Echoes and reflections – the glass of fashion. The Prada Galleria handbag, an eternal Prada icon, is celebrated alongside an icon of popular culture, the internationally acclaimed actor Scarlett Johansson, bathed in vivid, expressive color by Venezuelan-American artist Alex Da Corte.
A Tony and BAFTA award winner, and two-time Academy Award nominee, Johansson is globally recognized for the precision and passion of her craft – her innate ability to transform and embody multiple personae, different identities and ideals. In essence, she is herself a reflection, a refraction – interpreting and embodying another individual, bringing her own inherent qualities to her depiction.
Evolving an ongoing dialogue between Prada and fine artists to reconsider the relationship between Prada icons and iconic cultural figures, here, Johansson’s indelible image is reimagined by the conceptual artist. Da Corte’s works span a range of media – video, performance, installation, painting, sculpture – and this is his first work living in a fashion context. Drawing on Pop and Surrealism, on a tension between high and popular culture, his work creates fantastical, vividly-hued and all-encompassing artistic environs to explore the same notions of humanity Johansson brings to her work.
In the Galleria campaign, Johansson transforms constantly, framed and reframed by a sublimation of the everyday, translated into pure color. Color is innately synched to emotion, universally evocative of feelings. And, similarly recollective of collective experience and memories, there are shadows of poses, attitudes and situations we recognize – and, in turn, Johansson’s own global fame is reflected, enhanced and resonant in these images.
As this Hollywood icon is transformed and recontextualized through color, so is the Prada Galleria, its silhouette a canvas for an exploration of shades and patterns. Here, the Galleria itself serves as a unique mirror, of the transformed world that surrounds it.
