Helmut Lang Announces New Sculptural Exhibition in Los Angeles

After retiring from his namesake label in 2005, creative polymath Helmut Lang turned his attention to art, culling his extensive garment archive into raw material for his large-scale sculptures. Though his personal collection of the brand is no longer, having been transformed into artworks and donated to art and fashion collections around the world, Lang’s fascination with materials’ second life stayed central to his practice.

Now, Lang’s chimeric sculptures are coming to Los Angeles in What remains behind, his latest solo exhibition housed at the Schindler House of the MAK Center. Curated by Neville Wakefield, the show explores, in the artist’s own words, an affinity for materials “with a past, elements with irreplaceable presence and with scars and memories of a former purpose.”

Lang fills the room of the hallowed space with his ghostly presences, evoking both collective histories and unknown futures. The materials – once soft and malleable – are transformed into hardened, fist-like forms, their pasts still evident in marks and impressions. Crafted from mattress foam, rubber and wax, his sculptures offer a study of materials, abundant in meaning, memory and possibility, resulting not in a static body of work, but a liminal space where form ebbs and flows in a constant state of becoming.

What remains behind will be on view in Los Angeles from February 19 through May 4, 2025.

MAK Center for Art and Architecture
Schindler House
835 North Kings Road,
West Hollywood, CA 90069