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| Jun 07: During the heyday of Helmut Lang's supremacy over intellectual fashion in the '90s, a visit to a Lang boutique was as much about the sublime artwork and flawless curation of the space as it was about the hallowed clothes. In fact, clothes always seemed like a corollary to the Vienna-born designer's broader creative vision. So it's hardly surprising that since his much-bemoaned departure from the label that carries his name, Lang has devoted much of his new time and freedom to a series of personal, vaguely defined art projects, excerpts of which have been published in alterna-magazines from time to time. For Lang fanatics accustomed to the biannual fashion cycle and hungry for more frequent helpings, there is a new online portal providing a degree of reprieve. (It's worth noting that Lang was somewhat of a web pioneer, having embraced the new medium before most fashion folk when he posted his fall 1998 collection on the Internet instead of holding a conventional runway show.) Hl-art.net is the virtual outpost of the company Lang founded in 2005 to incubate his post-fashion creative endeavors, and currently showcases two projects that have kept him busy of late, "Selective Memory Series" and "Long Island Diaries." Overall, an air of mystery pervades the site, from the numerical matrix of the opening page (part of the ongoing "Digital Collective Records") to the aforementioned projects, which consist of row upon row of elegantly cryptic notes and sketches presented with nary an explanation. There is also a link to a highly anticipated, just-launched online exhibition of photographs from the Magnum archives hand-selected by Lang. Meanwhile, the site's own archives, a work in progress, features a handful of close-up photographs of pieces from Lang's career as a fashion designer. (The complete interactive archives will be accessible by fall.) But even in its nascent, hieroglyphic state, hl-art.net already contains surprises worth a linger. One such encounter is reminiscent of the kinky subversiveness that often lurked beneath the clean, minimalist surfaces of Lang's fashion design. To say much more would ruin the puzzle, which is half the pleasure of perusing the site, so we'll leave it at this: find the glory hole.
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