Performance: The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Presents Fashion Designer Henrik Vibskov in His First U.S. Residency

CHICAGO—The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), a global leader in art and design education, presents Copenhagen-based fashion designer Henrik Vibskov in his first artist residency in the United States. Through a collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) and the IN>TIME performance festival, Vibskov will install as part of the residency “Henrik Vibskov : 0000 : State on State,” a multimedia exhibition including fashion, film and a massive paper installation at SAIC’s Sullivan Galleries, on view from Feb. 7 through 14, 2019. 

For the exhibition “Henrik Vibskov : 0000 : State on State,” Vibskov presents his most current experiments in clothing and performance. He will show four voluminous and sculptural costumes made out of printed-paper textile that were created for a video-performance he is shooting in his studio for the exhibition; and he will construct a massive paper installation over three days on site with SAIC students.

In conjunction with “Henrik Vibskov : 0000 : State on State,” SAIC presents a companion exhibition in the Sullivan Galleries featuring short dance films by Norwegian choreographer Ingri Fiksdal, including “STATE,” and an installation by fashion designer Fredrik Floen, who also has collaborated with Fiksdal. Floen, who serves as Sullivan Galleries’ artist-in-residence from January 21 to February 13, is using the natural light of SAIC’s galleries to incorporate and absorb the highly reflective power of the sequined works he created for Fiksdal’s performance “Diorama.” In the same room, Fiksdal, dancers and students from SAIC will rehearse for the live performance and US premier of “Diorama.”

“As one of today’s most dynamic artists, Henrik Vibskov seamlessly breaks down the boundaries between artistic disciplines to create work that blurs fantasy and reality and transforms runways and stages in addition to creating larger-than-life sculptures and producing genre-bending music and videos,” said Trevor Martin, SAIC’s executive director of exhibitions. “We are honored to host Henrik, his collaborator Ingri Fiksdal and fashion designer Frederic Floen to bring programming and performances which echo the interdisciplinary ethos of SAIC.”

SAIC is partnering with the MCA to bring “Diorama” to Chicago’s Anish Kapoor “Cloud Gate” sculpture Feb. 11–13, 2019, 4:30 p.m.–5:10 p.m., timed to the setting of the winter sun. Also part of Vibskov’s residency are a lecture by the artist in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Rubloff Auditorium, 230 S. Columbus Drive, on Wednesday, Feb. 6, at 6 p.m., and an in-gallery reception in the Sullivan Galleries on Thursday, Feb. 7, from 5–7 p.m. preceding the U.S. premiere of “State” by Ingri Fiksdal, for which he created costumes, on the MCA stage.  Vibskov’s residency, exhibition and public lecture at SAIC are made possible through the generous support of the Consulate General of Denmark in New York, the Danish Arts in Chicago campaign, and the SAIC Fashion Council. 

SAIC’s Sullivan Galleries have 32,000-square-feet of exhibition space and feature exhibitions, performances, lectures and screenings by students, faculty and guest artists that are free and open to the public Mondays–Saturdays, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

Summary of public events:

Jan. 26–Feb. 8
Frederik Floen gallery installation
Reception:  January 25, 7–9 p.m.
SAIC Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St, 7th floor
Free and open to the public

Thursday, Jan. 31, noon
Frederik Floen artist’s talk
SAIC Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St., 7th floor
Free and open to the public

Wednesday, Feb. 6, 6 p.m.
Henrik Vibskov Lecture
The Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium, 230 S. Columbus Dr.
Free and open to the public

Thursday, Feb. 7, 5–7 p.m.
Gallery reception and artists’ remarks by Henrik Vibskov and Frederik Floen
SAIC Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St., 7th floor
Free and open to the public

Feb. 7–14
“Henrik Vibskov : 0000 : State on State” gallery installation
SAIC Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St., 7th floor
Free and open to the public

Feb. 11–13, 4:30–5:10 p.m. each day
“Diorama” performance
At Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate in Millennium Park
Free and open to the public. Park bench seating is available for the first 80 attendees.

Wednesday, Feb. 13, noon
Ingri Fiksdal artist’s talk
SAIC Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St., 7th floor
Free and open to the public

Henrik Vibskov
Henrik Vibskov has produced more than 30 men’s and women’s fashion collections since he graduated from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, in 2001. He is the only Scandinavian designer on the official show schedule of the Paris Men’s Fashion Week. Vibskov has exhibited at the Museum of Art and Design, New York; Art Cologne, Germany; MoMA PS1, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and the Textile Museum, Washington, DC, among other notable institutions. He has produced several large-scale solo exhibitions including at TEMPO Documentary Film festival in Stockholm; Daelim Museum, Seoul; “Neck Plus Ultra” at Galeries Lafayette, Paris and Gammel Strand, Copenhagen; and a major retrospective at Design Museum Helsinki in Finland. Prizes include Cologne Thrumber Award, 2017 and the 2011 Söderberg Prize, the highest design prize in the world. Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark awarded Vibskov the Thorvald Bindesbøll Medal in 2016.

Ingri Fiksdal
Ingri Fiksdal was a research fellow at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She investigates choreography as a collective and affective event, grounded in a belief that art is a motor for change and something “utterly useless” as opposed to things that have a given or known purpose. Fiksdal’s collaborative creative process places equal emphasis on music, sound, light design, scenography, costume, and dance/choreography. Her awards include the Natt & Dag Award for Night Tripper, the Norwegian Critics’ Association Dance Award for HOODS, and a Hedda Award nomination for Cosmic Body, which made its North American premiere on the MCA Stage in 2016. She tours throughout Norway and has been presented at brut Wien, Vienna; Kampnagel, Hamburg; Harare International Festival of the Arts, Zimbabwe; the Homo Novus festival, Lithuania; In Between Time, Great Britain; the ANTI festival, Finland; and the Armory Show, New York.

Frederik Floen
Fredrik Floen (1988) is a Norwegian costume and stage designer based in Oslo. Floen graduated from Oslo Academy of the Arts in spring 2017, with an MA in Fashion and Costume Design. His work is centered around costume practice as an independent artist in a theatrical aesthetic in different collaborations and contexts.  He has worked as an assistant for the theatre company Vinge/Müller in Volksbühne, Berlin. Together with stage director Marie Nikazm Bakken, he has staged the early historic (and not so good) plays of Ibsen in Sweden and Norway.

Floen's latest work, "Mrs Inger to Osteraat" was co-created with Bakken and presented at Otta Kulturhus in Oslo and the Turteatern in Stockholm, and is a "horror piece without social relevance" based on the historical figure and Henrik Ibsen's eponymous text that explores the aesthetic variants of the High Middle Ages in Norway mixed with popular references.  With Bakken, Floen also created “Vikings of Helgeland” by Ibsen in Stockholm, as a Netflix inspired performance series of 12 shows, with special episodes such as Ocean overture, Christmas edition and Greek tragedy, (sunrise to sunset).  Floen was invited by the Danish collective Hotel ProForma to design costumes for the world premiere of “Vespertine,” an opera based on Björks pop-album with the same name in Mannheim, Germany; and with choreographer Ingri Fiksdal, he created Diorama, a series of site specific sparkling view performances. 

About the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
For more than 150 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been a leader in educating the world’s most influential artists, designers​, and scholars. Located in downtown Chicago with a fine arts graduate program consistently ranking among the top programs in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, SAIC provides an interdisciplinary approach to art and design as well as world-class resources, including the Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries​, and state-of-the-art facilities. SAIC’s undergraduate, graduate​, and post-baccalaureate students have the freedom to take risks and create the bold ideas that transform Chicago and the world—as seen through notable alumni and faculty such as Michelle Grabner, David Sedaris, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Hunt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cynthia Rowley, Nick Cave, Jeff Koons, and LeRoy Neiman.