The MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main stages the first comprehensive museum exhibition of the work of Kostas Murkudis, one of the most well-known fashion designers in the world today.

With this exhibition project, the MMK is continuing and broadening its programmatic focus on the borderlands between the visual arts and fashion. The exhibition architecture and displays is designed by the German artist Carsten Nicolai.

In 2013, Kostas Murkudis donated large parts of his archive as well as original designs and prototypes to three international museum collections: the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, the Palais Galliera – Musée de la mode de la ville de Paris, and the Kyoto Costume Institute, Japan. His gift to the MMK marks the point of departure for the extensive show at the MMK 2.

Artistic outlooks and ways of working have had a decisive influence on Murkudis’s work. This circumstance is manifest particularly in his sculptural approach, his investigation of three-dimensional materials, his creative praxis, but also in the presentation of his designs in a manner distinctly different from the ordinary fashion show. By addressing social, sculptural and participatory issues, he changes our conceptions and perceptions of the medium of fashion. Comprehensive research and perceivable architectural influences are further aspects that permeate his oeuvre.

The exhibition showcases Murkudis’s work in selected collections, workgroups and prototypes. With the aid of additional material, it also takes a more in-depth look at several aspects of his œuvre, allowing visitors literally to “experience” it within the framework of various presentation forms.

For the exhibition at the MMK, Kostas Murkudis also examines the relationships between his designs and prominent works from the museum’s holdings, thus curating a presentation of the collection. The latter encompasses concepts and display forms, performance, the ready-made, material aesthetics and many other phenomena and approaches with which artists have concerned themselves since the 1960s. Artistic oeuvres in which textiles play an important role enter into dialogue with Murkudis’s collections and individual pieces.

Exhibition design by Carsten Nicolai and the architect Aaron Werbick.