the de or re constructed nikes say

An MCA exhibit on streetwear brought new crowds

"Figures of Speech," the big exhibition at MCA Chicago celebrating the artistic output of Rockford raised, streetwear turned high fashion designer Virgil Abloh, is not like other art museum shows you might have seen.

For one thing, the exhibit which will end Sunday with dazzling attendance figures is chockablock with consumer products: rugs Abloh designed for discount furniture giant Ikea, sneakers he crafted for Nike, album covers he conceptualized for Kanye West, clothing he made for his own fashion label Off White and for the big old line house Louis Vuitton, where in 2018 Abloh was hired to become menswear artistic director.

There's even an Abloh store that is separate from the exhibition yet essential to it (and also separate from the main MCA museum shop). It is called "Church State," you can only enter it with an exhibition ticket, and in it you could drop close to $50 for a fluorescent green trucker cap that says "Figures of Speech" or "FOS" and also has an "Abloh" tag affixed, or you could spend almost $70 for one of the official show T shirts. Get one today for your budding sneakerhead nephew elsewhere in the Midwest (I actually did).

And those are replica louis vuitton only the Discount Replica Louis Vuitton Bags budget items (and prices on them have been cut by about 25 percent as the show nears its end date): You can spend several hundred for an actual Off White brand Abloh T shirt or handbag, ever ready to proclaim itself as being "Off White." What's the point of a $300 T shirt if the people around you think it's just another cotton shirt with an image on it?

Meanwhile in the galleries, the "art" Abloh has made expressly for this show feels like the lesser of the outputs next to the consumer goods. The Ikea rug with "'Keep Off'" in the center is clever. Kanye's 2013 "Yeezus" album is a classic, and many visitors treat fake designer bags the oversized version of the cover art like a sacred icon. The de or re constructed Nikes say, or at least suggest, something about the perils of overvaluing a mass market consumer product.

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But is the giant billboard with Abloh graffiti on the back worth the space it occupies? Do the graffiti adorned concrete park benches he's fabricated, a nod to the skateboard culture that was part of his youth, really merit spots in an art museum?

MCA, with its policy of always rotating its exhibits and trying to live up to the 'C' in Fake Louis Vuitton Replica Bags its title, draws a younger crowd on a normal day: About 60 percent of its audience is between 18 and 35, the museum says, which is already enviable in the museum world.

The Abloh crowd has been especially young and especially diverse. It's leaning heavily to 25 and unders, officials say. And if old people are there, it's probably because their kids made them come with, says Michael Darling, the MCA chief curator who brought Abloh into the museum. (He also curated MCA's most popular exhibition, 2017's "The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg," the examination of Japanese pop artist and sometime Abloh collaborator Takashi Murakami. "Abloh" is likely to finish as the museum's third most popular show.)

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"The thing that I was really looking forward to is just seeing what replica louis vuitton bags the audience was going to be like," Darling said. "And high quality replica handbags china it's been really fun just seeing, you know, such a young audience and such a diverse audience and everybody's coming dressed up to go to the exhibition the street wear crowd is very considered in what they're wearing. It's highly, highly preplanned and connoisseurial."

So the show is for the 'tween from the suburbs and his pals, wearing the most carefully thought out outfits you'll find in the vicinity of Michigan Avenue and that, considering all the Chicago money that lives in the nearby high rises, is saying something.

Carneil Griffin takes in the "Figures of Speech," the Virgil Abloh exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)

It's for Carneil Griffin, a 31 year old designer from Hyde Park and Los Angeles who our photographer spotted at the show in neon green oversized Balenciaga sneakers (the Triple S model, Griffin said later) and who dreams of having his own museum show some day.

"I didn't go with a crew," he said by phone afterward. "I needed the first time to be able to pay attention. I threw my Airpods in and literally took it all in."

He was immediately impressed by the consistency and clarity of Abloh's vision, said Griffin, who runs Griffin Direction Interiors, plus home good and eyewear lines under his name replica louis vuitton handbags so that he has "high tier, mid tier and low tier."

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"At first it seemed like a ploy good marketing for Vuitton," Griffin said. Then it seemed like much more. "It was crazy to see the beginning portion. That's what really stuck out to me, what he was doing pre 'the blowup.' To see he's been consistent. He's been kind of deep with it for a while. He's not new. He's new to the world."

replica louis vuitton bags And it's inspirational, he added. "I look at it, I see a young black kid from the Chicago area a little broke kid who had some art education. I see somebody who uses very little to cheap louis vuitton bags from china uk make an impact because they have a critical thought process. They know how to add" to existing objects.

Even while it's lured new audiences, "Figures of Speech" has resonated outward in ways that are also atypical, helping spread something of the gospel of streetwear around Chicago even more than it already has.

Virgil Abloh and his Chicago designs, the Louis Vuitton store and Nike Air Force 1 Off White MCA. (Louis Vuitton/Taylor Castle/Nike / HANDOUT)

Some of it was the big brands already associated with streetwear wanting to make sure they catch whatever wave Abloh was going to bring to town. Vuitton did a pop up store in the West Loop where many of the Abloh designed goods were in orange, and the store itself was clad in that color, too.

Nike used an empty Michigan Avenue storefront to host an Abloh themed sneaker lab that showed product but also aimed to let youth try their own hand at designing.

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The Apple Store, further south on Michigan, collaborated with MCA to host a series of streetwear events through July.

ComplexCon, the streetwear heavy fashion, art and cheap replica handbags music event, convened for the replica louis vuitton first time outside of California at McCormick Place in July, even as it left out local streetwear pioneer Leaders 1354.

And East Garfield Park saw a pop up Museum of Street Wear weekend event showcasing independent designers. As all that was happening the Virgil summer brought news that Stadium Goods, a mostly 1:1 replica handbags online re seller of highly collectible sneakers, was opening a brick and mortar store on the Gold Coast, and Drake planned to open one of his October's Very Own streetwear stores in roughly the same neighborhood.

Laura Choe and Sea Choi compare photos in the "Figures of Speech," the Virgil Abloh exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)

For traditionalists, and even for curators who've been at the leading edge of cultural trends in the past, there's a learning curve.