Atlas Loved: Slava Mogutin's Photographic Curation of Queer Romance @ The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in New York

“What is ‘My Romantic Ideal’? If there were just one, I’d have been able to stop making images searching around the borders of yearning, imagining, and lusting, many years ago. These are some recent attempts at mapping those.” – Robert Flynt

Robert Flynt. Untitled (NPCG; NYC 41), 2023 Unique inkjet photograph on found atlas page (additional image on verso) 11 x 16 inches 

text by Summer Bowie

Like Lee Oscar Lawrie’s sedulously brawny statue of Atlas lunging interminably under the weight of the world in Rockefeller Center, Slava Mogutin has taken on the ambitious charge of defining Queer romance in all of its variegated multitudes. Drawing from the work of twenty-eight artists, his curation coalesces into a comprehensive cohort across the generational and gender spectrums with searingly vulnerable takes on romanticism. Such an endeavor seems only natural considering Mogutin’s personal history of putting himself on the line for the sake of his community. Working in a plurality of media, he has always questioned and prodded the boundaries of sexual freedom, from his early Queer activism and writings for the political weekly newspaper Novy Vzglyad to being the first person to register for a same-sex marriage in Russian history with his then-partner, Robert Filippini. As the first Russian citizen to be granted exile in the United States for reasons of homophobic persecution, his commitment through legal and artistic means to broaden our understanding of love and its ultimate liberation remains steadfastly on the frontlines. 

In Mogutin’s “Stone Face (Brian), NYC” (2015), we see an outstretched arm holding almost identical copies of a photograph containing a man’s face partially buried in rocks. More than just a nod to David Wojnarowicz’s “Untitled (Face in Dirt),” we see lower Manhattan’s skyline at sunset on the horizon. Where Wojnarowicz quietly mourns the violent isolation of ultimate abjection, Mogutin’s figure is rendered in print and then literally held by another man in the city of his exile—a photo taken almost a quarter century after Wojnarowicz’s untimely death from AIDS at just thirty-seven years of age. In Stanley Stellar’s “Cherry Grove Kiss, Fire Island” (1990), the man’s entire face emerges from the sand in anticipation of an impassioned kiss. Where Mogutin trades dirt for pebbles, Stellar trades it for sand, making the burial feel elective and impermanent. Made at a time when the AIDS crisis was still looming large, it effectively sublimates the unthinkable trauma of carrying such an insidious burden into not only erotic, but manifestly romantic pleasure.

Slava Mogutin
Stone Face (Brian), NYC, 2015 Offset print, 20 x 27.5 inches Edition of 10 

Stanley Stellar
Cherry Grove Kiss, 1990
Archival analog tinted silver gelatin print
15 x 15 inches, 16 x 20 inches frame
Artist Proof 

Held both literally and figuratively by the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, My Romantic Ideal implores us to define romanticism on our own terms, knowing that in the process of queering the heteronormative parameters, we normalize our queerness. He is glitching the hegemonic system, à la Legacy Russell, with an unabashed proposal to reexamine our assumed notions of tenderness, intimacy, and beauty. These images represent a disparate yet equally valid selection of possibilities for romantic encounters, both with others and with self. They are safe spaces that are not safe for work, and at times, I can’t help but blush at the thought of sharing them. Some of them are too risqué even for the press kit, like Quil Lemons’s “Untitled (Penetration)”—which is reason enough to see the show in person if you live in New York. Others, like Carter Peabody’s “Bastian Floating,” lean into dreamy ecosexual escapism with an Adonis-like figure floating in sea grass-lined, turquoise waters. “I have only known shame when it comes to love. For me, romanticism is freedom from heteronormative oppression. The bodies floating in my pieces are unattached to the strict norms of our world and free to feel, explore, and play with the sensuality of the sunlight and water surrounding them. There is an innocence and wonder that takes hold when we become our inner child in search of love, and the judgement of our subconscious just melts away.” Here, romance is imbued in everything surrounding the act of love, rather than in the act itself.

 

Carter Peabody
Bastian Floating, 2025
C-print on Metallic Paper
23.5 x 31.5 inches
Edition 1/12 

 

Benjamin Frederickson’s “Self-Portrait with Lillies” features the artist sitting nude in a brutalist wooden chair, peering out of a floor-to-ceiling window that reveals a verdant forest. He props his feet on the identical chair facing him with an enormous vase of lilies placed tightly between his legs. If we deign to inquire, we cannot help but notice that he is gently indulging himself with just the tips of two of his fingers. This sensual, autoerotic moment of bliss feels utterly unimpeachable. 

Benjamin Frederickson
Self-Portrait with Lillies, 2019
Chromogenic print
15x19 inches image, 16x20 inches sheet
Edition of 3+2APs 

Bruce LaBruce’s “Hunk with Sneaker” might be having an autoerotic moment of his own. Then again, he might just be testing that theory about guys with big feet. Berlin-based American photographer Matt Lambert presents us with two new pieces from his forthcoming book If You Can Reach My Heart You Can Keep It. Luridly graphic in content, these images leave us only to imagine what kind of tantric infrared technology he is patenting in his dark room/dungeon. Pierced and penetrating, his figures find themselves interlocked in full coitus with mysteriously luminescent erogenous zones. Berlin-based Spanish photographer Gerardo Vizmanos says, “I have a complicated relationship with the term ‘Romanticism’—I see it as both something we enjoy and something that restricts us … which is why I focus on love and desire instead. They offer a more radical, utopian force—one I strive to capture in my photography.” His dancer performs a preposterously blasé hamstring stretch, his entire body giving rise to the kinds of questions often inspired by an ample-when-flaccid endowment.

Bruce LaBruce
Hunk with Sneaker, 2008
Digital C-print
11 x 14 inches
Edition of 1/5 

Gerardo Vizmanos
Dancer, 2024
Archival Pigment Print
8 x 10 inches
Edition of 7 

Matt Lambert
Warm Amour, Paris, 2017
Thermal Imaging C-print
20 x 24 inches
Edition 1/5 

Of course, no collection of photography on the subject of Queer romance would be complete without the work of Paul Mpagi Sepuya. His intimate studio portraits meditate on the vulnerable interplay of sensuality and performativity between artist and subject—that ineffable power dynamic inherent in every nude portrait since time immemorial. In all of these artists, we see an earnest motion to decouple our fantasies with any notions of shame or fear—to let them not only be conspicuous but copyrighted in our names. 

 
 

My Romantic Ideal is on view through August 31 @ The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division 208 West 13th Street Room 210, New York

A Democratic Eye On London: Dennis Morris @ the Photographers’ Gallery

 

Dennis Morris, Johnny Rotten, backstage at the Marquee club, London, 1977 © Dennis Morris.

 


text by Poppy Baring


Known mainly for his celebrity portraits and coverage of stars like Bob Marley, Oasis, the Sex Pistols, and other early punk and reggae icons, Dennis Morris’s new solo exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery in London also features his lesser known reportage work. Music + Life is a three-floor presentation of Morris’s life documenting everything from the pride and resilience of post-war Black British culture to the rarefied inner sanctum of the music industry. 

These pictures don’t have an angle they’re attempting to make plain. Instead, they provide us with a rare and personal glimpse into the lives of mega music stars in their youth. They are candid images taken between friends. Morris thereby reveals naturally occurring gems of moments that are refreshing, intoxicating, and remarkably at ease. His approach was nothing more than knocking on a door; the door would open, and he would go from there. 

 

Dennis Morris, Oasis Backstage in Tokyo, 1994 © Dennis Morris.

 

Starting at the age of eight, and landing his first cover on London’s Daily Mirror at just eleven years old, it is clear that Morris had a strong passion for photography early on, as well as the determination to take it places. His remarkable career started when St. Mark’s church in Dalston, where he sang in the choir, started a camera club. Influenced heavily by reportage photography, which was a favored style at the time, Morris began photographing his environment in East London. In 1973, this progressed into skipping school so that he could take photos of Bob Marley as he entered sound check. Almost straight after, when Morris was just fourteen, Marley asked him to join and document the Catch a Fire tour. Young Dennis Morris accepted and, as they did for several artists, his photographs became key to the marketing and making of Marley’s career.

Dennis Morris, The Abyssinians, outtake from the photo shoot for the album Arise, 1977 © Dennis Morris.

While these authentic photographs of famous musicians provide a behind-the-scenes look into the lives of stars past, his exploration into London’s Hackney in the 1970s surveys another fascinating world. Although areas like Dalston and Hackney are now sought-after places to live, the pictures taken in his early career show just how much London has changed in the last fifty years. Morris explains his approach, saying in his interview, “If I’m in the studio, it’s like I’m on the street; if I’m on the street, it’s like I’m in the studio.” Overall, this creates a nice balance to the exhibition—one which raises East London to stardom and renders celebrity as rather quotidian.

Music + Life is on view through September 28 at the Photographers’ Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies Street, London, W1F7LW

Dennis Morris, Untitled, 1970s © Dennis Morris.

Bogotá Rising: Notes on Resilience, Conviviality, and Experimental Art

San Felipe neighborhood skies

text & images by Perry Shimon

Colombia’s art scene is in the midst of a dynamic resurgence. After a prolonged lockdown that temporarily stalled the country’s cultural momentum, activity is ramping up again in anticipation of the fall season, anchored by Bogotá’s ARTBO fair, and two biennials in Bogotá and Medellín. Despite longstanding infrastructural and political challenges, the country has maintained a vibrant landscape of artist-run spaces, project-based initiatives, and strong public engagement.

In this mountain-wreathed brick city with a breathtaking theater of clouds, I had the great pleasure of seeing and meeting much of Bogotá’s cultural ecosystem. In May of this year, I attended a curatorial intensive organized by Mahazabin Haque (All About Curating, Berlin) and The Art Dome (Miami / Bogotá), which brought together artists, curators, and researchers, with warmth and conviviality, for a tightly packed itinerary of visits across studios, institutions, collections, archives, and impromptu social spaces. What emerged was a portrait of a cultural landscape with unique presence, community, improvisation, and resilience.

Telecom Building, student graduate show

One of the most memorable visits was to the dilapidated Telecom Tower—a relic of privatization now reimagined as a vertical commons. After organizing a group exhibition in the building in 2024, Linda Pongutá, William Contreras Alfonso, and Maria Leguízamo went on to occupy several floors, establishing studios, residencies, site-specific exhibitions, and performances. They also began developing an initiative to create a rotating museum showcasing works by the building’s members. During our visit, one floor hosted a student show, several artists graciously welcomed us into their studios, and independent publisher David Medina was at work on a new book project. In the elevator, the partisan resistance anthem Bella Ciao played on loop.

Gloria Sebastián Fierro Castro

Artist and teacher Ana María Montenegro gave a tour, describing a conceptual performance in which she was visiting each of Bogotá’s eighty notaries to have officially notarized a simple and rather philosophical promise: that she would be someone different tomorrow than she was today. Artist Juan Betancurth, who administers the artist residency program, gave an impromptu tour of his studio where he sculpturally assembles found objects into disquieting meditations on power, desire, and art. Nearby, Gloria Sebastián Fierro Castro showed us their haunting textile and tar works, drawn from a family archive that traces their transition from rural life to running a gas station—a stark emblem of modernization in a sepia-toned desert landscape.

Curator Nicolás Gómez Echeverri at Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia

The archive loomed large in other ways. At the Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia, curator Nicolás Gómez Echeverri walked us through a collection tour that will soon be dismantled and rethought under his guidance. The planned rehanging will confront the colonial scaffolding of the existing display, seeking ways to integrate Colombia’s extensive institutional holdings into a narrative that accounts for omissions and regionalism. Among the exceptional paintings of Fídolo Alfonso González Camargo, Obregón, and Cárdenas Arroyo, was a series of anonymous 18th-century convent funerary portraits: powerful images with uncertain authorship, quietly haunting and unsettling the canon.

Hadra Waheed’s Hum in Doris Salcedo’s counter-monument

At Fragmentos, artist Doris Salcedo’s “counter-monument” to Colombia’s armed conflict, we walked across a geographic-feeling topography of thirty-seven tons of hand-hammered metal tiles made from weapons turned in after the FARC peace agreement. In the adjacent courtyard, a deteriorating colonial ruin serves as the setting for Hum, a multi-channel sound installation by Canadian artist Hadra Waheed, which gathers protest songs from across the world into a reflective, almost devotional field. 

Juan Cortés Studio Visit

Memory was also the subject of a project we encountered in the studio of Juan Cortés, who shared a recent collaboration initiated by the Colombian president: a digital map of “houses of memory”—community archives, cultural centers, and alternative institutions preserving regional histories. The ambitious and exemplary project is part oral history, part visual archive, part social cartography, and a model for a new possible infrastructure for collective memory.

María Adelaida Samper giving a tour of Gabriel Zea’s Mystic Capital at the Al Romero gallery

Elsewhere, in San Felipe, Gabriel Zea’s Mystic Capital, at the Al Romero House Gallery, staged capitalism as a religion. Tarot-inspired AI works illustrated symbolic systems of belief in the market, as well as its impoverished aims and overdetermined meanings. An accompanying video installation collaged cartoonish bull and bear imagery into frenetic and tumultuous booms and busts. Zea’s collective, Aliens, curated the show with María Adelaida Samper. It both estranged the givenness of our cosmologically proportioned faith in markets and situated it in a longue durée continuum of numerology, mysticism, superstition, power, and grave consequences.

Tienda de Esperanza, San Felipe

Chuco Candela in Lavamoa Tumba

Tienda culture emerged as one of the more poetic and socially alive throughlines of the trip. These ubiquitous corner stores often moonlight as salons, exhibition spaces, and places of convivial gathering. Artist Chuco Candela’s intervention at Tienda de Esperanza turned an already beloved Macarena landmark into an exhibition space for his and his friends’ often meme-themed ceramics. Later, in San Felipe, his second location hosted a massive street party with fireworks for its opening. He later invited us to visit his most recent exhibition in his ongoing Lavamoa Tumba project—enormous, sprawling group shows in condemned buildings, this edition featuring 150 artists, and overflowing with energy, humor, and street-rooted practices.

Trepesitos fashion show at Odeon

After a fashion show by Trepesitos at the majestic theater-turned-exhibition space and artful community center Odeón, we ended the night in a tienda playing bolirana, a barroom sport that fuses pre-Columbian tradition with contemporary nightlife, popular with both Reggaeton and contemporary artists. It is perhaps to bowling what ping pong is to tennis and invites loud and playful sociality. Odeón’s Tatiana Rais and Juan Sebastián Peláez, formerly of the Miami Gallery and Carne Collective, began sharing insights about Colombia’s commitment to public art funding and the system of rotating independent art professionals who administer allocations for artist projects and spaces. While there is not a strong enough local market to support the many practicing artists, this type of public funding supports the scene to some extent and underwrites less commercially oriented works. 

María Morán at Cooperates

Charlie Mai exhibition and talk at Plural

We visited artist-run Cooperates studios and residency in Chapinero, anchored by the painter and teacher María Morán, and the communal Plural project—part art space, part kitchen—where Chinese-American artist Charlie Mai was showing an installation with a series of performances reflecting on Chinese capital, North/South American labor, transportation infrastructure, and hybrid identity. We were sad to miss the closing party with a durational cowboy performance, Chinese dragon dancing, and DJ set by underground club hero DJ Bclip.

José Darío Gutiérrez at Espacio El Dorado

At Espacio El Dorado, José Darío Gutiérrez gave a highlights tour of his impressive collection of overlooked political Colombian art and their marginalization through Cold War-era collecting policies imposed by major Western foundations. During our visit, a young scholar from Buenos Aires working on a curatorial project about political photographers and left-wing conferences overheard the conversation and joined our group, offering a recently published dissertation called “The Cultural Cold War in Colombia: Oil and Washington’s Policies for ‘Pacification’ of Art in Conspiratorial Times” by Christian Padilla Peñuela that Jose was coincidentally trying to place with a publisher. As we were leaving I noticed the young man and Jose in a deep thoughtful conversation, Jose generously retrieving books from his collection to give as gifts. 

Taller Arte Gráfico

Subachoque

Perhaps the most moving experience of the trip was a pair of visits to Taller Arte Gráfico and Sextante, founded by Luis Ángel Parra and María Eugenia Niño fifty years ago. They welcomed us warmly to their Bogotá gallery and country atelier in Subachoque and let us marvel at the breathtaking collection amassed over a lifetime of artful collaboration. They described their printmaking and publishing practice as a ‘love story’ and shared how they met fifty years ago, moved in on that very same day, and have been together ever since. We learned a few days after our visit that sculptor Hugo Zapata—a dear friend of theirs, whose works were on display in the gallery—had passed away, making the visit a poignant and beautiful parting gift.

