Without the hand, there is no artefact, nothing to sell, nothing to archive. Without the hand, there is no flourish, no flex, and no fist.
Season is delighted to present Hand Over Fist, an exhibition of prints made by Luca Nicholas during his 2024 residency at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium. The works focus on the Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten, developing out of the artist’s interest in the secondary market for men’s fashion, and particularly ‘archival fashion’: high-level thrifting that operates at the intersection of capital, culture, and scarcity. Archivists seek the ‘grail’, an article of clothing ascribed significant cultural and monetary value. Nicholas notes: ‘Exclusivity in this field breeds an aura of elitism; the girls that get it, get it: iykyk. As archival fashion becomes increasingly more mainstream, via platforms like Grailed, I’m excited by the possibilities that virtual and real archives offer in preserving significant artefacts and promoting circular fashion models. However, the field has not escaped the same crises of consumption and inflation that surround the fashion industry as a whole. In its more base iterations, I fear that archival fashion is little more than an insidious flex of power and privilege.’