LUDI NATURAE

With 'Ludi Naturae', Iris van Herpen examines the natural and manmade landscapes of our world from a bird’s-eye view, tracing the laws of entropy.Inspiration was found from surveying the intricate aerial photography by Thierry Bornier, and Andy Yeung, among others. This is a response to Van Herpen’s earlier work, for which she meditated on the world’s formations from a microscopic point of view.

“I zoomed out to look at the earth’s skin, trying to find the forces behind the forms. Looking from this perspective, I felt inspired by the patterns of chaos and order, nature and civilization blending into infinite hybrids.” Following the original inspiration, Van Herpen collaborated with the Dutch artist Peter Gentenaar, who is known for capturing ‘organic memory’ and motion in his delicate large-scale cellulose sculptures. For this show, Gentenaar created a site-specific floating installation that blossoms around the garments as the models move.

‘Ludi Naturae’ is vivid and optimistic, sheer and delicate, fusing the artificial with the organic. The collection blends a natural color palette of blurred and faded greens, yellows, blues and purples with skin colors and blacks.The 21 silhouettes feature boundary-pushing construction and innovative material techniques like ‘Foliage’, a process initiated with the Delft University of Technology in which leaf-like patterns are 3D printed as thin as 0.8 mm and tulle is laid into the 3D printer to print directly onto the fabric,  creating exceptional softness. 

‘Data Dust’, in which parametric patterns are computationally distorted, foam-lifted, laser-cut and then heat-bonded onto an invisible silk tulle, create radiant glitches. For the ‘Entropy’ process, nude leather and liquid fabric are bonded to mylar, individually lasercut into perforated diminishing patterns, to then be interwoven to form interlocking gradients from leather to voluminous drape.