The Fourth Sex: Adolescent Extremes
9 January – 9 February 2003
Despite the present trend for corroboration between fashion and art, few examples have been as believable as the exhibition The Fourth Sex: Adolescent Extremes, in spite of its somewhat pretentious title. The show was initiated by Florence’s annual men’s fashion trade fair, Pitti Uomo, but this somewhat banal commercial element has done nothing to undermine its integrity. The exhibition’s curator, Francesco Bonami, who is also curating this year’s Venice Biennale, teamed up with Belgian fashion designer Raf Simons to explore youth’s private angst and apathy vis à vis approaching adulthood.
The exhibition was held in the city’s
former train station, where a regiment of specially constructed cubes
provided a dramatic labyrinthine setting. Black on the outside with white
interiors, they formed a small cityscape where works by prominent artists
mixed with magazine editorials, video commercials and film stills.
This elegant but neutral setting formed a perfect contrast to the volatile
subject matter: youth’s rite of passage from puberty into adulthood,
focusing specifically on that complex cocktail of creative and destructive
forces unleashed by all those pubescent hormones. Opting for the diversity
of adolescence and making the search for identity (hence fashion) the
essence of the show, Bonami and Simons concentrated on the private
experience rather than political expression. Few student uproars but plenty
of sexual insecurity and bravura. From almost dry taxonomical observations,
like the rise of awkward self-consciousness in Rineke Dijkstra’s
photo-sequence of a young girl growing up in a refugee situation in the
Netherlands (Almerisa, 1994 – 2002), to photographers Parsons & Hay’s
registration of misguided anger from a virile youth towards the pinnacle of
bourgeois romance (Fuck You Sunset, 2000), all works were chosen for their
display of, often clumsily suppressed, bouts of energy, confusion and
emotional denial. Surprising were the number of sculptures, most notably
Bjarne Melgaard’s piece about frustrated youth’s flirtation with suicide
(Untitled, 2001).
And this is where the show gained credibility. At no point did it become the advocate of fashion’s fascination with the subject, that ultimate sales tool, especially where nostalgically lingering adults are concerned. Instead, it focused on the source of fashion’s inspiration; the confusing road towards an allegedly adult, personal identity.
Siebe Tettero