3399 Love is love JP Gaultier Montreal, 2017

Love is love JP Gaultier Montreal
: Denis Farley

Wedding bliss for all à la Jean Paul Gaultier

Love Is Love features a spectacular audio-visual and musical design that celebrates Jean Paul Gaultier’s boundless imagination and twenty years of haute couture. The exhibition features wedding gowns and suits created between 1990 and 2017. Presented in the Contemporary Art Square of the MMFA, the exhibition is organized around a monumental wedding cake with female and male mannequins: couples of every gender and orientation.

The work of Studio Makkink & Bey is featured with an installation of furniture and objects that have been entirely covered in an immaculate elastic membrane, like a cocoon. The concept of the installation is based on the re-appropriation of existing contextual elements. Traces of chairs, tables, lamps, paintings and an exit soften the entire space and create an environment in which the mannequins come to life at the same time.

The studio also collaborated on the Maison Jean Paul Gaultier’s spring-summer 2014 fashion show and haute couture salons, as well as for the MMFA’s retrospective presented at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2015. Interestingly enough, the MMFA’s collection contains a lamp and an armchair designed by Jurgen Bey as well.

from 27 May to 9 October 2017

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA)