A unique collaboration between art gallery Sofie Van de Velde and fashion label Capara

Sofie Van de Velde is collaborating with fashion label CAPARA for the creation of a spectacular three day event that combines art, fashion and performance. In the gallery space on Antwerp's Nieuw Zuid, works of multidisciplinary artist Rutger De Vries and installation artist Stef Van Looveren will interact with the new collection of fashion label CAPARA.

Every month, CAPARA drops 11 new pieces alongside 11 short fashion film collaborations on the web. With this event, the fashion label goes offline to showcase another side of their creative identity.

Melting couture and streetwear, the aspiration of CAPARA is to communicate a coexistence of words, stories and statements accompanied by a designed visual world, an atmosphere. Their collections are inspired by literature, film, music and art. Ever since they started their own label in 2009, they have been interested in and intrigued by collaborations with other creative partners. They previously collaborated with - amongst others - Camper shoes, Noon Passama jewelry, Lunettes Kollection sunglasses.
 

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CAPARA
Produced by Gallery Sofie Van de Velde
20 - 22 October
Opening: 20 October, 18:00-20:00
Gallery Sofie Van de Velde - Nieuw Zuid
Leon Stynenstraat 21,
2000 Antwerp

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CAPARA
The label CAPARA was founded by the twin sisters Vera and Olivera Capara in Antwerp in 2009. They were born in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, and grew up in Germany. Their biggest passion, fashion, brought both sisters to Antwerp, to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where they were soon discovered by Dries van Noten who invited them to join his design team after completing their design courses in 2000.  

From 2003 onwards they also worked together as designers in Paris for Maison Martin Margiela creating the Artisanal Line for men and women. In 2007 their paths diverged for the first time and they worked for different houses; for Delvaux in Brussels – the oldest fine leather goods company in Europe, and under Raf Simons for Jil Sander in Milan.

After this meteoric start the duo was finally ready to present its own vision for a label in 2009 – CAPARA was born. The embodiment of innovative yet elegant design is the simple aesthetic vision of CAPARA. 

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Rutger De Vries
Dutch-born Rutger de Vries (NL, 1987) is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose practice is described as Post-Graffiti Art. His audacious body of work is based on autobiographical experiences as a Graffiti writer and trained Graphic Designer. In the field of tension between public space and the gallery, de Vries inverts a graffiti reality and alters the work and its maker substantially. 

De Vries’ method of integrating elements of public space, such as everyday-life objects, into his installations is a reoccuring reference to his life as a street artist. While de Vries’ motifs, such as the notion of a recognisable signature, allude to Graffiti art contextually. By producing artwork mechanically through the use of self-built painting machines, the “tag”, not only becomes an allegory but is a way of questioning authorship and the role of today’s fine artist. “There always is something in-between me and my work—It is either a tool or a machine”, de Vries states. 

Additionally de Vries’ practice is firmly rooted in the subtractive color model and the CMYK color printing process. While paint is the subject, Rutger de Vries’ art practice is a process-oriented experiment and a visual form of self-expression. Capturing a moment in time and leaving behind the artists trace like a paint bomb. 

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Stef Van Looveren
Stef Van Looveren(1992) lives and works in Antwerp (BE). He finished his masters degree in Fine Arts at Sint Lucas Antwerp and went to Central Saint Martins in London as an Erasmus student. Van Looveren’s practice translates itself into video installation, photo and collage. These installations are used, as an attempt to reflect and dismantel the performativity of human behaviour, primarily within the notion of gender. Playfully mimicking our social conducts along with visual culture, his work moves towards a surreal gesture.

Van Looveren embraces in Hir a gender-bending loop of self-representational role-play. Despite the deeply erotic nature of the sliding and turning choreography, the artist keeps the pornographic at distance by avoiding full nudity and sexual intercourse. Instead he playfully focusses on the joyful exploration of fluid sexual identities in the context of a visual culture dominated by self-presentation. 
- Petra Van Brabandt

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