The multidisciplinary artist’s work delves into an ongoing exploration and critical examination of identity through a blend of different mediums
Photography courtesy of James Bantone and UGG
Words by Sonia Zhuravlyova
Among the hustle and bustle of Milan Design Week, a side street in the Porta Venezia neighbourhood opens up onto Spazio Maiocchi, a former industrial building that is now a social space where art, design and fashion come together. For the duration of design week, it is home to Capsule Plaza, the brainchild of creative director Alessio Ascari and co-curator Paul Cournet, who wanted a stage for the blurring of creative boundaries in the fields of art, fashion, music, food and design. It was the perfect setting for Swiss artist James Bantone to show his work, which itself sits at the intersection of photography, sculpture and video art.
Australian brand UGG invited Bantone to collaborate on the installation, called “If you (see me, see me, see me)”, in which he could continue to explore his artistic practice. Bantone’s work often interrogated the way bodies are represented and manipulated in everything from art photography to advertising. Here, five large artworks, created especially for Milan Design Week, riff on the design language of billboards and street advertising.
Each of the pieces features a repeating variation of the visual that Bantone initially created for UGG – depicting a pair of human legs wearing UGG shoes intertwined with those of a mannequin on a sofa – which is now up on billboards in Milan. ‘For me, repetition is very important,’ he says. ‘I feel like there’s information that is lost and information that is created through it.’
Photography courtesy of James Bantone and UGG
The artist likes to question how we perceive reality and whether we are simply consumers or active participants in what we see. Mannequins and dolls have long been a point of fascination, and the Milan show follows hot on the heels of his exhibition at the Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art in New York, which explores similar themes. He is also fascinated by the idea of the green screen, onto which a simulacrum of reality can be projected. ‘I wanted to bring the billboard inside of the space so I started to work with billboard “sculptures”, which show variations of the image that you’ve seen in the city,’ he explains.
Bantone added a black leather sofa – the same one he used in the original image for UGG, now covered in zips and bright-green stitching – on which we are invited to sit. ‘Little by little, the sofa itself comes out of the image, so viewers are integrated into the image itself,’ he says. Mirrors line the space, bringing the viewer even further into the work.
The theme for this year’s edition of Capsule Plaza was “radical sensations” – and Bantone’s ability to ask pertinent, or even uncomfortable, questions is manifest. ‘I like to play with scale, and I like people to come closer to the work. Images are present everywhere, so how do you make an image that stays with you? More than anything, I like to think about how to create a feeling in the viewer.’
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