Within a broader reflection on the dynamics of the vintage market, with “Second Skin” Hannes Egger builds a performative device that directs the gaze onto the garment, as a trace and vector of existences.
A bunch of vintage clothes are made available to the public, invited to take one item in exchange for another that they are wearing in that moment. A few simple rules set the terms of this swap which must happen on one's own skin. “Second Skin” is a performative device that triggers a reflection on the traces of experience that we leave through clothing and on the dynamics of appropriation and identification that we establish with them. Hannes Egger isolates this moment, codifies its gestures and highlights them with the essentiality and clarity of his performative language, which here questions the vintage market system, explored in depth during a period of residence at Lottozero in Prato and investigated as phenomenon of economic history of the last fifty years.
The exhibition project is completed by a collection of found objects, recovered in the pockets of clothes then placed on the vintage circuit: concretions of past lives that tell in fragments personal stories and social customs, demonstrating how the garment is, essentially, a vector of existences.