Lockdown may have eased up in many places around Europe but that doesn’t mean we’re getting on anybody’s airplane. Unless Oprah pulls up in the PJ (and we donate to offset the carbon footprint, obviously), we’ll be living our Anna Karenina realness fantasies on the earliest speed train through the continent. First stop: Münich, Bavaria. Why? The amazing Belgian artist Klaas Rommelaere is putting on a show deep into the German south and we’re supporting. You’re travelling with GIRLBYE Travels (tickets refundable via 1-800-UTHOUGHT). Sit back, relax and put your feet up (mentally, not physically, because we will sue on hygienic grounds).


BAYERN & BOUGIE
Bavaria equals football, BMW’s, Oktoberfest and Weißwurst, right? Well, sure. But it’s also the German state where legendary artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Henrik Ibsen made a home in the early 20th century. Levi’s founder Levi Strauss was a Bavarian. (Let’s leave it at that, chile, because some of the worst humans in history were from Bavaria.) Anyway, we’ve got sights to see. We could head for the blockbuster destination: Neuschwanstein (the castle that inspired Sleeping Beauty’s modest home), but why not head for the lesser-known Residenz in Munich instead? A stunning palace that bears the artistic imprint of the Renaissance, early Baroque and Rococo to Neoclassicism; your followers will not have a choice but to gag when you show up in a Pyer Moss lavender gown to stunt. Countless likes later, we’ll head to Nymphenburg Park to ‘take the airs’, since being bougie is part of the GIRLBYE founding principles.

BLACK CHAPEL
While we’re in Munich: pivotal American artist Theaster Gates has an exhibition on at Haus der Kunst, titled ‘Black Chapel’. Gates has created an expansive, multi-part installation including sculpture and photography in a vast space that presents and re-contextualises Black history, representation and spirituality. On view until August 16 2020.

MÜNCHEN MUNCHIES
We’re eating good! And it’s not pork sausage. We’ll be sitting down outside at Max Pett: a 100%-vegan restaurant in the Pettenkorferstraße. They don’t serve alcoholic beverages. We’re ordering the asparagus quinoa salad, if you’re wondering.

DARK UNCLES, BRIGHT FINALE
And now for the main event. Just a 2-hour drive from Munich (or half-day bicycle trip, if you’re so inclined). Klaas Rommelaere is ready to present ‘Dark Uncles’: an larger-than-life installation consisting of huge embroidered wood and polyether puppets and dogs that move in a procession, surrounded by embroidered works and 18 stunning hand-knotted, 3D embroidery wall pieces. Open now at Galerie Zink in Waldkirchen.

Klaas Rommelaere originally graduated as a fashion student and interned with Henrik Vibskov and Raf Simons. Soon realising clothing design was not where his creative mind thrived, he turned to textile art by working with needle, thread, wool and yarn. Using traditional, handmade crafts within embroidery and textile techniques, Klaas Rommelaere shapes his own fantastical universe – reflecting parts of his own history, with visual markers of the everyday and life in Antwerp. Since the beginning, Rommelaere has teamed up with 15 senior citizen women, the ‘madames’, who help out making all of the art and handwork. For ‘Dark Uncles’, Rommelaere also brought textile makers from all over Flanders into the fold to help out with all of the embroidery, assembling about 90 craftspeople who responded to an open call from the artist and the Texture museum in Kortrijk. Physical distancing measures made it so that Rommelaere had to develop home kits, so the textile makers could craft from home using their own imagination and choices of colour.

The show’s characters are effigies of ten of his closest family members, including the pets, moving around and recounting memories of Rommelaere’s life. Pictures and family history memories complete the scene of dimensional story-telling in an incredible, painstakingly-created exhibition well worth travelling for.

Marking occasion, a catalogue will be published by Art Paper Editions in collaboration with Be-Part Kortrijk and Galerie Zink in Waldkirchen.
 

OKAY, ONE LAST STOP
You came all this way, might as well cap it off with a spa day, right? You deserve. GIRLBYE will be taking you to Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. Just a 3,5-hour drive from Waldkirchen. You might recognise the setting from a few of your your fave films. However, true cinephiles will all agree that ‘Last Holiday’ (2006) starring Queen Latifah is superioir and also thee finest Christmas movie ever made (I won’t allow for contestation). This is the exact hotel Queen Latifah’s character spends her life’s savings at! We will be performing re-enactments of the Palme d’Or-worthy skiing scene at 2 PM.

If travelling is out of the question for you right now, no worries. ‘Dark Uncles’ will be heading to Belgium in the autumn, showing Part 1 and Part 2 of the exhibition at Texture in Kortrijk. Starting October 3 2020.

Klaas Rommelaere: Dark Uncles (Part 1)
Galerie Zink
Waldkirchen 2
92358 Waldkirchen in der Oberpfalz
Germany

June 27 - August 9 2020
More info here

Klaas Rommelaere: Dark Uncles (Part 1+2)
Texture Kortrijk
Noordstraat 28,
8500 Kortrijk
Belgium
More info here

October 3 2020 - January 31 2021

Header image: © Benjakon