This is how Gary Card does Christmas

All Gary Card wants for Christmas is…

“Do you want the media answer or do you want an actual answer?” says the artist, video-calling from a pub in Soho.

He’s dressed in an old puffer coat, a patchwork Needles shirt and some purple bleach-dyed Braindead trousers. He’s not out for a drink – it’s a Monday afternoon – but simply nicking some WiFi. ​“All I want for Christmas is for the Prince estate to stop fucking up the reissues of his albums,” Card says, a diehard fan of the late pop star. ​“I’d want to sort everything out, particularly their art direction.” Presumably that’s the actual answer.

He has a tendency to veer off on tangents, so I quickly recalibrate the conversation. We’re here to talk about his new show, HOMUNCULAND, which has just opened down the road at W1 Curates, inaugurating Oxford Street’s festive frenzy with a filmic panorama of gargoyle-like CGI animations displayed on the building’s facade.

Inside the gallery space – enter via Flannels and head downstairs – tinsel-like cloud formations punctuate the ceiling, while gargantuan craters and spikes are dotted across the floor. In the centre, a series of Card’s charming, pot-bellied, top-hat wearing little men stand in formation, made from tightly wrapped masking tape. (They’re variations on a character called ​“Homunuculus” who he introduced for a special installation at Dover Street Market London during Frieze 2022.) All along the LED walls, a visual nativity story following the Homunculi (yes, that’s the plural we’ve settled on) through a madcap, parallel universe unfolds as an ethereal soundtrack plays overhead.

While working on the first iteration of Homunculus in 2022, Card decided to scan each of the 100 sculptures he made for DSM, saving the data for a future project. Fast forward to now, and the film playing inside W1 Curates is landscaped and layered using those digital skeletons. In essence, it’s the Homonculi roaming through, well, more Homonculi.

“The idea was like, ​‘How do we bring all the disciplines together?’ So, the painting, the set design, the sculpture,” says Card. As he sees it, the show combines the tactile sensibility he’s built his career on with a more visual-first approach, without feeling flat.

The project marks a moment of reflection in Card’s career. ​“This is like looking over my shoulder a little bit, looking back at a project that I felt that had more in it,” he says. For the past two decades, he’s cemented his name as fashion’s go-to set designer and maker, working with clients including Comme Des Garçons, Charles Jeffrey Loverboy and most recently, Oscar Ouyang, for whom he concocted a postcard-plastered SS26 runway. Card has paid his way with major commissions for Nike, Louis Vuitton, Hermès, adidas and lately, Calvin Klein.

But recently, with a little streamlining of his time, he’s been able to embrace a purer, artier side to his practice, showcasing work as part of a blockbuster Hong Kong exhibition in 2024 and a Phillips auction house show in 2019. His painting practice has flourished along the way. ​“I’m very hard to pigeonhole, but my philosophy is, the more we make, the more we understand,” he says, referring to HOMUNCULAND.

With Christmas fast approaching and the year winding down, we thought we’d take stock of Card’s journey and the new exhibition, all while getting the lowdown on his festive plans.

Hi Gary. How is your Christmas shaping up?

Well, this is very Christmassy. We’ve made a Christmas extravaganza! I haven’t actually done anything Christmassy [myself], because it’s [been] all on making this. There are loads of silver Christmas decorations weaved into the installation. Anything that’s reflective, silver, or foil, we’ve been cramming into the set.

The fact that the show is viewable from outside on the street makes it feel like an early Christmas gift to Londoners.

‘Tis the season, right? Everybody’s doing their Christmas shopping. I love the idea that you’ve got these guys following you around. It’s really funny to watch it at night, because you’ve got everybody walking past [at] almost the same speed as the Homonculi. They don’t really know that they’ve got these seven foot [creatures] shadowing them as they walk down the street.

Your work has long revolved around building worlds and pushing the limits of taste. With that in mind, how do you view this show within your journey as an artist?

It’s interesting. This is more retrospective in a way. I think, at the moment, what I thrive on, and what I love is exploring. I think this is a baby step towards bridging the gap between something that’s digital and something that’s physical. You know, these immersive experiences are great, but they can be quite one note. The great experiment here has been, can we take these sculptures and make them into something digital, dissecting them, making landscapes and then animating the characters? Everything’s handmade, everything’s real, but it’s just in a weird, new way.

How do you go about deciding if a project is right for you?

Well, Jason [Zhang, Card’s studio manager] works with me now, so we are able to do more. Our output is doubled.

Tell me more about Jason.

He’s my boyfriend, partner in crime, creative director and everything in between. At the moment, he’s front of house – that’s his thing – showing people around as I speak. With us working together, I can continue my set design practice while taking on the art stuff. Whereas a couple of years ago, I would have had to pick and choose, or maybe my set career would have taken the lead because that’s where the money was. Now, I can pursue both. Maybe one day they will collide, and we’ll do these kinds of public spaces full time. That would be the dream. We’re still set, but it’s something more. This is for a very broad audience – and very Christmassy.

You are quite a pop person. Can you tell us about the process behind the show?

It occurred to me very early on when we started talking to W1 that I have a body of work that we could exploit. Once we’d [recognised] that, it was about working with [designer] Richards Wilkins. I’ve got this funny thing in my head that I keep saying: If I’m Madonna, he’s my William Orbit – a very ​’90s reference for you. He’s basically making my shit look good. So, I’m there, sat with Richard, and he was animating it with me. He knows all of the technical stuff. I’d be asking him, ​“Right, this guy’s head needs to float off his shoulders. Can you do that for me? And that guy playing the guitar, he needs to wiggle. And that guy over there needs to start playing a trumpet.” All of these mad ideas.

Then, there was the physical set, which is very much about me and Jason putting things together. Then, it was basically me in the studio or in the kitchen of my house, building little things, watching TV, making tiny stones out of foil, classic Gary stuff – the kind of thing that I’ve been doing for years. That’s the other funny thing: animation is brand new but the set build is very, very classic, quite Tetsuo: The Iron Man, an old Japanese horror movie that I used to love when I was a kid. The foil idea was because we wanted the screens to reflect off the set. So when everything’s red, the set becomes red, and when there’s a blue moment, the whole room becomes blue. You know, one of my favorite things to do is find a really simple material and do as much with that material as you possibly can. For this, we were spray mounting onto colorama and then scrunching it to make clouds. It’s silver, it’s frosty; it feels very winter wonderland vibes.

As Christmas beckons, are you embracing silly season?

We haven’t, apart from a few parties. We’ve been doing this every night, working till midnight building it. It has to feel big. So that means putting in as many hours in as we can to make it awesome.

What are your New Year’s plans?

Oh, babe. It’s my least favourite part of the year. All I want to do on New Year’s is be with a couple of friends and watch something shitty – When Harry Met Sally, or something stupid on the TV. That’d be very happy for me. I hate parties on New Year’s Eve. There’s nothing worse than ​“You have to have a great time right now!” I hate that shit. I almost get pangs of anxiety about New Year’s, or at least I used to, which is why New Year’s Day used to be the best party day. But no, I don’t do that shit anymore. I just want to watch telly and eat a crumpet.

Stunning. Thank you, Gary. Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas!