Artist, fashion designer, and DJ Virgil Abloh has collaborated with Pioneer DJ to create custom off-white and transparent CDJs and a mixer that will be displayed at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art (From June 10 to September 22, 2019) in an exhibition called “FIGURES OF SPEECH.” The exhibition is the first to look at Abloh’s work that transcends industries, connecting music, fashion and architecture. The CDJ-2000NXS2 and DJM-900NXS2 are Pioneer DJ’s flagship pieces of gear for professional DJs, and Abloh calls his version the “skeleton” models.
ABOUT VIRGIL ABLOH
Virgil Abloh was born in Rockford, Illinois U.S.A in 1980. He is an artist, architect, and fashion designer. After completing a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he completed a Master’s degree in Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
It was here at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he was introduced to a curriculum, originally established by Mies van der Rohe. A curriculum which was formed from the notions of Bauhaus, that enabled Virgil Abloh to learn how to converge the fields of arts, craft, and design.
As the founder of Off-White™ and newly appointed Men’s Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton, Abloh's desire to bridge the gap between music, fashion and the creative arts supports Pioneer DJ's drive to explore the deep connection music can make and the harmony it inspires. Having gained prominence as Kanye West’s Creative Director, Abloh’s career and Off-White™’s main purpose is representing street culture and allowing it to transcend into an art movement, using any, and every, ironic medium necessary to do so.
Pioneer DJ’s involvement in the "FIGURES OF SPEECH" exhibition allows us to re-evaluate the current design treatment of our flagship DJ equipment and strip down to its skeleton.
Although color has been stripped from the molded parts of the CDJs and mixer, all the classic lighting schematics have stayed the same.
They’re sleekly modern and formalistic when dormant, and release a vibrant rainbow that bleeds through the transparent housing when turned on in the dark.
QUOTE FROM AKIO MORIWAKI, CEO, PIONEER DJ
“Virgil Abloh's creations can’t be defined by genre. He boldly connects various art forms, demonstrating unlimited creative possibilities to audiences around the world, and this embodies DJing. We hope that our collaboration with Virgil Abloh will trigger a new story for our customers and our company, and lead to the further development of DJ culture.”