The ‘Virgil 2.0’ Gremlin

L E S S O N . 1
= M A K E

I’m at the Virgil Abloh exhibition in Brooklyn Museum and what strikes me about the pieces in display is the variety of objects; shoes and designer clothes, lay next to sketchbooks with stickers on them and a Japanese tea house. The objects laid out in front feel more like ‘maquettes’ - a small scale model or an unfinished sculpture. I studied architecture, and in design school you make a maquette, take it to the tutor and get marked on how well your idea stands up. After your ego has been sufficiently bruised, you go back to make the next iteration. There is never ever a point where the tutor says ‘you are done’. That just never happened. And so laid out on these tables are maquettes of thought forms. Never done, constantly evolving.

I see videos of Serena Williams, athletes, olympians and skaters and I look at the people around me getting excited because this work speaks to the time that we are in. What I feel here is that Virgil was someone who loved what they did and loved humanity and was trying to find a way to build a more beautiful world across all disciplines. Whether he got there or not, the audacity to try is worth celebrating.

It’s a shame that Virgil passed because it’s a shame a great creator left with creations left unmade, but the glory here is that no talent was wasted. In a world of un-loved dreams and mediocre genius, to simply KNOW that someone tried to touch the edges of their imagination is a priceless gift. You see, we don’t know what we don’t know, and as the human race ebbs closer to what we are capable of creating we push the envelope of our collective power. The intention of the human spirit is important.

Till next time you beautiful beast.

K X

Each artefact is an iteration of a thought that builds a bigger picture about what it’s like to be a Gremlin with a thirst to question. The banner ‘Question Everything’ hangs above my head - it’s a figure of speech that epitomises Abloh’s practice. This exhibition isn’t about displaying beautiful things but instead showcasing a way of living creatively. The items on display aren’t particularly important in their own right - some are and some are ‘sketches’ of a beautiful thing, and I like that. For me, Virgil's greatness wasn’t in his craftsmanship, but instead in his humility to think from a place of curiosity.

L E S S O N . 2
= H U M A N . S P I R I T

We can only connect to the world to the level that we are willing to be seen. You can’t fake that level of connection because real speaks to real. We feel when someone loves us and we feel when someone is trying to trick us.

In our society of individualism it’s easy to think that problems are to be solved by individuals. We revere the face, however what compels me is that there are waves of people behind each artefact. I think about the groups of skaters, architects, athletes, celebrities and media teams that each sit under the item on display.

Part of me thinks that Virgil died so soon because his body couldn’t take the weight of such pressure and ‘what if there was a community that distributed the weight of a shared vision? Would he have died of Cancer so soon?’ Who knows. That's God’s business not mine (or whatever name you choose to call something greater than yourself).

A N D . N O W ?

I’m left thinking, ‘what if Virgil carried the baton as far as he could and now our generation must run the next leg?’ This whole museum is a by-product of the consciousness that Virgil resonated at, because frequency doesn’t die, the consciousness of these ideas will reverberate on.

When all is said and done, when a great maker passes what we are left with is the consciousness that they carried.

Image taken from the ‘Figures of Speech’ exhibition, Brooklyn Museum