Dior brings Alex Chinneck’s bent cityscapes to New York and Los Angeles
Dior’s windows in New York and Beverly Hills are occupied by Alex Chinneck’s distorted versions of city life, from yellow taxis and traffic lights to street lamps, clocks and cars. At the House of Dior New York on 57th Street and the Beverly Hills flagship in Los Angeles, the British artist has filled the glass facades with urban objects that seem to have softened under pressure.
The project celebrates the first anniversary of Dior’s two locations and looks back on the House’s long relationship with the United States, which began in 1947. Chinneck discovers this history through the language of the street. His sculptures use things that anyone passing by would recognize in a second, then twist them into something closer to tailoring: bent, gathered, strapped and tied.
NYC | images © Guillaume Barry, courtesy of Dior
a window of New York with an elevated taxi
In Midtown, New York’s House of Dior becomes a kind of miniature city behind glass. The building sits on a prominent corner of 57th Street, its pale facade opening into tall transparent bays at sidewalk level. Chinneck uses these large storefronts almost as urban rooms, placing nine sculptures where they can be read from the crosswalk, the curb, or directly from the avenue.
A yellow taxi can be seen peeling upwards through a window, its body coiling in the air as if the car had been folded up like a cloth. Elsewhere, a cluster of traffic lights bursts outward in a fan of yellow casings and red, green and orange lenses. The familiar machinery of the New York streets is still there, but it has been relaxed from its usual work and taken on a foreign, more sculptural life.
NYC | Dior Fills Its New York and Beverly Hills Windows With Alex Chinneck’s Twisted City Objects
street furniture with a couture gesture
This change is where the facility begins to have architecture. Chinneck treats the city as a set of parts and then changes the way those parts behave. Lampposts bend in arcs. Road signs slide into confusing clusters. Traffic signs cluster like oversized flower stems. The weight of the metal is still visible, yet the overalls appear to have been pulled, tied and twisted by hand.
The displays take street furniture and move it towards the language of clothes, especially drapery, ribbon and construction. A black light bulb sits above a mannequin like a drawn line in space. A bow of street lamps frames a figure in pale blue. The storefront becomes a meeting point between the sidewalk outside and the controlled interior world of the store.
NYC | Alex Chinneck bends taxis, traffic lights, street lamps and cars into sculptural forms for Dior
Beverly Hills through cars and lamps
In Beverly Hills, the mood changes with the city. House of Dior Los Angeles presents five works by Alex Chinneck that draw from the visual vocabulary of the boulevard: shiny cars, decorative lighting, shiny bodywork and wide window glass. The pieces feel tied to the movement, glamour, and cinematic concept of the street.
One of the most powerful works places a red car behind glass, its body coiled in a giant noose. The chrome trim, whitewall tire and long hood remain visible, so the object still reads as a car. At the same time, it behaves like a letter, a sign or a piece of scale sculpture on the facade. It’s funny, accurate, and weird enough to make someone slow down on the sidewalk.
NYC | The street lamps are connected in arcs that connect the material of the city with the couture language of Dior
NYC | the installations transform familiar street objects into design moments on a sidewalk scale
