reliefs. Mark Fletcher 23 Beekman Place, New York
2011 Make It Hard. The Fireplace Project, East Hampton
2009 Front Row. Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens
2008 alles gleich schwer. Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover
2008 Archive. 032c Museum Store, Berlin
2007 Next Ever After. The Journal Gallery, New York
1986–2004 Helmut Lang: Séance de Travail. Paris, New York, online, Paris 

Group exhibitions (Selection)
2018 Destefashioncollection 1 to 8. The Bass, Miami Beach
2018 Fetish. The Club, Tokyo
2017 Wormwood. Ellis King Gallery, Dublin
2017 The Carpet Kartell. Tanja Grunert Gallery, New York
2015 Space and Matter. Sperone Westwater, New York
2015 Vienna for Art’s Sake! Winterpalais Belvedere, Vienna
2013 The System of Objects. Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens
2012 Helmut Lang/Banks Violette/Dan Colen, Mark Fletcher, New York
2011 Commercial Break. Venice Biennale
2011 Austria Davaj! Muar, Moskau
2010 Not in Fashion. Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt
2009 Industrial Light Magic. Goethe Institute, New York
1998 Louise Bourgeois/Jenny Holzer/Helmut Lang, Kunsthalle Vienna
1997 Art/Fashion. Guggenheim SOHO, New York
1996 I smell you on my clothes. Florence Biennale

http://www.h-la. ng.studio