I haven’t seen any catwalk
designs from your hand
lately. Why is that?
It became harder and harder to make a good
show in London. For a long while I would
chuck myself into London Fashion Week and
work with young designers who were really
willing to take on fun sets and create a world
around their stuff. But there just isn’t the
budget to give them everything that they want
without me personally funding the shows. As
much as I love supporting young designers, it
got to a point that it wasn’t fulfilling anymore.
If I’m going to invest, whether that’s time or
money, I should start investing in things that
I want to build myself.Such as the Hysteri-
cal exhibition?
Yes. It was a bit of a dream of mine to
create an exhibition on cartoonography in
contemporary art, featuring works of my
favourite artists such as Cindy Sherman,
Paul McCarthy, Peter Saul and Yayoi Kusama.
And I wanted to create a visceral and manic
scenography – or rather wonderland – that
unified the works on show, and became
a work of art in itself.This was a self-initiated
project. Where do you
start when working
without a client brief?
I’m surprised to say that it’s hard to work
without a brief. There’s limitless potential
and you can get lost in your own imagination.But it’s also a great adventure to be your own
boss in a job that big. I didn’t have to fight
to get my own personality into the project. I
wanted the exhibition to be the total opposite
of what I do for clients. I wanted the space to
be so saturated that it would make your eyes
water – a clash of colours and structures, super
engaging but also giving a sense of whoa...
I’m not sure how long I can be in this space.The result is the total
opposite of a white box
gallery. Weren’t you worried
about the set overshadow-
ing the works on show?
I absolutely was, especially because I was
working with some of my favourite artists.
It was nail-biting to think that somebody
might actually pull their work from the show
because it was so crazy. But I also felt that fear
was an important factor. We were trying to
do something that had never been attempted
before so it had to push the envelope. I had
never seen a contemporary show before
that had tried to build an installation around
contemporary work – for that very reason
of potential overshadowing. Working with
auction house Phillips meant we weren’t
dealing with the artists themselves. We had
complete control over how the work was
presented, which gave us the opportunity to
make something that, if we are honest, a lot of
those artists probably wouldn’t have been too
happy about. So there was an exciting danger
and my inner brat quite enjoyed that. I knew
that it would probably piss off some peopleand that was actually quite an important thing
to pursue. The audience was really receptive,
but art institutions were a bit more scepti-
cal. For good reason. It was definitely a very
worthwhile experiment. I can’t believe we got
away with it to be honest.What’s next?
The purpose of the exhibition was to start
thinking of myself as an artist and make work
beyond the fashion industry. I’ve been work-
ing on a series of paintings for a new show
called Acid Reflux and I’m busy with a sculp-
ture project. My dream is to become estab-
lished as an artist now. There is an awful lot
of stigma attached to somebody coming from
the fashion world trying to get established in
the art world, but I think things are changing.
Kim Jones putting on his Dior show in Miami
just two days before the start of Design Miami
is a significant move. People are beginning to
see that these things can work together.•
instagram.com/garycardWe spoke with Gary Card following his
talk at Antwerp’s design and creativity
festival Us By Night.
usbynight.beAt the start of this year, Card created
a gradational backdrop for the
windows of a Gucci store.46 In Practice