“I had no idea Christopher was painting until I saw his pictures on Instagram,” says Katschnig. “Painted by Christopher Kane” T-shirt, £175 © Lisa Edi He shot the look book on site at Gugging.Ī detail from Aretha, 2021, by Christopher Kane © Lisa Edi There was further cross-pollination: Kane featured vibrant motifs by Johann Korec and Heinrich Reisenbauer in his pre-fall 2017 collection. Their first collaboration, an exhibition of Gugging artists in Kane’s Mount Street store, was shown during Frieze London 2016. It reminded him of a dress in his spring 2011 collection called Princess Margaret on Acid and on visiting Galerie Gugging he found a kindred spirit.
Kane first struck up a friendship with Katschnig in 2016, on the discovery of a work by Johann Hauser titled Woman in a Yellow Dress.
When you are running a fashion business your passions take a back seat, but I picked up my brushes and pens again and that practice became my sanctuary, a way of maintaining mental health,” says Kane. “Painting and drawing have always felt so natural, and as a boy I used to ask my mother to pose for me. The show, Curated by Christopher Kane, is a bold move for the designer, who found salvation in art during lockdown when the fashion industry had come to a grinding halt. Gallerist Nina Katschnig (left) and Christopher Kane at Galerie Gugging © Lisa Edi Kane is chatting in a light-filled gallery space, the world-renowned Galerie Gugging, which is tucked up in the forested hills of Lower Austria outside Vienna. He has been invited by the gallery’s director Nina Katschnig to show his own figurative paintings alongside pieces from resident artists from the House of Artists, a permanent home and studio for 14 creatives with psychiatric conditions. You see the raw intention and the works vibrate within.” “With outsider art – I prefer Jean Dubuffet’s term ‘art brut’ – there’s a purity and honesty. I’ve always been fascinated by the work of outsiders and maybe that’s because as a working-class creative from Glasgow arriving at Central Saint Martins, I felt like an outsider too,” says fashion designer and artist Christopher Kane.