Mauricio Limón

An unassuming stained-glass window in Adriana González Hulshof’s house in Amsterdam was the starting point for the collection of haute couture dresses designed by Mauricio Limón and realized by Atelier Caraco in Paris. When Mauricio Limón and Adriana González Hulshof – who grew up in Peru and Mexico before moving to the Netherlands at the age of ten – first conceived of the project together, they looked to textiles from Peru as well as Dutch stained-glass windows for inspiration. Although not an artist herself, González Hulshof felt the need to be closer to the creative process, especially in the area where contemporary art meets high-end fashion, just as Limón was about to relocate to Paris to move into a live/work studio space located on the top floor of Atelier Caraco, a collective of costume designers whose founder Claudine Lachaud is a family friend. Limón tends to work with a close-knit group of collaborators, more often than not relatives or friends of his, and this project is no exception. For Limón, these works are an extension of his practice as a painter. In fact, the four dresses made to date were conceived in dialogue with a series of twelve paintings executed with white potassium alum and occasionally black ink on wooden panels. Whereas the slender wooden frames on which the dresses are hung are fashioned out of a light, rosy-coloured timber called acajou in French – a generic term that refers to tropical wood – different types of scrap wood found in a lumber yard on the outskirts of Paris, serve as a background for the predominantly white alum paintings. These take cue from the irregular forms, shades, textures, and ring patterns of walnut, pine, maple, palisander, ebony, cherry and ash trees, espousing their shape, following the outline of a tear, responding to the marks that make each unique. The titles of the alum paintings, from Corset vert to the serial Garde-robe, hint at what they depict, albeit in an abstracted form. ‘Garde-Robe’, literally meaning ‘ward-robe’, is how Claudine Lachaud refers to the repertory of costumes spanning different periods and styles that the seamstresses at Atelier Caraco consult when designing outfits intended for the theatre and other performing arts. Words by Agnieszka Gratza from the accompanying exhibition text