Text by Jen Hutton

"While I take similar care in ripping the seams as a surgeon making an incision, I also take the garment apart the way a child might take a doll apart, with the same curiosity to figure out how it is made. To me the surgical lens is more about repair. In that manner, the project begins to veer off from the entry point because I am not out to mend, but to disfigure in order to create something new.” - Pilar Gallego

There is a particular art to constructing a garment. Sewing skill aside, the method of fitting a flat object (i.e. fabric) to a three-dimensional form (i.e. torso) is much more complicated than a quick swaddling. For all intents and purposes the body is a continuous, seamless topology, regardless if that surface changes from inside to outside and back again. (Consider the path from neck to chin to lip to tongue to throat to esophagus and so on…) Pattern construction necessitates a simplification of the body into more geometric planes; fabric follows the form of the body “naturally” when it is shaped with cut curves and darts.  

There is a particular art to deconstructing a garment as well. Studious sewers and pattern makers learn a lot by taking apart an item of clothing along its seams to see how the pieces fit together. Similarly, in the act of deconstruction, Pilar Gallego has created a series of new works that interrogate the codification of bodies through clothing, and expanding the definition of a body as a more complex form and source of subjectivity.  Gallego’s Deconstructed T-Shirts (2018) are sculptural works presented on the wall. Each piece is constructed from old white t-shirts; each has a distinct yellowed patina from wear. Gallego pulled apart the shirts along their seams so they laid flat, and then cut and sewed the fabric into new configurations to make outrageous flaps and holes. The edges of the shirts are exaggerated and stretch beyond their limits to make strange, biomorphic shapes. The holes, trimmed in white ribbed tape, suggest places for an arm or a neck, or other kinds of orifices, like a mouth or anus. Tacked to the wall, the deconstructed shirts appear like flayed skins, as if peeled from indescribable yet wondrous bodies. 

(continues on SHIRT PAINTINGS)