Exhibition Review: Helmut Lang. Séance De Travail 1986–2005

This review examines Helmut Lang. Séance de Travail 1986–2005 at the MAK, Vienna, the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Lang’s fashion practice. Drawing extensively on the MAK Helmut Lang Archive, the exhibition foregrounded process, media and ephemera in an attempt to move beyond the conventions of the fashion retrospective. The review considers the tensions produced by this approach, particularly between archive and object, process and product, and presence and absence. It argues that while the exhibition powerfully communicates Lang’s wider cultural significance, the marginal presence of garments and the body ultimately exposes the limits of reconstructing a design practice through its archival remains.