Fascinated by painting, photography and fashion, Bart Hess wants to express the tension between attraction and repulsion, between horror and beauty. His way of working is strongly linked to the academy he graduated, The Eindhoven Design Academy.

He collaborated with many artists such as Lucy McRae, Kev Stenning, Nick Knight, Walter Van Beirendonck, Theo-Mass Lexileictous.

Hess uses different materials that at the first glance look like a certain material- for example, the “fur” is composed of small metal pieces. For him the fur is associated with a certain power, and through his representations he wanted to make the viewers feel pity, comparing it with the fluff of a small dead bird.

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“Slime” is the material used in Lady Gaga’s Born This Way and is manipulated with the intention to show concepts like an extraterrestrial birth, mutants, while the latex gives the impression of digital manipulation.

barthess.nl
Bart Hess designed Slime Art for the video “Born This Way” from Lady Gaga and now he also designed a slime-outfit for Lady Gaga’s new album ‘Born this way’

The artist’s work is intuitive and is based on experiments that are made both on the material texture as well as on the human body. Though its materials are hand-crafted and low-tech the effect is something very futuristic, like genetically modified and digitally manipulated shapes.

Most of materials are linked to the body in a very normal way being represented through a strong connection to the character’s skin. One can see the contact they make with the body, how strong it presses the skin, how they change the human body and the character’s identity.

Bart Hess crossed the borders of the textile industry, manipulating the materials in such a way that the projects become a visual show. His materials look alive, thus tricking the viewer, playing with the qualities and the effects of the material: reflections, the reaction they have to the skin and the human body or the environment. They look as if they are “breathing materials”.

barthess.nl

The fusion between nature, technology and evolution generates new ideas that will certainly become trends in fashion, architecture and the industry of material. It’s a project that will have an impact in the future.

thefunambulist.net

www.gratefulgrapefruit.com

http://ljplus.ru

Hunt for High-Tech Project

In “A Hunt for High Tech”, Bart Hess seeks to harness both nature and technology and create armoured skin and fur for a new human archetype incorporating animalistic and fetichistic instincts. (via barthess.nl)

Shaved

Bart Hess was inspired by the aerodynamic forms of swimmers currently battling it out in the Olympic pool (via barthess.nl)

Extraordinary Gentlemen

In collaboration with stylist Alister Mackie and Nick Knight, this latest fashion film captures a series of hand-crafted handicraft homages to the extreme volumes and textures that characterise the best of twenty-first century menswear as featured in AnOther Man magazine (via barthess.nl)