「COMMUNS 回顾展 - COMMUNS PLACE」

Clothing is a silent witness of history. It conceals the body and belongs to the ethnic group; it broadens its horizons and learns from it. COMMUNS believes that every piece of dusty cloth, every piece of recycled clothing, has its own transcendentalism. Through the flowing experience of walking, they convey the perception and intuition of the object itself, and lead people to the history and distance beyond the sight.

Real understanding comes from down-to-earth measurement. Starting from Paris, COMMUNS and its designer SAI

Based on observations and reflections on the post-colonial era of France and world culture, he walks with the eyes of nomads and picks up the survival experience passed down in different time and space. The nomadic culture, nomadic peoples, the original culture carried by the land and human nature, as well as the poetic and mysterious theatrical atmosphere in the process of fusion with human civilization, continue to inspire the design inspiration of COMMUNS "audiovisual narrative sense".

From France, Mongolia, Senegal, Ukraine, to Mexico as a contemporary secret, today, COMMUNS is holding the retrospective exhibition COMMUNS PLACE of the brand's 2021 spring/summer and autumn/winter series in China (Beijing Common Place) for the first time, exhibiting the 2021 spring/summer "Shady Village" ”Series of visual images, 2021 autumn and winter “Chaman Routier” series of clothing. The exhibition is based on materials such as fashion, images, installations, etc., and writes a story-telling scroll. The ancient legends chanted from the "domain of the other" are chanting in the exhibition space. The juxtaposition of the common elements of humans and tribes, the dislocation of fantasy, and the integration of the myths and legends of the classical era into modern urban life, COMMUNS tries to present a mysterious and romantic interactive wonderland derived from different cultural matrices.

When a gust of wind wrinkled the white crocheted curtains in the residential houses of a remote Senegal village, people had not predicted that this gust of wind would blow the distant and dusty folk aesthetics and anecdotes on this land to another corner of the planet. , Became the scenery in the eyes of another crowd. The exhibition space of COMMUNS PLACE is such a landscape. The layers and details buried in the furnishings by stylists Pierre Fillaire and SAI from France reveal the unique vitality of clothes as the main body of storytelling. Sawdust and crop plant installations isolate the exhibition space from the surrounding contemporary atmosphere. Warm wildflowers, fluffy branches, and even dry soil, these relaxing natural landscape elements solidify into a psychedelic dislocation of geography and time and space. Silver knives, forks and marching bags are stacked on the loose mound, crocheted cloth and handmade carpets are stacked on top of each other, as if they are in a stage scene of an interlude play, or on a certain old yellowed photo The village lunch break that appears. The gap between the clothing and the clothes hanger in the series is filled with cotton, and shaman and religious dress are interspersed with each other. The shape resembling a scarecrow creates a scene of leisure during the lunch break. It seems that there is no intervention of "human", but the polishing effect of the role of "human" is leaked everywhere.

The process of migration itself has enough natural beauty. In the 2021 spring/summer and autumn/winter series, COMMUNS goes through Ukraine and Mexico respectively, and is named "Shady Village" and "Charman Routier". The unfamiliar land and humanistic portraits are intertwined, projecting the same tacit understanding in the design. Collecting vintage fabrics and antique decorations from all over the world, relying on purely artificial deconstruction and splicing, and the strict framework of the aesthetic foundation of classic European and American tooling, write COMMUNS's winding and poetic clothing trend. Antique fabrics seem to have their own obsessions. They are spliced ​​to form a new fabric system exclusive to COMMUNS. A sense of layering awaits the audience's reading spontaneously: the butcher’s coated apron is matched with the fishing net; the tie achieved on the Mongolian cashmere fabric Dyeing gives rise to a natural fading and hazy taste; the large hanging Indian embroidered cotton cloth is a coincidence that reminds one of the traditional Chinese embroidery stitches-seed embroidery; embroidery and satin curtains from Senegal The cloth is disassembled and placed in various parts of different items, dotted to piece together the continuity and surprise of the whole scroll.

Due to the free atmosphere of the exhibition space, the hanging clothes show the exquisiteness and superiority of the publishing style to the greatest extent. The classic European and American tooling tailoring techniques that can be followed in the tailoring are borrowed and refurbished in various pictographic ways. After the vintage military uniform from the continental United States spread to France, it was re-carved through French aesthetics and became a kind of eclecticism in the post-military era. One of the German military and police coats has chic and vertical lines, like a straight military officer, which reminds people of "Has Paris Burned?" "In this non-fictional work, the screen-like depiction and interpretation of the war years is like a storyboard.

Viewing COMMUNS requires the audience to mobilize a certain sense of intelligence, humor, and concentration. Although in different series, the captured regional cultures are not the same, but the very continuous style strung together seemingly bizarre but very poetic story lines. Just as every color has its own temperament, so does every piece of fabric. The naked fabric on the outside seems to be the main body of the clothes, but when you turn it inside, the fabrics of different textures and temperaments remind you unexpectedly. The rich and surprising content will always stay and observe the subtleties of you. Place.

The details that are worth looking at again and again come from the persistence of technology that has not yet been commercialized in large quantities and assembly lines. Due to the unique scarcity of antique fabrics, it is determined that most of the COMMUNS series items are precious few outside the "Popular Guide". The collection process of orphaned fabrics is cumbersome, the meticulous degree of hand stitching, and the self-developed fabric printing and dyeing process fixed the construction period of each piece of clothing within a week or even longer. Located in Paris, this "worldwide" studio is always busy quietly and orderly in order to awaken more precious fabrics and moving stories.

Experience the world, pay attention to the geography, travel to the depths of the land, and cruise to the vortex of the ocean. Through the experiment of recreating clothes, COMMUNS conveys its worldview in an orderly manner: it can tell the stories and experiences of personal experience one by one. Keep it intact, this is the most worthy thing to grasp in today's unpredictable environment.


                                                               Text: Wang Chuyu
                                                                       Photography: Li Entong

Exhibition address: Common Place, No. 98, West District, Commercial Street, Gaoliying Town, Shunyi, Beijing

Exhibition time: 07.12.21-31.12.21

10:00 AM to 10:00 PM (reservation required after 6 pm)