Johan Ku

Designer

Born in Taipei in 1979, Johan Ku began his career as a graphic designer, when he was just 17 years old. During his fashion and textile design studies in Taiwan, he was honoured with numerous awards and very quickly became involved in the Hong Kong Fashion Week.

In 2009, he was awarded the Gen Art’s Design Vision Avant-Garde Prize in New York for his attention-drawing collection entitled Emotional Sculpture. From that moment on, his work was hailed by the specialist press and he became a sort of national hero. In March 2010, the Taipei Contemporary Art Museum invited him for a solo show where he presented his sculptures-collections. His work, which was noticed by collectors around the world, has since then played a permanent role in the vast field of contemporary creation. 
Today, he lives and works in the United Kingdom.

Johan Ku created the costumes for Yo Gee Ti in 2012.
Johan Ku creates clothes in the same way that others paint or sculpt. He eludes the limits of the body and plays with volumes incorporating a highly-asserted expressive style.
He uses one-of-a-kind, occasionally rare, textiles, fabrics that he experiments with freely and without restriction.
A non-conventional creator, he has developed a three-dimensional knitting art using gigantic needles (or sometimes just his fingers) that breathes life into extravagantly-ornamented baroque sculptures. He fashions the silhouettes of his models (mainly feminine), whose bodies disappear under the textile mass, to create a living sculpture of flesh and substance. His unique style helps make the thin line between fashion and fine art even more evanescent.

“Nothing inspires me like… interesting textiles or yarns. I often get inspired by new materials. It’s not only an important element of my design process, but also a starting point for my collection”. Johan Ku

Source : Biennale de la danse – Documentation

Updating : january 2013