Johny Dar: Undress Your Body. Dress Your Soul
A Body Art Performance with Johny Dar and Frederic Auerbach in Cologne.
Johny Dar is a multidisciplinary artist, fashion designer, musician and film director. His groundbreaking work is now at the forefront of artistic innovation and is celebrated as a burgeoning new renaissance in the entertainment industry, gaining international recognition across a wide range of industries and media.
The Ibiza-based U.S. American will be at the Wasserturm Hotel in Cologne from September 6 to 8, 2022 where, under the title UNDRESS YOUR BODY. DRESS YOUR SOUL. several models, including German celebrities, become the medium.
Dar's work, including avant-garde fashion, sonic sanctuary sound engineering, scripts, and cinematic stagings, when viewed as a whole, feels like a Woodstock festival of the decade. In 2014, he sent his models down the runway at Fashion Week Berlin wearing only body paint. For the social impact project "Jeans for Refugees", international celebrities such as Julianne Moore, Karlie Kloss, Alicia Vikander, Chanel Claudia Schiffer, Sarah Jessica Parker and Victoria Beckham gave their jeans to be painted by Johny Dar.
Close to the body and soul is also the upcoming body art performance. For UNDRESS YOUR BODY. DRESS YOUR SOUL. Dar works with photographer Frederic Auerbach, known worldwide for his captivating celebrity portraits.
About the very beginning of his body painting series, Dar says: "In my first years in fashion in Los Angeles, an editor asked me about the inspiration behind the collection and I said spontaneously: Undressing the body, dressing the soul. And it took me years to understand what I was actually saying…
With “Dare by Johny Dar” at Fashion Week Berlin 2014 I finally dared to show my true inspiration behind fashion. Most likely no one observed it that way and neither did I bother to highlight it or express it.“
Dar adds: “Years later, I am ready to complete delivering my true inspiration without shying away from it because it seemed too deep of a concept to bring to fashion…
In my eyes, the revolution in fashion is to take it beyond the physical body - and complete the connection between the body and the soul through the medium of clothing. This is the seed of my inspiration of what’s to come. My new fashion collection will be based on that theme.”
The body painting series PRJCT AVTR in collaboration with Frederic Auerbach aimed to find one' s alter-ego and invent one' s personal avatar. PRJCT AVTR will continue in Ibiza in the summer of 2023.
About nudity: “I am finally taking the model on that experience, the soul experience that is occupied by our physical needs and desires of day-to-day. In order for us to expand our perspective beyond seeing nudity as sexual, rather as nature and really truly focus on the soul and enhancing that connection and therefore enhancing our connection to our own bodies as well as being part of the bigger body of nature." Johny Dar
Dar's creations have been exhibited internationally in many of his own eponymous galleries, as well as at the Saatchi Gallery, London, New York and Berlin Fashion Weeks and MOCA in Beijing, and his work has been celebrated in publications including Vogue, Marie Claire, Elle, Le Monde, Die Zeit, New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, Fault, Hunger, Kaltblut, Aesthetica, Tatler and Flair.
The upcoming body art performance with shoot will also be featured in a new Johny Dar film (working title: 'Bodypainting, My Story') that documents a decade of Johny Dar body art projects and brings together a range of footage and content from shoots over the past 10 years.
Photography: Frederic Auerbach
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