Hundreds of people will gather Friday evening, September 20, at the Amsterdam Fotomuseum (Foam) on the Keizersgracht to view ‘Phosphor: Art & Fashion’, the retrospective exhibition of Dutch artist Viviane Sassen. FashionUnited will be present at the well-attended opening night.
Sassen has built an impressive career over the years, working for renowned brands such as Gucci and Miu Miu. Her collaboration with these fashion houses, combined with her unique artistic vision that transcends borders, makes her work particularly relevant.
‘Phosphor: Art & Fashion’ fills nine rooms. That’s almost the entire Foam building. And rightly so. Sassen’s retrospective gives the visitor a glimpse into the life of a woman who lived life on her own terms for more than thirty years, guided by her intuition and creative impulse, unafraid to explore the depths of culture and art.
Viviane Sassen ‘Phosphor Art & Fashion’ in Foam
Sassen lived in Africa for many years. The first room is filled with the work she made there. The series ‘Flamboya’ contains more than fifty photos taken in South Africa, Kenya and Zambia. The models are the inhabitants of the country itself, some are captured spontaneously and some performatively.
In an interview with the cultural platform Nowness, Sassen says that many elements, such as shadow, are different in Africa than in the West. The artist explores these differences in the series ‘Flamboya’. She brings up complex themes, such as death, sexuality and desire. The models wear both traditional African clothing and Western clothing.
Sassen seems to have a connection with the people she photographs. The people in her photos often stand in a calm pose, which gives the images a warm appearance. In addition, she uses saturated colors, which further enhances that warm feeling.
In a room on the first floor, Sassen’s work during her student days in the Netherlands is on display. This section shows work from the period 1989-2001. This work mainly consists of photographs, collages and Sassen’s first self-portraits. In conjunction with her later work, this space offers an important insight into the origins and evolution of Sassen’s visual language. The artist does not shy away from cultural taboos.
Previous interviews with Nowness, among others, show that Sassen, despite her fashion campaigns for major brands such as Gucci and Miu Miu, does not want to be seen as a fashion photographer. Her work challenges the traditional fashion system several times. On the left side of the room is a pink sculpture that was made for Kutt magazine. This sculpture is a parody of Sassen’s own Miu Miu fashion campaign from the previous season.
Sassen is not a fan of the ‘perfect picture’. Her work not only challenges the traditional fashion system, but also shows that she has a different approach than typical fashion photography. This is evident in her collage series, which uses the surrealist ‘exquisite corpse’ technique. In this technique, body parts are connected in different ways, creating a total image of an alternative being.
In a room on the second floor, a monographic video of a moving water surface is shown. A second video work shows the reflection of the sky and the hypnotic play of light of thousands of lights in the sea. The series ‘Retinas’ from 2024 is a first at Foam and explores the boundaries between reality and abstraction.
After exploring Sassen’s oeuvre, visitors can purchase the photo book and T-shirts of the same name. The book states, among other things, that Sassen primarily follows her own intuition and creative impulse. For more than thirty years. The T-shirts contain collages by Sassen and were specially made for the retrospective exhibition in collaboration with the Amsterdam fashion brand Bonne.
‘Phosphor: Art & Fashion’ can be seen at the Photography Museum Foam in Amsterdam until January 12, 2025.
Source: fashionunited.nl
