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Murals by Alejandro Gehry for Issey Miyake's newest store.
By Paul Makovsky
January 2002
Californian illustrator Alejandro Gehry (b. 1976) attended Santa Monica
High School and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA, 1998).
In 1998 he moved to New York to work for the Arnell Group advertising agency
doing storyboards and concept drawing. He recently left the company to work
freelance and plans to do more magazine illustration and murals when he's
not customizing clothes, playing ice hockey, or spinning records.
On a visit to the new 15,000-square-foot Issey Miyake flagship store
in New York's Tribeca neighborhood, I was surprised to discover the work
of not one Gehry, but two. The shop, designed by Frank Gehry and his protégé
Gordon Kipping, includes a 25-foot-high flowing titanium sculpture
by Gehry and two gigantic murals painted by his talented son, Alejandro.
Metropolis spoke to Alejandro Gehry from his home in Brooklyn about
his murals.
Gordon Kipping, the architect for the Miyake space, worked with my father
a while ago. My father helped him get the project. Gordon wanted to install
some flat-screen video monitors on the wall to offer some sort of bold,
colorful imagery when you walk into the space. Unfortunately it wasn't in
the budget, so my father suggested he take a look at my work. Gordon knew
I was an illustrator and had done some designs for a mural for a restaurant
in Chelsea, but that project fell through. He liked what he saw and told
me to sketch out some stuff, which he presented to the client. He placed
my illustrations inside the scale model of the store, and they loved the
idea.
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The biggest challenge was the fact that the space is a store and the clothing
changes according to the season. I tried not to represent anything that
was too specific and to make the work timeless. |
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I worked from the scale model rather than the actual store space. I put
the drawings in the model to see how it looked and based everything on that. |
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I took measurements for a scale model, and made drawings and colored them
with markers at first. I reworked them a few times until I came up
with something I liked. I scanned the drawings into the computer. Then I
colored them and scanned them back, and did the finishing touches on
the computer so they could be printed digitally and applied like a billboard.
I like working in several techniques--photography, sculpture, drawing, and
painting--and mixing them all together. |
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The inspiration for the mural was both my father's architecture and what
Miyake does with clothing. I put my own little spin on it. A lot of people
say two of the faces on the mural look like me. I gave them certain elements
of my own personal style but also tried to use shapes and colors that would
go along with the style of the clothing and the store. |
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The installation of the murals was delayed by the events of September 11
last year. After it was finally installed, there was a problem with
one of the prints. Because it hadn't been treated, the colors started coming
off, so they had to reprint it twice. After they installed it there was
a leak of some sort, and the wall got damaged and it fell off. They had
to reprint it and install it again. |
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I've always liked using figures. I also incorporated some of the materials
that were being used in the space and took into consideration the huge titanium
sculpture that pours down the stairs. |
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There are a few things I would like to have worked on more, but I didn't
have a lot of time, working at this scale. It's actually a pretty amazing
feeling when you walk in and see it that big. I enjoyed it. | |
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There are two murals in the store: one is 15 x 15 feet; the other is 11 x 27 feet. |
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