Christian Dior and Chinese Artists

The House of Dior, in cooperation with 21 Chinese artists, staged and exhibition at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in the 798 Art District in Beijing entitled “Christian Dior and Chinese Artists”. The event was received as the latest public clinch between fashion and art and two continents, Asia and Europe. In addition to sumptuous and outrageously flamboyant Dior pieces by John Galliano and original Christian Dior creations, the show also featured specially commissioned works by Wen Fang, Wang Gongxion, Li Songsong and 18 other top Chinese artists, who were all charged with the task of artistically expressing the essence of Dior.

The exhibition opened with a dinner gala dedicated to VIP’s, artists and the media, with John Galliano as the guest of honour. For the gala, Creative Technology provided five Sanyo 12000ANSI Lumens projectors with Dataton Watchout as the playback control system. The five projectors, soft edge blended, created a single impressive image onto the curved ceiling of the venue. Watchout’s ability to manipulate images sent to the projectors allowed Tom Burford, CT Senior Media Systems Engineer, to integrate all the images and compensate for the curvature of projection surface.

In addition to the opening gala, CT supported several of the areas dedicated to the commissioned Chinese artists and their efforts to express their vision of Christian Dior’s works.

For the Zheng Guogu area, CT provided two Panasonic PT-D10000 DLP Projectors with a Dataton Watchout playback system. Here, the equipment was used to create a single image that was reflected onto all four walls of the room with the aide of a mirror illusion. The illusion provided the viewer with the feeling of being totally immersed in Dior’s unique world.

The most challenging area was the Wang Gongxin room. This area required two single projected images, each one created with five soft edge-blended images through Watchout. The screens were positioned on opposite sides of the room, directly facing each other. This positioning helped to create a video time tunnel featuring films of international world-class models wearing some of Diors most famous and outlandish couture on one screen and real Chinese women strutting the catwalk in the artist's own imitations of the same dresses made with cheap materials crudely pinned and taped together on the opposing screen.

The Yah Lei room featured a host of various size plasma displays, showcasing portraits of famous political figures, artists, television personalities and movie stars, through time, wearing Christian Dior couture.

Being part of such a prestigious event was a great honour for Creative Technology and its team. These are the kind of memories than one can simply not forget!