Vito Acconci Rooms from Below: A Display System for Show Windows

A first-time collaboration between Vito Acconci (b.1 940, New York City, NY), Acconci Studio, Public Art Fund, and Saks Fifth Avenue reveals a new perspective on Saks’ famous window displays. With Rooms from Below (A Design System for Show Windows), Acconci intervenes with the conventions of a store window, flipping it on its side and offering every possible view of the mannequin by using mirrored surfaces to fill the space with reflections. By multiplying the observer’s viewpoints of the display, Geoffrey Beene’s latest women’s designs can be seen from all angles, making the mannequin and her clothes larger than life.

Acconci literally rotates the window shopper’s perception 90 degrees. In each window, a mannequin stands (or sits, or lies) on the glass, transforming the window into a transparent floor surface through which one can see the contents of the display. Receding back from the glass wall (that functions as the floor) are the mirrored walls and ceiling of each room, which dramatically angle away from the glass in precise perspective, offering every possible view of the mannequin wearing Geoffrey Beene’s designs. The mirrored surface is fractured, blown apart at the seams that would normally form the boundaries between the walls and the ceiling. From these gaps, colored lights flood this constructed architectural space, bathing each room in a different color from warm to cool, red to blue.