“Liberation through Limitation” – Andrea Zittel’s Smockshop

Andrea Zittel, smocks for Smockshop, 2007.

Saturday, Season 1 artist Andrea Zittel opens her inaugural “smockshop” at Susan Inglett Gallery, coinciding with Fashion Week in New York.

Having spent years gaining international recognition and developing a variety of concepts for living, from furniture manufacturing, A-Z Administrative Services to the design and construction of an island off the coast of Denmark, A-Z Pocket Property, Zittel returns to the gallery as fashion arena with smockshop. With the collection that consists of a series of smocks sewn and designed in cooperation with various artists, Zittel challenges the connection between fashion and function, design and life, and commerce and art, and makes these links explicit by selling her one-of-a-kind smocks at ready-to-wear prices.

Zittel’s designs are more about everyday use and less about rarified statement. “Our current state of consumerism is pretty out of whack right now,” Zittel says. “Wear what you work” The artist hopes her project will inspire a more frugal approach to design, but under all circumstances, the smockshop is bound to tempt the eyes as well as the purse strings.

Smockshop will be on view at Susan Inglett Gallery until October 13. Visit the smockshop Web site at https://www.smockshop.org/