Adelle Lutz – Under Covered – the use of human hair as the main expressive component.

Separate exhibition

Based in New York, Adelle Lutz is best known for her costume work for the screen and stage. She began this varied career with Robert Wilson and lastly with Paul Auster while working with many in-between. Adelle Lutz has also worked directly with magazines – one memorable collaboration was for Harper’s Magazine in which the forum question was posed “if Jesus Christ came to the USA for a one week tour, how would we sell him?”

Her work – past as well as what she is showing now – can truly be regarded as one body of artistic endeavour, but this show at Färgfabriken is her first as a single artist in her own right. In the past she has participated in group shows and exhibited in collaboration with her husband, David Byrne.

At Färgfabriken, Adelle Lutz will show four separate groupings with one common element: the use of human hair as the main expressive component. Visitors will first encounter Corporate Adam & Eve – two mannequins, one male and one female, one wearing a flesh-toned suit and the other a different skin colored dress – both with gender-appropriate body hair portraits on the outside of their clothing. Another piece consists of three chairs – one blonde, one brunette and one redhead. There is also a series of drawings labelled The Tornado Drawings, and finally The Sleeper series – snall black velvet beds, on which lie pillows adorned with texts and images embroidered in hair.

Anne Pasternak, who initiated the exhibition together with Färgfabriken’s Jan Åman, writes in the catalogue that “hair by hair and stitch-by-stitch, Adelle Lutz’s sculptures and drawings are meticulously crafted. Working with creative fields like clothing design, embroidery, and domestic crafts – disciplines traditionally and globally relegated to the “female sphere” – Adelle makes art which is at once elegant, perverse, and unabashedly strong. Humor and the absurd are coupled with beauty and elegance.”

Adelle Lutz herself writes that “hair is pretty creepy in that it can keep on growing after a person dies. But these pieces have nothing to do with death.” These texts, plus one by Jan Åman, are included in the 48-page, four-colour exhibition catalogue, designed by Richard Hammarskiöld.