Heden/ Today

Heden has opened the new art season with ‘Lost Product of Society’, a unique solo exhibition by Peter Wertmann, spotlighting ‘fashion with expressiveness’. Wertmann graduated from the Textile and Fashion department of the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague with the collection exhibited at Heden, for which he won the Heden Start Award 2024.
The theme elaborated in this collection -the tension between freedom and restriction on a changing world stage- has partly biographical origins: Wertmann experienced the rigid restrictions imposed during military service as a stark contrast to the self-evident freedom of his youth amidst the Swiss Alps. Wertmann makes this tension palpable by bringing together seemingly opposite elements in an idiosyncratic visual language. Freedom and rules imposed from above may move along different paths, but they really do exist by the grace of each other, is the thought behind it. Wertmann’s selection of material, form and colour testifies to a sophisticated socio-cultural frame of reference. ‘The combination of technical refinement, depth of content and a highly individual visual ability makes ‘Lost Product of Society’ grabs you and won’t let go,’ the Heden jury said.

Research
Wertmann’s creations are the three-dimensional result of a complex process, for which research and co-creation are key pillars. In the research phase, he searches for subtopics that say (in-)directly something about the main theme of the collection. For ‘Lost Product of Society’, for instance, he looked at the traditional attire of the Inuit living in extreme cold and the clothing worn during polar expeditions from the late 19th century onwards. For his work, Wertmann also draws on the military domain and visual art. He takes the knowldedge of materials and form language contained in all these sources of inspiration and gives them a contemporary twist. In doing so, he likes to use materials that can withstand long-term use, such as heavy denims, suede coated with aluminium, latex and nylon. The specific properties of the materials are directly related to Wertmann’s design choice, so that form, knowledge and material are intrinsically linked.

Co-creation
Characteristic of Wertmann’s working method is co-creation. He involved no fewer than 15 makers in ‘Lost Product of Society’: craftsmen, film students, a film director, a photographer and models. Jelle Koiter’s photographs, which play a leading role in this exhibition, are characterised by technical perfection, innovative space suggestions and an ominous atmosphere that further enhances the control of the models and garments. Film director Luuk Sieben made the video featured in this exhibition. The footage, which Sieben shot in an asphalt production center, lends extra dimension to the garments. This once again demonstrates the great power of collaboration in Wertmann’s creative making process.
‘Lost Product of Society’ can be seen until Saturday 2 November 2024.
Peter Wertmann (Rolle, Switzerland, 1996) completed his Bachelor of Textiles and Fashion at the KABK in June 2023. For his graduation work ‘Lost Product of Society’, Stichting Heden awarded him the Heden Start Award in July 2024, an annual prize through which Heden supports young talented artists. With the same graduation collection, he was selected to participate in Lichting 2024, a competition for fashion students graduating in the Netherlands held on 6 September as part of Amsterdam Fashion Week. Moreover, Wertmann is a finalist of Designblok, an international design festival in Prague for design alumni from all over Europe, and will compete for prizes in the Fashion category in October. In mid-2023, Wertmann completed an internship at fashion house Melitta Baumeister in New York.