Kiko Kostadinov

ener.G

April 3 - May 22, 2022

Jeffrey Stark is pleased to present Kiko Kostadinov's first gallery exhibition in New York, titled ener.G. Kostadinov proposes a new suspended installation reflecting on the historical codes of late 20th century masculine aesthetics and their complex effects on contemporary identity politics. In a narrative arc from his youth until today, Kostadinov combines disparate visual metaphors in an accumulation of iconography related to his practice as a menswear designer and the spatial zoning of the gallery itself as a commercial vitrine.

Employing the mirror as both a decorative symbol of quotidian vanity and a sculptural framing device, the installation centres around a pair of IKEA vertical mirrors frosted with fragmented bore spacer patterns – a familiar motif in the artist’s work that interrogates the hybrid space between Art Deco graphics and utilitarian signifiers of performative masculinity. Appropriating the tradition of sandblasted glass (a modern form of Victorian rolled glass decoration made popular in residential projects of the 1980s) and positioned beneath a halo of fluorescent tube lighting, the mirrors form a reflective backdrop for a delicate floor-to-ceiling canopy of topstitched Sambo belts – relics from the artist’s youth practising the Russian martial art in his native Bulgaria.

Questioning the overt posturing of masculinity through the lexicon of combat sports and utility garments, found photography from German workwear catalogues is suspended from each coloured cotton belt. The laminate cards glorify banal blue-collar scenarios, in which clean-cut young models chosen for their traditional ‘everyman’ good looks, body types and even haircuts pose in staged recreations of various industrial occupations. Employing such overtly masculine stereotypes – with the purpose of selling technical garments and accessories for men to men – Kostadinov questions how the sterile, commercial imagery inadvertently approaches queer semiotics, and the fine line between the extremes of the gender binary in visual culture.

On an adjoining wall, a collectible motocross jacket from the late 1990s hangs as though on a domestic coat hook, acting as a readymade souvenir and a physical manifestation of the photographic subject matter. The garment holds multiple visual cues, including corporate sponsorship from the Italian streetwear brand Energie - one of Kostadinov’s early entry points into men’s fashion. Furthermore, it signifies the artist’s constant and inert presence throughout the installation, in a playful hint to Kostadinov's passing resemblance to the famed Grand Prix motocross champion, Valentino Rossi, whose name graces the object.

-Text by Dan Thawley

press release

close

Past
Contact

Jeffrey Stark

88 East Broadway
Space B11
New York, NY 10002

Leave this field empty if you're human: