Despite their ritzy reputations, not many disco balls have had as glamorous a career as the battered customized one that is now on view at the journal's [sic] blacked-out storefront exhibition space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Sitting in the centre of the influential art quarterly's small gallery, the ball scatters light around the space like a fallen star. With its shattered, dented surface sprinkled with multicolored ornaments, the disco ball is instantly recognizable as the one that Helmut Lang placed in his Soho store. And for his first solo gallery exhibition, the fragmented sparkle of the disco  ball creates a poignant portrait of stary-eyed glitz brought down to earth.

Inside the 21st issue of the journal, top curator and frequent journal contributor Neville Wakefield, a master at fusing fashion and art, talks to the elusive Lang about collaborating with artists, collecting their work and creating his own series of collages in a series especially designed for the journal. At first glance, the ball and its over-the-top associations seem at odds with Lang's streamlined understated urban aesthetic, but in fact it fits perfectly with Lang's belief that art and fashion are "like a beehive now. It has all become one."

See more pictures at the journal's website.