A never-seen-before Supreme Box Logo tee is exhibited at the Virgil Abloh's retrospective

In these hours a never-seen-before Supreme Box Logo tee has appeared. It's a classic white tee with the famous streetwear brand's box logo on the front, which instead of the typical red background presents the colours of the Pan-African flag: red, black and green. It is worn by rapper Chief Keef.

The new item was unveiled on the occasion of the preview of FIGURES OF SPEECH, the first museum exhibition dedicated to the work of the artist and designer Virgil Abloh, which will open on June 10 at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art and will remain open until September 22, 2019. The event is an opportunity to explore the evolution of the work of the talented designer, his way of using different media and the context of his artistic inspiration. As explained by Michael Darling, curator of the MCA, inside the museum you can visit a multidisciplinary collection, varied and dense, embracing more than 15 years of work in the field of fashion, music and design to ensure to those who know Abloh only for his recent collaboration with Louis Vuitton to have a 360° view of the American artist. 

"I need this to jell together the kid that knows every Tumblr post that I ever made to someone who doesn’t even know of Off-White but just knows my name keeps popping up" has Virgil said, confirming the approach chosen for the project.

For this reason as part of the exhibition there will be items belonging to different periods and areas of his career: jewelry, chairs, suitcases, a skateboard ramp, clothes made with Nike for Serena Williams as part of the Queen collection, photographs of the Louis Vuitton campaign, turntables and a cover of Kanye West's album Yeezus in 1.5 meter plexiglass, created when the designer was the creative director of the star... Among the many objects on display there are also elements initially created for the unreleased capsule collection between Off-White and Supreme, which never hit the stores, such as the T-shirt we were talking about before. FIGURES OF SPEECH not only tells the story of the past but also of the present. In fact, Virgil has promoted a number of initiatives specifically for the event, such as the partnership with Pioneer, Louis Vuitton's all-orange capsules or the book dedicated to the exhibition.

Abloh believes that the Chicago exhibition is very important because it is a formal recognition by art. For him it is a sign of cultural progress:

It’s a sign that the system was out of date.

He stated at Soho House Chicago, explaining that his typical fan and buyer is often derided, called hypebeast, a stereotype of a male Millennial with money at disposal obsessed with streetwear. An image that weighed on his artistic credibility. So for Abloh, the exhibition becomes an opportunity "It shows that the kids knew better than the establishment." Virgil goes further and calls it "a victory for his generation". 

Maybe he's right. Maybe it's just a normal evolution of the concept of art or, more simply, it's the affirmation of what has become a trend in recent times: the invasion of street art in museums, alongside works by more "canonical" artists such as Picasso or Monet. What until a few years ago was considered underground becomes so mainstream that it is also recognized by the cultural establishment. The phenomenon is often referred to as "industrialization of the underground". Maybe it's just the normal course of acceptance of an idea, an artist, a social phenomenon.