THE SHOW THAT NEVER HAPPEND

CHAPTER I

Willy Vanderperre (b. 1971, Belgium) ‘Prada evolves and changes every season; this season, the part we were shooting and filming felt like an honest collection. Stripped from fashion ideas, which turns that idea into fashion again. It also felt introspective and slightly schizophrenic. A look into the past with the future ahead. I hope that the audience feels that in the movie, a distilled pure and honest presentation of the collection.’

CHAPTER II

Juergen Teller (b. 1964, Germany) ‘It was an honour to be asked to photograph and film Miuccia‘s last collection. I thought the men and women looked beautiful, elegant and modern. I enjoyed looking at Miuccia‘s vision and trying to make sense of it as honest and direct as possible.’

CHAPTER III

Joanna Piotrowska (b. 1985, Poland) ‘Gesture and physicality are an essential non-verbal form of communication and play a big role in the conceptual and compositional aspects of my work. The finger snap, is a quick and subtle yet attention-demanding action. It is also used to indicate approval or to maintain rhythm. I thought that this short could be an interesting space to work with the snap as a recurring motif that marks the movements and refocuses the viewer’s attention to each new look.’

CHAPTER IV

Martine Syms (b. 1988, USA) ‘The video is a collage of multiple formats and features iterative, repetitive movements intercut with beautiful people staring at images of themselves on monitors and screens in Milan and in my studio in Los Angeles. Since the collection pieces have a 60s feeling to them, I tried to include several references to cinema culture and surveillance/sousveillance from that time period to the present. I'm inspired by the way screens have come to make & unmake us, and what it means to be living, breathing, moving fleshy things in a world full of them.’

CHAPTER V

Terence Nance (b. 1982, USA) ‘The film that came through was born of speed and play, I have no words through which to decode what the meaning is and was and will be but it may be about ‘time’ - and keeping your organs in that vessel we call a body while it contorts itself to love each second as it goes bye bye.’

#PradaSS21
#PradaMultipleViews

ARTISTS’ BIOS

Terence Nance

Terence Nance was born in Dallas, Texas in what was then referred to as the State-Thomas community. Nance’s first feature film, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically soon after. The film featured music from Flying Lotus and was Co-Executive Produced by Jay-Z and dream hampton. In the summer of 2018, Terence’s Peabody award-winning television series Random Acts of Flyness debuted on HBO to great critical acclaim, and was renewed for a second season by the network. The New York Times hailed the show as “hypnotic, transporting and uncategorizable”. In the fall of 2018, it was announced that Nance was tapped to write and direct Space Jam 2, starring Lebron James. Terence has been active making music for a decade scoring all of his own films and TV series and working with several groundbreaking musicians in the process. Featured collaborators on his recently released THINGS I NEVER HAD EP are the psychedelic chanteur Nick Hakim, the incomparable harpist Brandee Younger, and of course the space gospel minister Nelson Bandela. Additional film work includes “Swimming in Your Skin Again” and “Univitillen”. Nance premiered a performance piece, 18 Black Boys Ages 1-18 Who Have Arrived at the Singularity and are Thus Spiritual Machines at Sundance. Nance is currently at work on healing up and interdimensionality. Debut album coming soon.

Joanna Piotrowska

Joanna Piotrowska, born 1985, lives and works between London (UK) and Warsaw (PL). Her practice focuses on familial structures and their relationship to the wider systems—including politics, economics, social, and cultural life. She explores the past and the present, showing all the inequalities of power and psychological drama, and translating the gestures and everyday intimate behaviours into new scenarios. The artist uses her surroundings to show the anxiety and psychological tension of the domestic space—rather as a document of a performance than a documentary image. Recent solo shows include 2019 Stable Vices, Kunsthalle Basel, All our false devices, Tate Britain, London, (UK) and Yorkshire Sculpture International, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds (UK). Recent group shows include: 2019;Tell me about tomorrow, NS-Dokumentationszentrum München, Munich, (DE) Coimbra Biennial of Contemporary Art Coimbra, (PT) Jen Liu, Joanna Piotrowska, Jesse Wine, Simone Subal, New York, (USA), 2018; Antarctica, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (AT); Being. New Photography, MoMA, New York (US); 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Berlin (DE); ROOM, Warwick Art Center, Warwick (UK); Off -Biennale, Budapest (HU). Joanna Piotrowska is represented by Southard Reid, London and Thomas Zander, Cologne. In 2014 she published her first monograph book Frowst by MACK Books, London; in 2017 Frantic by Humboldt Books, Milan (IT).

Martine Syms

Martine Syms is an artist who has earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humor, and social commentary. She has shown extensively including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and ICA London. She is in a band called Aunt Sister and hosts CCartalkLA, a monthly radio show on NTS. She also runs Dominica, a publishing imprint for artist books.

Juergen Teller

Juergen Teller, born in Erlangen, Germany, in 1964, studied at the Bayerische Staatslenhranstalt für Photographie in Munich 1984-1986. Right after the graduation, he moved to London where he still lives and works. For over 30 years, Teller has worked with leading fashion brands. His works have been published in influential fashion, art and culture publications and have been the subject of solo exhibitions including those at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, Garage museum in Moscow, Bundeskunstalle in Bonn, Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague and Fotomuseum in Winterthur. In 2003, Teller won the prestigious Citibank Photography Prize. From 2014 to 2019, he held a professorship at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg. In the span of his career, Teller has published over 40 books.

Willy Vanderperre

Born and raised in Belgium, Willy Vanderperre is a photographer and filmmaker occupying a highly influential role in the fashion industry. Based in Antwerp, the city that became his home when he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Antwerp) to study fashion, he made the switch to photography while still at the college. Seeing photography as a more direct way to express his impulses in fashion, nevertheless, his background in design has given him both an intuitive feel for clothing and an extensive knowledge of the design process. Today, he produces both influential and highly regarded fashion editorial shoots and advertising campaigns each season. Campaign highlights include Calvin Klein, Christian Dior, Dior Homme, Jil Sander, Prada and Raf Simons. He is a featured editorial contributor to a host of high-profile magazines including Another, Another Man, Document, Dust, Love, Vogue Hommes International and W Magazine. In recent years, other projects beyond the bounds of fashion, immersed him in the worlds of contemporary dance-theatre, the instantaneous nature of Instagram, and extended narrative filmmaking. For his 2014 book The Power of Theatrical Madness II, Vanderperre spent a prolonged period of time working with and documenting Jan Fabre’s company during the revival of the dance-theatre production The Power of Theatrical Madness in 2012. Late 2015 saw the publication of 635, a book that records each of the photographer’s Instagram posts up until the point of the publication’s printing. January 2016 witnessed the premiere of Willy Vanderperre’s film Naked Heartland at London’s ICA, marking his debut as a fully-fledged film director. The book Naked Heartland is a concentration on stills from the film. It too highlights Vanderperre’s preoccupations with youth, isolation and the redemptive power of pop culture; a refrain that echoes throughout Willy Vanderperre’s career and images. 2018 was the launch of the fanzines, a series of studies dedicated to the models he has a long lasting relationship with. 2019 brought the conclusion of the Instagram book with the launch of 1500 and the added 485 Remixed fanzine, that combined re-worked images of him posted on Instagram.