British artist and designer Benjamin Shine is the latest to create an installation meant to stop shoppers in their tracks, outfitting the windows with his signature bespoke tulle works. The exhibition, titled “Seeing Through the Material,” features five faces, each delicately crafted from a single sheet of tulle measuring approximately 15 meters in length. Shine meticulously labors over each piece for roughly 50 hours, layering and manipulating the fabric just so to help it take shape. He likens his process to playing a chess gameworking with a finite piece of fabric means he must constantly assess how each movement will affect the entire work, and he is always readjusting and tweaking, even after installation.
The exhibition explores energy, emotion, and tranquility in a meditative oasis amid the chaos of midtown Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. Each face has its eyes closed as if lost in deep contemplation, save for one figure, whose eyes are wide open as if in a state of clarity (that piece took nearly 100 hours). Realized in bright, emotive shades of teal, fuchsia, ocher, and purple, the works have a hauntingly lifelike quality to them despite the unusual medium. The figures share the frame with gowns and other vêtements by names like Valentino, Fendi, and Louboutin that work in tandem with the tulle flows, which Shine appreciates. “We try to express ourselves through what we wear and how we visually see each other, and then there’s another side to being human that’s a more spiritual and emotional side,” he says. That other side is what he brilliantly captures in “Seeing Through the Material,” where viewers can see their self-reflections transposed on his works in the exhibition.
