“What is the Contemporary?” by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben was the book that inspired Gucci Creative Director Alessandro Michele to challenge the audience at his Gucci Fall 2015 presentation to explore the notion of the contemporary, which eventually opened a creative debate.

For Michele, it is a state of temporal flux where elements of the past are mixed with signs of the future and where people are free to create new meaning out of it. Embodying this idea through his men and women’s collections, the designer celebrates the traces of pre-existing worlds and the signs of future ones.

In collaboration with Katie Grand, LOVE magazine’s editor-in-chief, Michele has curated an exhibition entitled “No Longer/Not Yet” that invites artists from around the world to contemplate the concept of contemporary/untimely. American sculptor Rachel Feinstein, British photographers Glen Luchford and Nigel Shafran are among the participating exhibitors.

The exhibition will open on 16th October 2015 in Shanghai’s Minsheng Art Museum and will feature a series of rooms in which the artists’ installations will be displayed including a personal artwork by Alessandro Michele.

Mirella Haddad