Dean Lukic: Inside the Tunnel, Inside a Hole This collection, this production of clothes with holes, is a production of interstitial space that is emptied of all the detritus, of all memories and all melancholy. This is a space of pure intensity, of precision and severity: a brutal fashion... It is not so much clothes that matter here, but rather the holes. In fact, the clothes are only good as the membranes of the holes (see the tunnel, it is all there, but around). Ultimately, this work is not about a fashion design either; it is about making holes and their expansions. A tunnel is a hole, especially this tunnel with its restricted depth that doesn't lead anywhere, that is like an opening to nowhere. A tunnel that is a hole, a horizontal hole, and more, a hole of the surface. It is a punctured surface. So we come to this: where the main point of the work is to make punctures in the surface, in the environment, and by extension in the world. To make depthless holes, this is a difficult matter that encompasses a whole minor philosophical universe. A universe of openings that are empty, a universe of carefully designed "exteriorities". Which just means there is nothing hidden inside the empty space, it is only a method of relation to the outside world; turning things outwards. Furthermore, the clothing items themselves are the multitude of holes, holes that proliferate. In this sense, the tunnel is only an extended hole, a membrane that should be viewed as another clothing item; we "wear" it when we are inside of it, we get dirty by touching it. It is an empty space made 0f 1500kg of steel (that is its lightness). Only a membrane. Likewise, every perforated space is a tunnel in one way or another, and we can say that this collection of clothes is filled with small "tunnels". In this regard it makes perfect sense that the clothes are exterior to the empty space of the tunnel; we relate to the outside through the tunnel, and everything is where it should be, even though, at first sight, it might not appear to us as such. This tunnel, this hole, is neither a representation of the passage nor of the void. In fact, in its "lessness" it is much more; less beautiful, less mysterious, less symbolic. And more, an illuminated hole (with halogen lamps), a veritable inversion of a dark passage into a bright non-passage. That is its humor and its surface. Zero pretense, just inversions. This is a motion where the violence of the technique of stitching (i.e. forceful conflation of membranes) is amplified with the further creation of holes, which then with time expand, change, until all disappears. And there is nothing to say about disappearing, one can only be a part of it step by step. The holes, the tunnel: they don't lead anywhere, they are just there, generating empty spaces and more empty spaces. That is their function, to enunciate our disappearance, first of the clothes, then of ourselves. A strange mission for a fashion designer, to make clothes slowly vanish. It would be wrong to define this emptiness as absence since it is too visceral, too base and material, where holes of emptiness are made by strong substances such as dripping acid and iron. Consequently, we consider holes, and things with holes, as imperfect. But our skin too, by the way, is nothing but a stretched surface with thousands of holes, of the tiny pores that admit the passage of substances. Thus we have to admire the meticulous work taken towards becoming-hole; for that is what this collection enunciates. It is not without reason that Silvio says that these clothes look dead without holes. At the same time it is important to note the precision in generating a hole which is never an arbitrary act, but rather one that is viewed as an instigator of the change in the configuration of one's form. It gives us a new outline, a new silhouette. Or in other words, holes provide us with vitality, they have a pathology of their own. This is why Silvio's work can never be said to be only about destruction even though preferred materials are the ones that disintegrate easily. Its sole function is to invert natural and expected functions (of the textile, of a passage) and through this inversion to create a new dimension of experience: one without trauma, without regret, one that makes us laugh from within its distorted gaps. For it is funny that one practices the art of stitching only to produce holes, and more holes. It has to be repeated how radical this investment in holes is since it not only divests us of the false configurations of depths of reality (in art, or design, or thought), but it destroys the very idea of the surface as well, little by little, hole by hole, only so as to liberate new movements and initiate transformations. The only thing that is left (after the false dialectic of surface and depth collapses) is a hole. And it is monstrous and innocent all at the same time, it is elegant monstrosity where everything is possible, and where slow delirium of breaking things open fills that empty space. A brutal fashion of immediacy: work of Silvio Vujicic, it is like a smear of rusted iron, it gives you another skin, one that does not belong to you, but one that will soon be more yours than any other ever was. Step into it, inhabit the membranes of infinite holes and become one yourself.