Photo:©2024 Kunning Huang / Courtesy of Europa and Kunning Huang
Thrillseekers take note: The Two Bridges neighborhood in downtown New York is currently haunted in the most delightful way with the installation of Brandon Morris’s ghost dresses at Europa Gallery on Division Street. Having fallen for the first of these sculptures, glimpsed briefly on a visit to Parsons in 2023, seeing them at Europa was a waking dream. Pretty as they are, Morris’s work also challenges the idea of what fashion is—or can be.
Entering into the main gallery space, you might feel like you’ve interrupted a game of Simon Says, one in which Simon had said “stop” and the participants were invisible. The poses Morris has captured look like they could be stop-motion, their green-tinted resin adding to a sense of liquidity and undulance. The simplest dress, number 6, which resembles a nightgown, seems to be grasping the side of her skirt; it’s a gesture that brings to mind Edward Gorey’s seemingly innocent, but not, Victorians. That’s the thing with this show—which is called “Actress,” by the way: Things are not quite what they seem. The idea of presence in absence is one that stood out for me.
Born in San Diego and raised in New Jersey, Morris’s initial exposure to art was through his art teacher mother; as a teen he began customizing his clothing. When he applied to Parsons it was to study fashion design, but after the first year, Morris was already leaning more towards art than garment-making and took a year off. It was during this time, he says, that he started taking “everything that I learned in fashion design, like construction, fully towards making my art.”
That said, one of Morris’s heroes is Martin Margiela. “I look at his work almost daily. When he was making his collections they weren’t labeled art, but I’d make the argument that he’s inspired just as many artists as he has designers.” Many of the Belgian’s collections were answers to a specific query, such as: how do you create clothes that are flat off the body, or what would it look like if you blew up doll’s clothing to specific proportions? Morris is similarly inquisitive. “I feel like most fashion, or even art, is like beauty for beauty’s sake…I like things that are made to solve something or answer a question…What makes [something] successful is if you’re able to answer it or not. The bonus is if you can make it look cool.” The ghost dresses meet both criteria.
