My former fascination with the transition forms and hybrids of fashion, design and free art has given way to a much more restrained attention to fusions and possibilities opened by their blending.  Although I find pure functions and forms of fashion and art more interesting and important, this doesn’t mean that the two have nothing in common.

What I have in mind is not the fact that art and artists employ social and marketing strategies that the fashion industry has got down to a fine art, or view fashion as the subject of a large number of artworks, nor the fact that the most interesting fashion designers experiment equally enthusiastically with form, content, morphology, material, effect and social aspects of their work. What they share, in my opinion, is the utopian and often subliminal effort to change people – by offering an alternative to the way they experience the world or, in contrast, by deepening and intensifying, or expressing more clearly, the idea of who (what) we are and where we are going. Both require respect for the audience to whom the artist relates and speaks, for whom or on whose behalf he or she works.

Denisa Nová’s individual pieces of clothing, as well as her collections and the manner of their presentation, exude extraordinary sensitivity to any approaches striving, with minimum means of expression, to achieve an ultimate statement, be it through a shape or the use of almost invisible details. The clothes are not for everybody, as they are defined by a relatively accurate manner of how to wear them – and how to behave when wearing them. With only a little exaggeration, a person who puts on something by Denisa Nová should be aware, at that very moment, that they do not need to add anything specific to it as they have accepted themselves.

The exhibition prepared for PLATO by Denisa Nová, together with Karin Zadrick, her long-term photographer and Klára Dvořáková, modelling and inspiring Denisa Nová’s designs, and who also wrote the text introducing the project, transfers or inscribes the rules of regarding clothes in relation to those who wear them into an exhibition room. Not to explain, only to hint, to leave things to fate. We don’t do art. Our objective is to demonstrate, through an exhibition as a specific presentation format, the relationship between those who dress others and those who wear their clothes, and why in this particular way.

Marek Pokorný

Klára Dvořáková (*1984)
– poet, yogi and Arabist. Graduated in Arabic Studies, History and Culture of Islamic Countries and Political Science at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague.

Denisa Nová (*1973)
– top fashion designer whose works have been on the market since 1999 under the trademark DNB. Specialises in design and creation of women’s clothing, complemented with collections of accessories and shoes.

Karin Zadrick (*1975)
– is a photographer. She has been cooperating with Denisa Nová on a long-term basis, and she is co-author of publications Skici 1 and Skici 2 (Skeches 1 and Sketches 2).