CHICAGO — From fashion and music to art and architecture, “Figures of Speech,” the first exhibition devoted to the work of Virgil Abloh, opens Monday at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
“You would get the high, the low, you would get art, a little bit of the sneaker culture. I’m just going around the world more as like an anthropologist or something, just sort of seeing and creating and putting something else on the table,” continued Abloh, who grew up in Rockford, Ill., “a kid from nowhere,” as he says, who holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and master’s degree in architecture.
Set in a space designed by Samir Bantal, a director of AMO, the research studio founded by Rem Koolhaas, the exhibition takes viewers on a tour of Abloh’s career, starting with Pyrex Vision, his first fashion brand launched in 2012. Pyrex refers to the glassware found in home drug labs, and his early designs referenced Italian artist Caravaggio and “23,” for Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan.
One work, with numbers written on yellow cards on the ground resembling a forensic firearm examination, seems to speak to the rampant gun violence plaguing Chicago. A painting called “Cotton” reverses the colors of black and white and calls attention to the history of cotton and slavery in America.“I’ve only seen glimpses of my work, I’ve never unpacked it all and put it up in a neat order,” he said. “I don’t weigh anything more than another.