{"id":483742,"date":"2026-05-14T04:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/483742\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T04:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:52:10","slug":"iris-van-herpens-groundbreaking-work-presented-in-new-exhibit-at-brooklyn-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/483742\/","title":{"rendered":"Iris Van Herpen\u2019s Groundbreaking Work Presented in New Exhibit at Brooklyn Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn 2010, Iris van Herpen<\/a>, then only three years after establishing her eponymous couture brand, sent the first 3D-printed garment down the runway as part of her \u201cCrystallization\u201d collection. A top evoking the skeletal structure of a snake with its ivory-colored coils of 3D-printed polyamide, the piece was a collaboration with British architect Daniel Widrig.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was a big moment,\u201d says van Herpen, 41, as she contemplates the look on a form in the Brooklyn Museum galleries. \u201cAnd it was definitely a starting point for me to collaborate with architects on new techniques.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time, 3D printing was mostly the purview of architecture and engineers. Van Herpen was the first designer to utilize the technology for a wearable garment. More than 15 years later, she has continued to push the boundaries of material and technique, collaborating with architects, sculptors, chemists, multidisciplinary artists, bioengineers and astrophysicists. That evolution \u2014 and her many inspirations \u2014 is the subject of the mid-career retrospective, \u201cIris Van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,\u201d opening Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum. The show originated in 2023 at the Mus\u00e9e des Arts D\u00e9coratifs in Paris, which acquired the aforementioned 3D printed top in 2018, and has since traveled to Australia, Singapore and Rotterdam, Netherlands.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Iris<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cIris van Herpen<\/a>: Sculpting the Senses\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOn White Wall Studio\/Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Brooklyn Museum\u2019s iteration is organized by Matthew Yokobosky, the institution\u2019s senior curator of fashion<\/a> and material culture, with Imani Williford, curatorial assistant, photography, fashion<\/a> and material culture, and is augmented with new works drawn from the museum\u2019s collections in American, Asian, contemporary and feminist art as well as scientific artifacts and natural history specimens including coral, fossils and skeletons. Dutch composer and music producer Salvador Breed, van Herpen\u2019s life partner who also curates the music for her runway shows, composed the soundscape.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tVan Herpen\u2019s groundbreaking work fuses traditional craftsmanship with technological innovation, transforming fashion into a meditation on the complexity of science and nature in a rapidly evolving world. Organized around eleven themes, \u201cSculpting the Senses\u201d is an immersive exploration of van Herpen\u2019s boundless curiosity and eclectic interests, from mathematics, astronomy and neuroscience to marine biology, paleontology, mycology and mineralogy.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Brooklyn Museum exhibition features several new pieces from van Herpen, including the crimson pliss\u00e9 gown that she created for Anne Hathaway\u2019s pop star character in the film \u201cMother Mary\u201d and the algae dress from the designer\u2019s 2025 \u201cSympoiesis\u201d collection. A collaboration with biodesigner Chris Bellamy and researchers at the University of Amsterdam, the dress has the look of pillowy luminescent lace and is constructed from 125 million living algae, which emit light in response to movement. It was grown in seawater baths over several months and is on view in an environmentally controlled chamber.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI take a lot of inspiration from nature, but this was really a next step where it was about collaborating with nature,\u201d van Herpen explains.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe exhibition contains many of the pieces worn by van Herpen\u2019s celebrity clients including multiple looks worn by Lady Gaga, the iconic snake dress worn by Bj\u00f6rk at the 2012 Roskilde Festival in Denmark and the Heliosphere dress, a custom look for Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles-Carter\u2019s 2023 \u201cRenaissance\u201d tour performances in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso on view is the first iteration of van Herpen\u2019s bubble dress, from 2016\u2019s \u201cSeijaku\u201d collection. A collaboration with Tokyo-based studio A.A. Murakami, the dress features 15,000 hand-formed iridescent glass bubbles, each hand-adjusted and individually bonded in place with UV light. (Olympian Eileen Gu wore a custom version of the bubble dress to this year\u2019s Met Gala.) The dress is meant to float on the body with the bubbles evoking the airy ballet of soap bubbles.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Iris<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cIris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOn White Wall Studio\/Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you look at our atoms, they\u2019re 99.9 percent empty space,\u201d van Herpen says. \u201cI\u2019m fascinated by the atomic reality of our bodies; scientists give such an interesting perspective on who we are. I think art is doing the same thing, and that\u2019s why I\u2019m bringing art and science and philosophy all together into my work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPioneering scientific texts are on display throughout the exhibition, including lithographs from German zoologist Ernst Haeckel\u2019s 1904 masterpiece \u201cArt Forms of Nature\u201d and several hand-drawn renderings of the brain by Santiago Ram\u00f3n y Cajal. Considered the father of modern neuroscience, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1906. The Haeckel drawings are on loan from the American Museum of Natural History, as are many physical specimens, including sea corals and several dinosaur fossils; there is a baby Protoceratops, dating from 80 million years ago, and a Pellecrinus (commonly known as a Sea Lily) preserved in limestone from 345 million years ago.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore contemporary ephemera include Chinese artist Ren Ri\u2019s honey bee sculpture \u201cYuansu Series II.\u201d The bees constructed their hive along hexagonal structures placed inside a translucent box. \u201cI have been beekeeping myself since a year, and it\u2019s really fascinating to see how some creatures in nature are really like architects themselves,\u201d van Herpen says. \u201cThey are such good sculptors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Iris<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cIris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOn White Wall Studio\/Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum<\/p>\n

\n\tThe piece is shown next to van Herpen\u2019s honeycombed Radiography dress (2014\u2019s \u201cMagnetic Motion\u201d collection), a collaboration with Canadian architect Philip Beesley made of laser-cut and heat-molded PETG, which is a 3D-printing thermoplastic.<\/p>\n

\n\tA sculpture of Asian Fawn Tarantula webs inside 20 stacked acrylic boxes, which were created by ecologic Studio, is flanked by pieces that look as if they were indeed spun by spiders, including the Argiope Dress from the 2016 \u201cLucid\u201d collection. Inspired by the orb webs of the genus Argiope, the dress is constructed of 3D-printed ABS polyurethane, which is hand-sewn onto black silk, seemingly encasing the body in a cocoon of delicate webbing.<\/p>\n

\n\tVan Herpen\u2019s collaborations with the late artist and former NASA engineer Kim Keever \u2014 whose large-scale photographs of liquid clouds of color were an inspiration for her 2019 \u201cShift Souls\u201d collection \u2014 is augmented by Rob Wynne\u2019s enormous glass installation sculpture \u201cExtra Life,\u201d which in this context, conjures the swirl of the Milky Way. A late 19th-century Polynesian tiputa (poncho) crafted from barkcloth and featuring geometric Niuean pattering, is shown among looks that conjure the underground root systems of plants, including the Genesis dress from 2022\u2019s \u201cMeta Morphism\u201d collection, an intricately draped column gown made from banana leaves. Toni Costa\u2019s opt art piece \u201cVisual Dynamics\u201d is perfectly compatible with the illusory effect of van Herpen\u2019s Data Dust Kimono Dress from 2018\u2019s \u201cLudi Naturae\u201d collection. An untitled Mylar sculpture by American artist Tara Donovan that evokes metallic mushroom spores is juxtaposed with van Herpen\u2019s Syntopia dress from 2018\u2019s \u201cSyntopia\u201d collection, which is constructed of silk organza, laser cut crepe, Mylar and stainless steel.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey are among the 15 works from the museum\u2019s permanent collection. The museum also explores van Herpen\u2019s creative process with a recreation of her atelier in the fifth-floor rotunda where videos of the construction of the garments are projected onto giant spools of fabric extending from dress forms to the rotunda\u2019s ceiling.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we started the process, Iris came and spent a whole day with us in the storerooms,\u201d Yokobosky recalls. \u201cBefore Iris arrived, I had images in my head of pieces in the collection. And then before I even sent them to her, she had gone and done her own research. So I think we have these beautiful moments of synergy between our collection and Iris work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIris Van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses\u201d runs through Dec. 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2010, Iris van Herpen, then only three years after establishing her eponymous couture brand, sent the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,596,19,17,47848],"class_list":{"0":"post-483742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-fashion","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-iris-van-herpen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116571141290063995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}