the north face arrives at storm king with textile sculpture by johannes offerhaus

contemporary art with the north face x gore-tex

The North Face has joined with GORE-TEX and Storm King Art Center in upstate New York to mark the launch of HKe, the brand’s newest performance collection. The event centered around the unveiling of a new large-scale sculpture by Dutch designer and artist Johannes Offerhaus. The installation combines the language of technical apparel with the material and spatial logic of outdoor architecture.

Installed on one of Storm King’s open fields, the work introduced Offerhaus’s Tower, a nine-meter-high structure composed of SPECTRA® textile, carbon tubes, aluminum, and ropes. Its geometry draws from tent systems and alpine pack design, reflecting a shared ethos between art, design, and high-performance gear.

images © Malakhai Pearson

Johannes Offerhaus’ transportable sculpture

The collaboration between The North Face and Johannes Offerhaus extends beyond just the sculpture at Storm King Art Center. The project first appeared in the HKe campaign, which took place last month in Tungstølen, Norway (see here). There, the artist and a small team carried each component by foot across a glacial landscape, assembling the ultra-lightweight structure on site before disassembling and removing every piece. It was an homage to the outdoor spirit and respect for place that mirrors The North Face’s commitment to minimal impact.

In Upstate New York, Tower reads differently. Anchored in Storm King’s grassy terrain, the same lightweight system interacts with open air and shifting weather, making movement and tension visible through its ripstop planes. The use of SPECTRA® — a high-strength polyethylene also featured in the HKe collection — emphasizes the connection between technical textile innovation and the physical environment it is designed to endure.

The North Face and GORE-TEX arrive at Storm King for the launch of the HKe collection

high-performance material for artwork and apparel

The team at The North Face notes that its HKe collection (developed with GORE-TEX) reflects a growing intersection between performance design and cultural identity. It invites a rethinking of what outdoor gear can represent, merging utility and aesthetics without hierarchy. With this newly installed, large-scale artwork, The North Face and GORE-TEX demonstrate the performance material’s utility for both apparel and for sculptural exploration.

At Storm King, this dialogue feels natural, as the museum’s collection has long engaged with artists who explore scale, structure, and ecology. Offerhaus’s Tower continues this lineage to evoke the precision of pattern cutting and the logic of engineered form.

Johannes Offerhaus unveils his newest Tower sculpture in upstate New York