Subachoque

Hugo Zapata

There were countless other stops: Liz Caballero’s impressive three-story SKETCH Gallery, La Casita’s misleadingly named sprawling intergenerational and dialogic collection, Casa Hoffmann’s austere kinetic and music themed program, NC-Arte’s gorgeous design villa, Desborde Gallery’s anarchic installation and performance works by Alfonso Aguas Negras, a tour of artist duo Eduard Moreno & Andrea Marín García studio and upcoming works for the Medellín biennial, perhaps the world’s most significant pre-Columbian metalwork collection at the Oro Museum, and a very moving studio visit with the young Bogotá-born-and-raised painter Angie Vega, whose extraordinarily skillful intimate portraits of her Tunjuelito neighborhood familiars had garnered her invitations to apprentice with master painters in Europe and Saint Petersburg. The lingering impressions from this vibrant and flourishing art ecosystem were its warm hospitality, generous sociality, and a sense of experimentation that felt neither reactionary nor utopic, rather present, responsive, and open.

SKETCH Gallery

Daniela Acosta Parsons and Danilo Roa’s studio

Jeronimo Villa at La Casita

Angie Vega

Lia García in her studio

Camilo Bojaca at Galería El Museo

Miller Lagos in his studio

Studio of Andrea Marín García & Eduard Moreno

Mauricio Gallego in his studio

.

Alfonso Aguas Negras at Desborde Galería

Hugo Zapata at Sextante

Theatron

Cloud theater

Put On A Face, Any Face: Read An Interview of Kenny Scharf & Curator Shai Baitel →

Courtesy of Roger Davies

It’s not often that an artist and a curator connect the way Kenny Scharf and Shai Baitel do. Emotional, the biggest show of Scharf’s career, didn’t come out of a typical museum timeline or curatorial trend. It came from Baitel’s urgent feeling of injustice that the art world hadn’t given Scharf the recognition he deserved, and he wanted to change that. When we spoke, Scharf joined the Zoom call straight from his studio, answering questions with a paintbrush in hand. It felt intimate and telling: Scharf doesn’t separate art from life. His world is constantly in motion, fueled by color, feeling, and spontaneity.

The dynamics between Scharf and Baitel set the tone for a conversation that highlighted the reverent partnership between them, whose collaborative spirit is at the heart of the exhibition. What initially started as an interview about an art show quickly turned into a rhythmic conversation about friendships, personal stories, timing, and how things can easily fall into place when two people believe in the same thing.

Scharf came up in the late seventies and early eighties in New York, rubbing shoulders with Basquiat and Haring, bringing a psychedelic, cartoon-fueled energy that set him apart. He paints like he’s channeling something from another planet, but also something deeply familiar and simple. Emotional is more than a retrospective—It’s a long-overdue celebration of a singular voice in contemporary art. Read more.

BHAKTI—Krishna’s Grace Celebrates the Transformative Power of Devotion @ NMACC in Mumbai

Bhakti opens an immersive and enlightening dialogue between the viewer and devotional art. It showcases artworks made in reverence of Krishna.

 

Shreenathji in Divine Adornment – A Pichwai painting capturing the grace and splendour of Krishna in his Govardhan-lifting form, resplendent in intricate jewels and devotional symbolism.

 

text and photographs by Parrie Chhajed

In a world where devotion often lives quietly—in morning rituals, household shrines, whispered prayers, and temple bells—Bhakti elevates it to a form of collective artistic expression. It draws from the everyday but expands into the eternal. This summer, the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC)—a multidisciplinary arts space dedicated to preserving and promoting India’s artistic heritage across visual art, performance, design, and culture—presents Bhakti—Krishna’s Grace. The exhibition reflects on the divine power of Krishna and the devotional path of bhakti through the evolving lenses of art, history, and lived spirituality. It explores how the transformation of humankind and landscapes has unfolded through sacred narratives. Perspectives from artists, devotees, and storytellers converge to honor the enduring presence of Vishnu in Indian spiritual and artistic traditions.

Chennai-based art historian Ashvin E. Rajagopalan’s curation brings together myth, memory, and material practice. As Director of the Piramal Art Foundation, he helped establish the Piramal Museum of Art in Mumbai and founded Ashvita’s, a cultural platform for emerging and established Indian artists.

Ananta Shayana Vishnu – A sculptural depiction of cosmic repose, where Lord Vishnu lies on the serpent Ananta as creation begins, watched over by Brahma and Lakshmi in celestial harmony.

The journey begins with Vishnu’s Dream, a specially commissioned centerpiece anchoring the exhibition’s cosmological vision. A visual timeline follows—moving from early human settlements and cave dwellings to ancient temple architecture, culminating in a sensorial reconstruction of Tamil Nadu’s Vaikuntha Perumal Temple, highlighting sacred geometry and cosmic design in early Indian architecture.

One of the more thought-provoking parallels often drawn in this context is between Vishnu’s Dashavatar and Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Though rooted in mythology and science respectively, the progression of the avatars appears to echo the arc of life—from Matsya (fish) to Kurma (tortoise) to Varaha (boar) and Narasimha (man-lion), symbolising transitions from aquatic life to mammals to early humans. The later avatars—Vamana, Parashurama, Rama, Krishna, and Buddha—map onto stages of human development, from survival and order to emotional and spiritual evolution. Kalki, the final avatar, possibly hints at a future transformation—ecological or spiritual. Whether coincidental or intuitive, the parallel adds another dimension to the global relevance of these spiritual and religious perspectives.

This theme continues in the Crafts Village, where master artisans from across India demonstrate traditional techniques—sculpting, weaving, painting—that keep devotional practices alive. Over forty rare artworks and sculptures, many publicly displayed for the first time, celebrate diverse expressions of Krishna devotion through literature, performance, and material culture.

Among the highlights is a Pattachitra painting, created on a long scroll using the traditional storytelling technique from Odisha and West Bengal. Known for its delicate linework, vibrant natural pigments, and decorative floral borders, Pattachitra was historically used by chitrakars (scroll painters) to narrate epics and myths door-to-door—functioning much like what we today call storyboards. This particular scroll illustrates the birth and early life of Lord Krishna, beginning with the divine prophecy that he would end the tyranny of his uncle Kansa. The narrative unfolds as Kansa imprisons his sister Devaki and brother-in-law Vasudeva, and kills their first seven children. When Krishna is born, divine forces intervene—the prison gates open, the guards fall asleep, and Vasudeva carries the newborn across the stormy Yamuna River to safety in Gokul, where he is raised by Yashoda and Nanda. Each sequential panel captures a moment of this miraculous tale, blending devotional intensity with visual rhythm and artistic finesse.

Raas Leela – A celebratory textile painting capturing the divine dance of Krishna and the gopis, where love, rhythm, and surrender unfold beneath celestial trees and blooming devotion.

Another striking work uses the Rajasthani miniature painting technique, likely inspired by the Kishangarh or Mewar school of thought. With detailed landscapes and a radiant saffron sky, it portrays Radha and Krishna in a divine forest encounter, reflecting the tradition’s romanticism and spiritual subtlety.

In contrast, a painting in the Tanjore style celebrates Krishna’s childhood as Nandkishor and Makhanlal. This South Indian form is known for its bold colors, raised relief work, and gold leaf detailing. The depiction captures Krishna’s playful charm and the devotional love surrounding his early years in Vrindavan.

Tying these expressions together is the philosophy of idol worship in Hinduism, where God is both formless (nirguna) and with form (saguna). Idols become focal points of devotion after rituals like prana pratishta, inviting divine presence into sacred forms. Spiritually and psychologically, they anchor memory, imagination, and connection, serving as both mirror and portal for inner transformation.

Bhakti is more than an exhibition—it is a multi-sensory invitation to witness how art, myth, and memory intertwine to express the sacred. It reminds us that devotion is not static;it evolves, adapts, and continues to offer grace in ever-new forms.

Bhakti—Krishna’s Grace is on view through August 17 at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC), Mumbai 

 

Installation view of BHAKTI—Krishna’s Grace at Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, Mumbai.

 

Rick Owens' Retrospective Is A Paean to the Designer's California Roots @ Palais Galliera in Paris

Rick Owens, Temple Of Love is a meditation on romance, beauty, and diversity. It archives one of today’s leading designers, transforming the museum into a shrine to creativity.

 

Courtesy of Palais Galliera

 

text by Kim Shveka

Rick Owens, Temple of Love is the first exhibition in Paris dedicated to fashion designer Rick Owens, which he creative directed himself. The massive retrospective features collections from his beginning in Los Angeles through his most recent theatrical runways in Paris’s Palais de Tokyo.

With his radical fusion of Gothic Romanticism, Brutalism, and Minimalism, which often provokes social and political themes on his runways, Rick Owens has long been known as fashion’s avant-garde designer. His aesthetic challenges conventional notions of beauty, gender, and form, often occupying a space between fashion, performance art, and architecture.

In the exhibition, we gain rare insight into the designer’s creative inner world, understanding how his references come to life and the ideas that lie behind his work. Gustave Moreau, Joseph Beuys, and Steven Parrino were among Owens’s sources of inspiration, resonating with his embrace of destruction as creation, the usage of art as a vehicle for criticism, and the glorification of beauty through excess. The exhibition also focuses on the central role played by his lifelong wife and muse, Michèle Lamy, whose presence is always felt through Owens. We get an intimate glimpse into the couple’s private world through a recreation of their California bedroom, designed using pieces from Owens’ furniture line. Just beyond the wall, their closet room is unveiled, with dark garments loosely folded next to a packed bookshelf. This section of the exhibition feels like a genuine invitation into their daily lives, where we are meant to truly feel their presence. The air itself is infused with Rick Owens’ signature scent, activating all five senses for a complete journey through their rituals.  

 

Courtesy of Palais Galliera

 

In another room, plastered with “No photos please” signs, stands perhaps the most Rick Owens-esque piece in the exhibition: a towering statue of Rick himself, mid-urination. It reads as the most cynical, provocative fountain since Marcel Duchamp.

The exhibition is extended throughout the entirety of the Palais Galliera campus, as well as the outside garden, wherein California-native plants and vines surround thirty brutalist cement sculptures. Above the garden is the building of the exhibition, whose windows display three colossal statues of Owens covered head to toe in gold. Owens saw the importance of finishing his retrospective with his origin, California. As a designer whose presence casts a looming glunge shadow over the City of Light, it’s easy even for him to overlook his roots in the Sunshine State.

Courtesy of Palais Galliera

Rick Owens, Temple of Love is on view through January 4, 2026 at Palais Galliera, 10 Av. Pierre 1er de Serbie, 75116 Paris

Louis Vuitton SS26: Pharrell Williams' India Is Rooted in Reality, Rendered in Reverence

With a hand-painted Snakes and Ladders set, coffee-hued denim, and cinematic embroidery, Pharrell Williams' SS26 collection for Louis Vuitton reimagines India not as spectacle, but as substance.

 

Image courtesy of : Louis Vuitton

 

text by Parrie Chhajed

In Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2026 menswear show, Pharrell Williams looks east, not for ornament, but for essence. India emerges not as a motif but as a moodboard: one defined by color, craft, and quiet charisma. Far from the reductive tropes often seen in luxury fashion’s attempts to ‘globalize,’ Williams’ India is observational, tactile, and purposefully translated.

The show set, created in collaboration with celebrated architect Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai, was a towering hand-painted wooden interpretation of Snakes and Ladders, India’s traditional board game. It was an immediate statement: playful, rooted in storytelling, and intentionally handcrafted—an homage to India’s material cultures rather than its monuments. A.R. Rahman’s “Yaara Punjabi” set the sonic tone, blending seamlessly into the aesthetic narrative.

Williams and his team spent time in New Delhi, Mumbai, and Jaipur in the lead-up to the collection, absorbing India not through fashion history books but by walking through markets, workshops, and city streets. “You won’t see any tunics or anything like that,” Williams said backstage. “What we were inspired by from India were the colors.” And indeed, the palette tells the story. Black is replaced with a regal purple-blue. Camel becomes a dusty beige. Denim appears in a never-seen-before “coffee indigo,” inspired by Indian filter coffee and designed to fade gracefully into white thread, like sun-worn cotton.

The silhouettes, too, reflect this shift—from conventional tailoring to something more intuitive. Think relaxed pleated trousers worn with leather flip-flops, pajama-stripe jackets, robe coats, and flowing layers. There’s a sense of ease here that feels lived-in rather than styled, a softness that alludes to India’s informal luxury—the kind found in hand-pressed cotton, creased linen, and clothes shaped by climate.

A particularly poetic detail: Louis Vuitton resurrects the animal motifs originally created for The Darjeeling Limited (2007), revisiting its visual dialogue with India in a new context. Hand-embroidered zebras, palm trees, and cheetahs reappear across cashmere coats, safari jackets, and luggage—a cinematic nod refined for the runway.

Yet this was no costume drama. The collection delivered on commercial pragmatism with buttery leather outerwear, clean-cut blazers, tonal shirts, and the Maison’s signature monogrammed baggage. Everyday wear was elevated with micro-beading, metallic threadwork, and even a shell suit fully woven from metal yarn. There’s experimentation, but it's controlled, audacious without being theatrical.

 
 

Pharrell’s respect for Indian craftsmanship is unmistakable. He describes his visits to printmaking studios and embroidery ateliers as the most meaningful moments of the journey. “What art and painting is to Paris, textiles and embroidery are to India,” he said. That respect materialized in garments enriched with lace, hand-placed stones, and artisanal techniques that elevate rather than overwhelm.

This wasn’t Williams’ first Indian reference. In 2018, he launched an Adidas collection inspired by Holi. But this time, the tone is mature and rooted in research. Less festival, more foundation. It’s an India experienced rather than imagined—drawn not just from its celebrations, but its subtleties.

 

Image coutsey of Louis Vuitton

 

“I’m personally a global citizen,” Williams said. “Storytelling provides context. And when you provide context, it makes it easier for people to understand what your true intentions are.”

And that’s perhaps the collection’s greatest strength—it doesn’t speak over India; it listens to it. In a time when global references can quickly slip into appropriation, Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton stands out for its clarity of intention and depth of execution. The result isn’t just a collection inspired by India; it’s one in conversation with it.

SS26 proves that India isn’t a detour in luxury—it’s a destination. And for Louis Vuitton, it’s a terrain rich enough not just to inspire, but to shape the future of menswear.

The Art of Impossible Perfection: Demna’s Final Couture Statement at Balenciaga

“I have come as close as possible to being satisfied in this endless pursuit of impossible perfection,” writes Demna in his farewell to Balenciaga couture, marking the close of a transformative decade at the helm of one of fashion’s most revered maisons. The 54th Couture Collection is not merely a finale; it is a culmination—a poetic, exacting thesis on craftsmanship, silhouette, and legacy. Shot across Paris and laid bare in both look and making, the collection fuses the radical spirit of Cristóbal Balenciaga with Demna’s own uncompromising vision for the future of fashion: personal, sculptural, and exquisitely strange.

A corresponding film directed by Gianluca Migliarotti—known for his documentary O’Mast on Neapolitan tailoring—offers rare access into the meticulous inner workings of the House’s couture ateliers. In it, premières, tailors, and designers narrate the multi-layered labor behind each garment. The documentary traces the making of corseted gowns, reconstructed archival silhouettes, and collaborations with legendary artisans like Maison Lemarié, William Amor, and fan-maker Duvelleroy. It is a film not just of fashion, but of devotion—a love letter to the human hands that define couture.

The collection opens with a tribute to “La Bourgeoisie,” a term once synonymous with conformity, now mined for its elegance and severity. Tailored jackets bear tulip lapels that frame the face like armor; high collars evoke both Medici nobility and Nosferatu’s haunting grace. In Demna’s hands, bourgeois tropes are recoded—pierced with irony, elegance, and a commanding silhouette. “Garments are sculptural and intricate in their construction,” he notes, “while embracing minimalism and reduction in their architecture.” This paradox—maximal form through minimal means—runs like a seam throughout the collection.

Corsetry, once an instrument of feminine discipline, is reengineered for comfort across ten different looks. An airy pink debutante dress in technical Japanese organza, a diva gown encrusted in black sequins, and a draped one-seam gown conjure Old Hollywood glamour as seen through a funhouse mirror. These are not nostalgic recreations—they’re cinematic hallucinations. A “mink” coat made from embroidered feathers, worn by Kim Kardashian as a tribute to Elizabeth Taylor, is paired with the actress’s actual diamond pendant earrings, on loan from Lorraine Schwartz. Over 1,000 carats of custom jewelry glimmer throughout the collection—white diamonds, Padparadsha sapphires, and canary yellow stones—turning the runway into a constellation of light.

Other garments are grounded in quiet subversion. A silk bomber jacket becomes as featherweight as tissue; a summer taffeta blouson transforms into businesswear via sleight of hand. One standout detail: 300 kilometers of tufted embroidery used to create trompe-l’œil corduroy pants, a feat of excess that reads as effortlessness. “They’re the first ‘corduroy’ pants I want to wear,” Demna says, with a wink toward comfort as luxury.

A standout thread in both the show and its documentary is tailoring—specifically the collaboration with four family-run Neapolitan ateliers. Nine suits, developed as “one-size-fits-all” garments measured on a bodybuilder, are modeled on a diverse cast of bodies. “It is not the garment that defines the body, but the body that defines the garment,” Demna writes. This democratic inversion of couture’s traditional ethos suggests a radical inclusivity. Migliarotti’s camera captures the intimacy of fittings, the choreography of needle and cloth, the philosophy of hands that have stitched for generations.

Heritage and transformation are braided throughout. A 1957 floral print from Cristóbal Balenciaga’s archives resurfaces on a sequined skirt suit. A replica of a 1967 houndstooth look once worn by Danielle Slavik, one of the house’s original muses, becomes the “Danielle” suit. Each is a memory made tactile. The finale gown—a seamless guipure lace sculpture shaped using millinery techniques—embodies the house’s entire language in a single garment: restraint and drama, memory and innovation, body and architecture.

The accessories deepen the message. Logos on bags are replaced by the wearer’s name, subverting the idea of branded status. Duvelleroy fans, recreated over nearly 200 hours of craft, flutter like time machines: one from 1895, another from 1905. Flower brooches are crafted from discarded tissue paper and silk, offering waste a new role as adornment. Even the couture sneaker—handmade using traditional shoemaking techniques—feels like a manifesto: this is couture for the street, couture for now.

Demna’s voice is not the only one heard. The soundtrack of the show features the names of his team—an act of collective authorship, a rare moment of ego dissolution in a field known for solitary genius. This final gesture is perhaps the most emotional: a house, after all, is not built alone.

As Demna departs Balenciaga couture, he leaves behind not a collection, but a philosophy. Couture is not anachronism—it is resistance. It is an art of slowness, of refusal, of obsessive care in a time of disposability. “This collection is the perfect way for me to finish my decade at Balenciaga,” he writes. “The ultimate minimal sculptural gown…represents everything this House stands for.”

What does Balenciaga stand for now? In this collection: freedom, contradiction, legacy, reinvention. A house haunted by its past, electrified by its present, and—through the ghost stitch of every seam—already dreaming of what comes next.

Balenciaga by Demna: The End of An Era

At Kering's Paris headquarters, a one-time exhibition unfolds Demna's work for Balenciaga, featuring pieces across 30 collections from the past decade.

 
 

In the historic Kering headquarters at 40 Rue de Sèvres, lies Demna Gvasalia’s resume from the last decade at Balenciaga. A decade of radical creation and endless ideas unfolded in this complete, uncensored retrospective, curated by Demna himself.

Demna’s magnitude as a designer cannot be denied, although many critics have tried; this exhibit shows his credentials as a creative force, a marketing genius, and a brilliant couturier. Through 101 selected pieces, we are taken through Demna’s aesthetic autopsy, inviting us to explore how the designer revolutionized the face of contemporary fashion, challenged pre-established rules, and posed a satirical lens on society through his designs.

Demna had become a synonym for oversized, deconstructed silhouettes and has deeply influenced fashion’s embrace of streetwear, often sparking controversy with his idea of wearable casual wear.

The exhibition opens with a rejection letter Demna received in 2007 from Balenciaga, which reads: "Dear Demna, Thank you for your interest in an internship at the Menswear Design Team at Balenciaga. We've carefully reviewed your application and, after consideration, we will not be moving forward with your candidacy at this time. Your profile will remain on file should future opportunities come up."

This email isn’t about holding a grudge, but rather a gentle reminder that rejection can often be a redirection toward something greater, like in Demna’s case, where missing out on an internship led to becoming a creative director.

Now, as he prepares for his last couture show, Demna concludes his long journey with the presumption that his force cannot be denied, and we’re left longing to see his new chapter in Gucci.

 

Courtesy of Balenciaga

 

Balenciaga by Demna is on view from June 26 through July 9, at 40 Rue de Sèvres, 75007, Paris.

Encounters at the Barbican: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha

Special Guest Star, 2016. Huma Bhabha. Clay, wood, wire, t-shirt, acrylic, tin, paint brush, White Tailed Deer horns, and steel. Overall: 39 3/4 x 94 x 13 3/8 inches. Image credit: Kerry McFate. Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner Gallery

text by Poppy Baring

The Barbican’s Level 2 gallery reopened in May with a joint exhibition featuring sculptures by Alberto Giacometti and Huma Bhabha. Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha features works, some of which are nearly a century old, that explore the human figure, the trauma it faces, and the process of survival. This ‘dialogue across time’ allows viewers to examine the artists’ responses to human vulnerability, violence, and displacement, and is the first time Bhabha has exhibited her work at a public London gallery.

The entrance upon arrival is currently home to four titan-aged bronze sculptures made by Bhabha. Debuted in New York last year, where the artist currently lives, these figures are being displayed in Europe for the very first time. Continuing inside, visitors encounter “The Glade” (Composition with nine figures), created in 1950 by Giacometti, a small tabletop sculpture that marked a significant shift in Giacometti’s practice. These supremely thin, isolated figures were created to capture people as they were, vulnerably themselves, on the street. 

Alberto Giacometti holding Three Men Walking, 1940s, Photo: anonymous, Silver print on paper, 11.9 x 17.2 cm, Archives Fondation Giacometti. © Succession Alberto Giacometti / Adagp, Paris 2024


Giacometti’s observation of individuals “coming and going...unconscious and mechanical... each having an air of moving on its own, quite alone,” inspired how Bhabha approached the composition of the exhibition. She sets sculptures up as groups and allows visitors to potentially cross paths with these works, as though the space were a public street, bringing a sense of life and interaction to the statues. The message becomes progressively clearer, as phantom-like, vulnerable figures gradually replace fragmented works. Collectively, both these artists’ work point to conflict and highlight its effects as human life becomes increasingly disfigured.

This exhibition is entirely suited to the Barbican. As far as Giacometti is concerned, he made some of his most significant pieces at the same time as the Barbican was under construction. Art and architecture made in this post-war period are often considered a response to the brutality of the Second World War, and both Giacometti’s work and the gallery, at that time, proposed a new (not so fresh) perspective on what it means to live and be human. The non-materialisticness of the work and the space that surrounds it creates a mass of meaningful beauty that explores a way of thinking where art is deemed crucial to living.

The Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha exhibition is on view through August 10th 2025 at the Barbican, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS.

 

What Should it Be, 2024, Huma Bhabha. Painted and patinated bronze and concrete pedestal. 44 3/4 x 31 x 31 inches. Photo credit: Kerry McFate. Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner Gallery


 

It Has Its Own Presence: Read an Interview of Ceramicist Kathy Butterly →

Photo credit: Alan Weiner

Kathy Butterly, sixty-two, is one of forty-one women whose work is being showcased at The Grey Art Museum’s exhibition, Anonymous Was A Woman. The show celebrates the recipients of the grant, anonymously awarded to mid-career women artists living and working in the United States. Butterly’s three ceramic sculptures—Heavy Head (2002), Chinese Landscape (2005), and Garter (1996)—are three of the 251 works on display until July 19, 2025. 

Butterly, born in Amityville, New York, splits her time between New York City and Maine. “If I didn’t have Maine as an outlet, I don’t think I’d still be in New York,” she said over the phone from her home in Maine. Butterly did not come from an art family—one of the reasons she initially believed she would study interior design over an art like ceramics. But once she began studying at Moore College of Art and Design, where she met American sculptor Viola Frey, she discovered her passion for combining painting and sculpture. While she sipped juice from a wine glass and I coffee from a ceramic mug, we talked about the evolution of her work, her Anonymous Was a Woman grant, and the different functions of the interiors and exteriors of her lively sculptures. Read more.

Paris Couture Week Predictions Through the Lens of Charles Worth's Current Retrospective @ the Petit Palais

Unlike other fashion, Paris moves through layers of history and a continuous dialogue between tradition and change. But in today’s challenging and ever-changing economic and political climate, what can we expect from this trendsetting city next?

 

Worth & Bobergh, Robe à transformation, vers 1866-1868.
Faille verte et tulle de soie. Philadelphia museum of Art, États-Unis d’Amérique.
© 125th Anniversary Acquisition.
Gift of the heirs of Charlotte Hope Binney Tyler Montgomery, 1996, Philadelphia museum of Art.

 


text by Kim Shveka


As Haute Couture week descends on Paris, the city reasserts its place as the center of gravity in fashion, the stage where elegance is both performed and consumed. The newly opened Charles Worth exhibition, Worth, Inventing Haute Couture, at the Petit Palais deepens this position, reminding us that Paris’s fashion dominance is not merely current. It is layered with history, narratives, and unbreakable foundations that were built since the 15th century. Worth is cited as the father of Haute Couture; he altered the way to view fashion, from practicality to a status of art. He created a system that is defined by exclusivity, artisanal craft, and aesthetic authority that helped distinguish Paris as a city where fashion is understood not only as clothing, but as culture. The aim was not just beauty, but distinction—an aesthetic nationalism that still echoes in the way French fashion is marketed and perceived today. From this foundation, figures like Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent built empires not only by introducing new silhouettes but by shifting the paradigm of femininity, luxury, and modernity. The designers didn’t just reflect French culture; they directed it to the rest of the world.

The other fashion capitals each carry their own codes. London is where fashion is pushed to its most conceptual edge. New York delivers commercial clarity and cultural speed. Milan prizes structure, refinement, and a family-driven approach to legacy. But Paris continues to present itself as the stage where it all connects—the final act, the definitive voice. Its claim to be the capital is not just symbolic; it is structural: the power, the history, and the industry still move to the Parisian rhythm. And yet, that same stage is now caught in a cycle that resists disruption.

Alongside the grandeur of the maisons and the ritualistic anticipation of the shows, there’s an unsettling pattern repeating itself in the background. In the span of a few months, many of the major houses in the fashion industry have appointed new creative directors, reshuffling the same names that have long been in circulation. With every season, the game of musical chairs intensifies, and what once felt like an exciting leap now looks more like a closed loop. The question is no longer who gets the chair but whether there are any chairs left for those who have never had the chance to sit in one.

This past year has seen dramatic shifts across the Parisian landscape. After years of dominating Balenciaga with a confrontational, minimal lexicon, Demna left the house and was swiftly appointed at Gucci. In his place, Pierpaolo Piccioli, formerly of Valentino, took over creative direction at Balenciaga, signaling a sharp pivot from shock to softness, from provocation to romantic craft. At Dior, Jonathan Anderson, who had already proven his capacity for reinvention at Loewe, was named creative director for the entire house, including menswear, womenswear, and couture, a role no one has held since Christian Dior himself. Sarah Burton, once the artistic director of Alexander McQueen, made her debut at Givenchy with a recalibrated take on femininity anchored in tailoring and strength. Meanwhile, Glenn Martens, already at Diesel and Y/Project, was announced as the new face of Maison Margiela following John Galliano’s departure, with a highly anticipated debut planned for tomorrow.

 

Gazette du Bon ton, Entre chien et loups, 1912. 24,7 × 19,2 cm. 
Palais Galliera, musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris. CCØ Paris Musées / Palais Galliera, musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris.

 

On the surface, this looks like change. But beneath the headlines and the hashtags, it’s the same logic that’s been quietly driving the industry for years. None of these appointments were about discovering an unheard voice or matching a designer with a house based on his aesthetic affiliation; they were about bankability. The equation is simple and cynical: if a designer has already succeeded commercially, they can probably do it again. A recognizable name promises brand buzz, social media traction, and a fast return on investment—all in a fragile market where luxury sales are under pressure and leather goods are expected to do the heavy lifting.

This tendency has made the creative director role more of a function than a vision. It has also made the path to that role narrower than ever. The doors that were once open for young designers with new ideas are now closed by default. It is not that the industry doesn’t want new voices; it simply doesn’t leave them enough space to develop, to fail, or to prove themselves beyond a single collection. With every appointment handed to a designer who has already made it, another seat is taken from someone who hasn’t.

The expectation is that each new director will immediately stabilize revenue, secure brand loyalty, and carry the weight of legacy while still offering something “fresh.” But freshness is difficult to fake, and even harder to maintain when everyone is rotating between the same houses. The result is a kind of creative fatigue. Consumers may still buy, but the cultural impact of each new collection grows weaker.

 

Worth, Manteau de cour porté par Franca Florio, 1902. Palazzo Pitti / Galleria del Costume , Florence, Italie. 
© Museo della Moda e del Costume, Palazzo Pitti, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence. Ministero della Cultura.

 

John Galliano’s recent departure from Maison Margiela deepens this dilemma. His Artisanal Spring 2024 was arguably the most talked about in years, precisely because it evoked a time when a fashion show was true art, when fashion shows aimed to move, not sell. Yet, such significant shows appear so rarely now. And with the latest wave of appointments, they seem even less likely. Why, then, are even the most profitable luxury houses struggling to produce that level of artistry? Can a system so driven by metrics and performance indicators ever make room for true creative vision again? These new directors may bring efficiency, consistency, or even spectacle, but they don’t replace what the industry is truly missing: a sense of forward motion. The biggest luxury brands carry immense responsibility; they dictate trends and set the standard. Yet, they consistently fail to raise the bar, to truly innovate, and to genuinely make us feel something.

This is the paradox Paris finds itself in. The city still holds the world’s attention, but it is no longer opening doors the way it once did. Couture Week is the moment when fashion is meant to step outside of commerce and return to craftsmanship and conceptual purity. But even here, the same logic applies. Trust is placed in those who have already delivered profits, not in those who could shape the future if only given the platform.

What is missing is not talent. It is the willingness to take a risk on someone who is not already on the circuit. The problem is not just that the chairs are constantly changing; it’s that they are being filled in a closed room. The game is being played by the same few, while others wait in the wings for a door that may never open.

As the week unfolds and the collections are unveiled, Paris will once again claim its position at the center of fashion. But unless the industry begins to create space for new perspectives, it risks becoming a hall of mirrors. The reflection is beautiful, but it does not move.

 

Nadar, La comtesse Greffulhe, 1886.
Procédé photomécanique, 29 × 16,8 cm.
Palais Galliera, musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris.
CCØ Paris Musées / Palais Galliera, musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris.

 

Worth, Inventing Haute Couture is on view through September 7th at the Petit Palais, Av. Winston Churchill, 75008, Paris.

The Arrival of Untitled Art Fair In Houston Reveals A Hidden Historical Art Scene

Mark your calendars for September 19. The Lone Star State is an up-and-coming art destination.

The Menil Collection, Modern and Contemporary galleries. Photo by Caroline Phillipone


text by Karly Quadros


Houston may call to mind NASA, BBQ, and hurricanes, but just beneath the surface of one of America’s most diverse cities, a vibrant art scene is emerging.

On track to become the third-largest city in America within the next decade, Houston is a city on the rise—quite literally. It’s a place where bigger is always better and change is constant. Leaving very little in the way of historical architecture, the city finds itself perpetually busy building the next bigger and better thing. There’s no single racial or ethnic majority. Instead, the city attracts everyone from French art collectors to Sudanese refugees, a fact that’s produced a richly diverse food scene.

But it’s Houston’s art scene that’s attracting international attention. With Untitled Art, Houston making its debut in Houston on September 19, director Michael Slenske and executive director Clara Andrade Pereira are bridging the gap between the city’s historic institutional art world and contemporary audiences.

Half a century ago, a booming oil industry fueled Houston’s art scene while the rest of the country was sinking into recession. Two significant investments in the city’s institutional art infrastructure—the construction of the Contemporary Art Museum Houston and a multimillion-dollar renovation to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston—signaled a push to establish Houston as one of America’s artistic centers. A local art scene cropped up around the Lawndale Alternative Art Space at the University of Houston (now the Lawndale Art Center), founded by sculptor James Surls. Meanwhile, other standout artists, such as Julian Schnabel and Robert Rauschenberg, were developing their distinctive styles in Texas. Then a mid-80s oil bust interrupted the scene’s boom. Now, there’s a renewed effort to finish what Surls and Harithas started and put Houston on the international art world’s map.

The Menil Collection campus. Photo by Grant Gay

The foremost underpinnings of Houston’s art scene stem from one family. Billionaire collectors and patrons of the arts, Dominique and John de Menil, formed the backbone of Houston’s fine art world, encapsulated in the Menil Collection. The couple’s story reads like something out of a spy novel: Dominique, an oil heiress to an oil company, married John, an investment banker from a family ennobled by Napoleon, only to be forced to flee their home in Paris through a Spanish port on a steamer bound for Cuba in 1944 when the Nazis invaded. The couple eventually settled in Houston, a small city on the Gulf of Mexico with a barely nascent art scene. Dominique credited the lack of art in the city as the exact reason why she began collecting in the first place.

The de Menil’s private collection reflected an adventurous and forward-thinking mindset. As early champions of Max Ernst, they mounted his first solo museum show in the US (Ernst’s portrait of Dominique, done when he was still an unknown artist in Paris, hangs in the first room of the Menil Collection to this day). 

The collection reflects their diverse and eclectic tastes, encompassing everything from Surrealism to Pop Art to ancient artworks from Africa and Oceania. From Magritte to Man Ray, Henri Matisse to Joan Miró, and from Hans Bellmer to Bruce Davidson, the Menil Collection, which became a museum in 1987, rivals any private art collection across the country. In a city that is notoriously concrete and sprawling, its campus is a cool and calm patch of green space in the heart of Montrose, a walkable neighborhood humming with the trill of cicadas and the chirps of grackles. In addition to its core collection, the campus is also home to the Menil Drawing Institute, the Cy Twombly Gallery, and the Dan Flavin Installation at Richmond Hall.

Dan Flavin Installation at Richmond Hall. Photo by Sarah Hobson

The Menil Collection is notably abutted by the Rothko Chapel, a nondenominational worship space featuring fourteen Rothko murals rendered in solemn purples and blacks that were characteristic of the artist’s final years before his death. Initially intended for the Catholic University of Saint Thomas, the church’s streamlined result, with its octagonal structure and moody ambiance, was a little too modern for their taste and became a much more expansive space, serving as the backdrop for everything from human rights award ceremonies to a music video by Solange Knowles. The space, like much of Rothko’s work, possesses a timeless quality and a nearly endless capacity to encourage reflection, inward movement, and calm.

In any other city, it would be hard to match the Menil Collection, but the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) is a standout, not just regionally, but globally. Stretching over three sunlight-filled buildings, the museum houses works from nearly every ancient, modern, and contemporary art luminary imaginable (really, I eventually gave up on taking notes after several pages listing iconic pieces from Impressionism to Surrealism to Pop Art and everything in between). 

James Turrell, Caper, Salmon to White Wedgework, 2000

Even the walkways between buildings are works of art. You can easily escape the humidity by stealing away between galleries in a luminous light tunnel designed by James Turrell. Patrons can pop between multiple immersive art exhibitions, including a Yayoi Kusama infinity room and the pulsating Chromosaturation MFA by Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, before tucking in for a Michelin-starred lunch courtesy of chef Alain Verzeroli at Le Jardinier, the museum’s fine dining alcove, which overlooks a sculpture garden created by Isamu Noguchi.

Yayoi Kusama, Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity, 2009. Courtesy of the museum and Yayoi Kusama

Just a two-minute walk away is the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Currently on view until March 29, 2026, is Across the Universe, by Houston-born artist Tomashi Jackson. Rooted firmly in archival and historical research, Jackson excavates the troubled histories of democracy, exclusion, and law in the South. Incorporating a wide range of techniques across painting, printmaking, fiber art, and sculpture, she employs juxtapositions of color and material such as dust from Greek marble quarries, voting pamphlets, and river soil to interrogate the calcified layers of history. In 2026, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston will host a four-decade-long survey of conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll.

The Menil Collection, main building galleries. Photo by Hung Truong

Despite the institutional dominance in the city, Houston is also home to one of the most innovative art residencies in the country: Project Row Houses. Founded by a small collective of Black artists and community leaders and helmed by MacArthur Genius Award winner Rick Lowe, the logic of Project Row Houses is simple: strong communities and great artwork are only possible when people’s basic needs are met. Lowe and his collaborators restored thirty-nine shotgun houses in Houston’s Ward back in the ’90s. They award fellowships to artists who live and work in nine of the houses for a period of one year. Tomashi Jackson had a formative fellowship there, as did Sam Durant and Whitfield Lovell. Beyond the residencies, Project Row Houses offers a residential program for young single mothers, after-school programs, and entrepreneurship programs to encourage Black-owned businesses. The entire enterprise is what Lowe calls “social sculpture,” an artistic practice that’s inextricable from political action and community engagement.

A new generation of artists and community organizers has taken up this mantle, including Amarie Gipson, founder of The Reading Room. This hybrid space combines a library, community center, and art gallery. The Reading Room celebrates Black visual culture in all its forms, from art and design monographs to film screenings to community conversations. It includes everything from literary salons devoted to Octavia E. Butler to documentaries on West African cultural repatriation.

Other fixtures, like Adam Marnie, are making waves in the independent publishing world with F Magazine and its accompanying art gallery and indie publishing house, also called F. The gallery has showcased Houston contemporary art stalwart Mark Flood and even collaborated on a sprawling monograph titled The Origin of Mark Flood (2022). Marnie’s wife, Rebecca Matalon, is a curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum, where she is currently working on the Mary Ellen Carroll retrospective.

Meanwhile, lovers of outsider art have no shortage of things to explore. There’s the Orange Show, a carnivalesque fever dream devoted to the restorative power of citrus, created by postman Jeff McKissack in 1956. Or there’s the Beer Can House, a folk art installation created in the late ’60s by John Milkovisch, who adorned the exterior of his home with flattened beer cans and caps. Why? “I got sick of mowing the grass,” he once said.

Houston is a town of endurance. In a city beset by extreme weather and perpetual change, the art that crops up around the city is a testament to the creativity of Houstonians. As Untitled Art Houston approaches in the fall, it’s important to remember John de Menil’s response to a New York friend who once decried Houston as a cultural wasteland.

“It’s in the desert that miracles happen.”

The Menil Collection, Allora & Calzadilla's Graft. Photo by Caroline Phillipone

Stitched in Place: Do Ho Suh at the Tate Modern

The Genesis Exhibition Do Ho Suh at Tate Modern © Tate Photography (Jai Monaghan)

text by Poppy Baring

Do Ho Suh’s first major London exhibition at the Tate Modern showcases decades of his work that touches on themes that bring the importance of home back into audiences’ hearts. The title of the exhibition Walk The House derives from the Korean expression Hanok regarding a traditional house that can be packed up, transported and re-assembled across space and time. Originally from Seoul and now living in London, Suh has lived and worked across many continents. Walk The House involves impressive ghostly fabric structures, time-worn graphite rubbings, and intricate drawings that are to be experienced physically but also ask viewers to look introspectively at their own inner worlds.

The overwhelming size of some of these works contrasts against meticulous drawings and delicate watercolors and while the former risks overshadowing the latter, this contrast is precisely the point. By juxtaposing the grand with the intricate, Suh shows that memory does not exist at a single scale. We remember our homes and their rooms, while also holding onto the small elements that fill them. Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul 2024, presented for the first time, demonstrates this well and is at the heart of this emotional experience. Here, Do Ho Suh outlines his current home and partners this with architectural features from previous spaces he and his family have inhabited. 

Rubbing/Loving Project: Seoul Home, 2013–2022 is the first and one of the most powerful works exhibited. Newly reconstructed but made over several months, the large-scale wall installation was created using a practice which in itself is meditative. The artist’s childhood home was covered with Hanji (mulberry paper) and gently rubbed with graphite capturing its structure and all its blemishes, which were enhanced by the elements the paper was left exposed to. This process mirrors how we recall our own homes—not as exact images, but through textures, sensations, and fragments of detail.

Do Ho Suh Nests, 2024. Courtesy the Artist and Lehmann Maupin New York, Seoul and London and Victoria Miro. Photography by Jeon Taeg Su © Do Ho Suh

Visitors continue to move through the colorful corridors of Nests, 2024, where Suh stitches together rooms, hallways, and entryways from buildings in Seoul, New York, London, and Berlin. These liminal spaces, often passed through without thought, become the focus, transformed into a fluid architecture that defies the logic of solid buildings. These in-betweens embody the shifting nature of memory and migration, like walking through the echo of a home that never fully was, but somehow feels known.

Suh’s films: Robin Hood Gardens, 2018 and Dong In Apartments, 2022, underscore the ever-changing layout of cities like London and Daegu. They show built environments as malleable living things that continue to be loved, destroyed, rebuilt and changed alongside the rest of us. This rich and colorful exhibition and the themes it touches on are as relevant as they have ever been with pieces reflecting on how political unrest coat our memories of time and space. Home is something to be reminded of and while some reviews have suggested the exhibition feels overcrowded, perhaps that is not far off from most people’s lived experience of where and how they live their lives.

The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House is on view through October 19th 2025 at the Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG.

Design, Desert, and the Art of Slowing Down: A Family Stay At The Desert Wave House

text by Oliver Kupper

We packed the car and headed to Palm Desert to stay at the Desert Wave House, a mid-century modern dreamscape nestled among the palms and rock formations. It was one of those family getaways that somehow managed to be both restful and quietly transformative—a pause, a breath. And, thanks to a new collaboration with Design Within Reach and Boutique Homes, it became something else too: a design-lover’s immersion, curated down to the very last detail.

It’s the first time Design Within Reach has offered this kind of experience—a full takeover of a private architectural home, styled with furniture pieces from the Paul Smith Collection, which merges iconic pieces from DWR’s roster with the legendary British designer and fabrics textiles developed with Maharam. And you can feel that intention the moment you step inside. It’s not just staged to be photographed—it’s designed to be lived in.

The Desert Wave House, designed in the 1950s by Walter S. White, is almost unreal in its beauty. From the road, it ripples into view like a mirage—low-slung, curvilinear, with its signature undulating roofline that echoes the nearby Santa Rosa Mountains. Inside, the architecture feels elemental. Soft light pours through clerestory windows, bouncing across poured across uncovered original terrazzo floors. But what makes the space sing right now is the way Design Within Reach has layered in warmth and ease—simple lines, beautiful textures, tactile materials. We arrived midafternoon and immediately dropped our bags. The house gently asks you to slow down.

One of my favorite rooms is the living room, with a vinyl record player—yes, a real one—which sat on a credenza stocked with records. We put on Miles Davis while making breakfast and then later flipped to Fleetwood Mac as the sun dipped low. It sounds like a small thing, but those musical moments grounded the day. There’s something so physical and present about putting a record on and letting the crackle warm the room.

And then, of course, there’s the pool. A sparkling, perfectly proportioned pool with views out to mountains. We spent hours floating and watching shadows stretch across the patio. Design Within Reach had furnished the outdoor space with low-slung loungers, architectural umbrellas, and side tables made for lemonade (or spritzes, depending on the hour). In the evenings, we watched the sky go pink, then purple, then absolutely star-splattered.

What struck me most was how seamless everything felt—not just the interiors, but the experience of being in the house. The kitchen was stocked with beautiful tableware; the bedrooms had DWR linens so soft they might as well have been washed a hundred times. Every corner was photogenic—but also intuitive and functional. It’s not easy to create a space that feels elevated and effortless. But they did.

This partnership between Design Within Reach and the Desert Wave House feels like something new. Not just a showroom in situ, but a lived-in, emotionally resonant experience of what good design can actually do. How it can set a tone. Encourage rest. Invite connection. For years, DWR has been synonymous with accessible modern design—you walk into their stores and can imagine these pieces in your own home. But this collaboration takes that idea a step further. It asks: What happens if you let people live inside the fantasy for a few days? The answer is: you come away inspired.

For our family, it was more than just a stylish weekend. It was a memory—of barefoot breakfasts and shared swims, of design conversations. It was time spent inside a space that reminded us how much atmosphere matters. How much the way a room feels shapes the way you show up in it.

We left reluctantly, peeling ourselves away from the sun-drenched terrace and carefully repacking our half-read books and damp swimsuits. But we also left with ideas. About what it means to create a beautiful, functional home. About the joy of a well-balanced chair. About the luxury of slowing down enough to notice details.

It’s rare that a branded experience actually sticks—that it feels like more than a surface-level showcase. But this one did. The Desert Wave House wasn’t just beautifully curated—it was generous, lived-in, soulful. It reminded us that good design doesn’t shout. It whispers. It nudges. It opens up space for presence.

The experience can be booked until August 31st here.

Telfar Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary Not With Spectacle But With Substance

Two decades after its quiet beginnings in Queens, Telfar turned the streets of New York into a runway and the community into the main event. This was not just a fashion show; it was a reminder that independence, creativity, and cultural impact are what fashion is all about.

Courtesy of Jason Nocito

What began twenty years ago in a Queens apartment by a teenage Telfar Clemens has evolved into the largest Black-owned fashion brand in the world, and likely the longest-running genderless brand in history. The brand has charted its own path entirely, remaining 100% independent, without investors and little entanglement with the fashion industry. Yet, with its captivating DNA, Telfar managed to build a loyal following of over three million customers along the way.

Telfar has long stood out as a brand that simply gets it right. It’s visionary, equitable, and deeply in tune with its audience. From the beginning, it gained a loyal community drawn to its commitment to cultural storytelling, accessible pricing, and customer-first values. This integrity helped elevate the iconic “T” bag into one of the most sought-after accessories of the past decade, carried by A-listers and aspirational shoppers alike.

Over the weekend, following a five-year hiatus, Clemens took to the streets of New York City to make his return to the runway.

 

Courtesy of Telfar

 

At the show, the support and love were undeniable. Fans, friends, family, and industry insiders all came crowding to the street behind the Telfar store, fittingly on Juneteenth weekend. Among them were familiar faces like Luar’s Raul Lopez and Solange Knowles, who’s often cited as the one who promoted the brand in its early years. Her sister, Beyoncé echoed that same support in her 2022 Renaisssance album, closing it with a shoutout to the brand: “This Telfar bag imported, Birkins them shit’s in storage,” encapsulating everything the brand is all about.

As always, Telfar did things their own way. Instead of a traditional runway cast, the show featured people directly from the brand’s community. Through a series of open castings at the Telfar store called New Models, anyone could take part. The final lineup was chosen not by insiders but by the public, who voted live during the first episode of New Models, streamed on Telfar’s own platform on June 19. Friends, family, and longtime collaborators all walked the show, making it a true celebration of the people who have shaped the brand.

Telfar’s Spring/Summer 2025 collection was a bold celebration of community and creativity, and every look was met with cheers and applause. It opened with reimagined suiting and shirting, crafted from deconstructed jersey T-shirts that honored the brand’s twenty-year history. Loose-fitting jackets, flared trousers, and relaxed silhouettes offered a fresh take on fashion staples; easy streetwear, and polished tailoring—echoing the brand’s ability to capture New York’s forward-looking vibe. The collection continued with khaki in tones of beige, black, and camo as a foundation, denim spanning vintage to futuristic rib knit dresses, and logo jelly sandals in various colors, just in time for the minimalist footwear wave.

Courtesy of Jason Nocito

Accessories took center stage as much as the clothing did, proving once more why Telfar changed the way the industry thinks about “it” bags. The debut of the Tie Bag—an evolution of the Telfar shopper as a slouchy hobo tote—is available in three colors and one perfect size. Of course, the legendary Shopping Bag was also present in spirit, reminding everyone just how Telfar became the brand known as Bushwick Birkin. Together, these pieces underscored Telfar’s core message that quality design and cultural resonance need not break the bank.

Twenty years in, Telfar has proven that good things are worth the wait. The fashion industry constantly demands speed and instant reinvention, often leaving creatives forced to accumulate. But Telfar Clemens has built an empire that allows him to listen to a slower, more authentic rhythm, and he understands the value of risk in fashion. As he celebrates the brand’s platinum anniversary, it’s never been more clear that Clemens is still winning the game, with rules he made himself.

Autre "Desire" Issue Launch and Signing With Mia Khalifa and Nick Sethi At Dover Street Market Paris

A queue snaked around Rei Kawakubo’s transportive forest installation all the way to the streets of Le Marais for Mia Khalifa and Nick Sethi at Dover Street Market Paris’ Rose Bakery. Photographs by Oliver Kupper