Bart Hess is a Danish designer whose works intertwine fashion, product design and art. Born in 1984, he studied at the Eindhoven Design Academy. Since 2007, the artist has shown his compositions in different exhibitions, gradually making himself known.
Bart Hess works intersect the world of fashion but, at the same time, transcend it. Indeed, he is fascinated by photography, painting and visual arts. Through the use of peculiar and special materials, also supported by advanced technologies, his works play with human bodies, transforming them into disturbing and uncanny visions.
Over the past ten years, Hess has developed an impressive roster of work. He has pinned, stretched, slimed and scraped materials about the human body. Foamy, sweaty, blobular and molecular are the kinds of surfaces that Hess concocts. Flirting with a touch of the grotesque and the macabre, he explains that he tries “to find a balance between beauty and disgust or horror.
I think the darker side of beauty has fewer restrictions because it hasn’t been explored that much, which makes it more interesting for me to show to my audience”. Through the use of design, film, photography and installation, Hess has found intimate ways for his textiles to communicate with their “audience” (Philip Fimmano – Fetishism in Fashion).
What immediately catches the eye of Bart Hess’s style is the choice and use of materials. The artist often uses materials that have a strong connection with the human body, experimenting to create unsettling resemblances.
Hess goes beyond the boundaries of the textile industry. The materials he chose seem alive: the reflections, the reaction they have on the skin, the human body and the environment create contrasting sensations for spectators. On the one hand, the works of the Danish artist remind us of something deeply human but, on the other, they convey something alien. The result is a mix of real and visual that causes repulsion and attraction at the same time.
Discover more about Bart Hess work here!
