VINCENT DARRÉ BRINGS FANTASY TO PARIS’ LE MAGNIFIQUE HOTEL
 
French designer Vincent Darré has brought his theatrical imagination to Hôtel Le Magnifique, a hotel on Rue de la Gaîté in Paris’ 14th arrondissement. Located in a neighborhood historically associated with theaters, cabarets, and the artistic life of Montparnasse, the project transforms hospitality into an immersive experience shaped by fantasy, mythology, and the performing arts. The building itself carries an unusual history, having originally housed Les Mille Colonnes, a renowned theater dating back to the early 19th century. Its historic façade now introduces a series of interiors where decorative elements, unexpected colors, and...

Florence Quivar’s blend of triple cream voice and superior musical expression earned her a discography and videography to rival those of any of her contemporaries.

“Brazil is a country that has never really looked at itself,” artist Rosana Paulino — one of the nation’s representatives at this year’s Venice Biennale — tells curator and researcher Daniela Mayer in an interview today. So Paulino sets herself to the task, coopting the European form of the illustrated naturalist album — “images made by foreigners for foreigners” — to represent the experience of Black Brazilian women. All the world over, art is a flashpoint for political struggle. In Paris, art students block the entrance of the Louvre to protest France’s overcrowded and underresourced schools, Staff Repoter Anna Lee writes. In Colombia, artists are out on the streets, fighting back...

Goran Tomcic brings reflective sculpture and performance to MOCA London.

Kendalle Getty turns mirrors, sculpture and self-image into a theatrical Paris installation.

RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA BRINGS THAI FISHING BOATS TO ART BASEL PARIS
 
Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija has designed two monumental stainless steel tables inspired by traditional Thai fishing boats for Dalad’s, a temporary restaurant presented by We Are Ona during Art Basel Paris 2026. Installed inside a secret location near Place de l’Étoile, the elongated structures function simultaneously as dining tables and working kitchens, with integrated seating and steam pots that allow food to be prepared and served directly in front of guests. Conceived in collaboration with chef Dalad Kambhu and We Are Ona founder Luca Pronzato, the installation places cooking and social interaction at the center of the...

kengo kuma on music as a source of architectural inspiration
 
For Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, music is closely tied to the way he thinks about space. A longtime admirer and personal friend of Ryuichi Sakamoto, he sees parallels between the composer’s approach to music and his own work in architecture. ‘He created a new image of what an Asian artist could be, crossing boundaries between East and West, tradition and modernity,’ Kengo Kuma tells us. His selections for this edition of designboom listens move between jazz, ambient music, classical compositions, and experimental sounds, with each track offering a different point of entry into his creative practice.
 
In our weekly series, we explore the...

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Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, January 1889 emerges like a vaguely familiar, climactic apparition about a third of the way through the new blockbuster exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton (FLV) in Paris. Here, we find “poor Vincent,” as he is occasionally referred to in the exhibition catalog, smoking a pipe, an activity he associated with calm contemplation. Behind him, swaths of orange and red form a bold contrast to his green jacket and matching green eyes, which steadily look back at us. As the painting’s title notes, we see the artist with his left ear in a white dressing; the work is one of two self-portraits he made after cutting off his earlobe following a...

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a tiny handbag for your smartphone
 
There’s now room for your AirPods, chapstick, and car key fob on the back of your phone, thanks to a stretchy silicone pocket by Los Angeles-based Ninja Labs. The company has introduced a MagSafe version of its Flex Pouch, a small, expandable compartment that attaches magnetically to compatible smartphones. It can be pulled off whenever you want, turning an ordinary phone into a tiny, stretchy handbag that’s ready to hold all the little things that tend to disappear into our pockets.
 
The pouch can accommodate anything from a single credit card to a thick stack of twenty, according to the company. Lip gloss and wireless earbuds can be squeezed inside, along with a...

So much has been said about John Berger over the past five decades that it almost feels trite to pile on. You know the familiar takeaways: that the critic and novelist taught us how to look and pay attention, believed art belongs to the people, exposed how the male gaze shapes our perception. So, it’s especially astounding that a new biography by Tom Overton has managed to both capture the scope of Berger’s influence and reframe him, first and foremost, as human.Author Megan O’Grady, who reflects on many of the same questions as Berger in her recent book How It Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Our Selves, penned a sensitive review of the biography and its approach to addressing the complex...

Hundreds protested at Colombia’s national museum in Bogotá this weekend, days after the country’s far-right government ordered the removal of objects addressing political violence, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ history — including a rainbow Pride Flag — in a move straight out of the Trumpian playbook. Inside the museum, images taken by locals showed stripped-down gallery walls bearing the haunting silhouettes of dismantled pamphlets and photographs; at the entrance, rows of police in riot gear stood at the ready to suppress demonstrators with water cannons and stun grenades. Under the order of President Abelardo De La Espriella, approximately 30 artworks referencing LGBTQ+ and feminist movements,...

Abu Dhabi government-owned developer Aldar announced plans for a new cultural district in the city dubbed “Noma,” as reported by The Art Newspaper. The announcement precedes the inaugural edition of Frieze Abu Dhabi, which will take place from November 19-22 in the capital of the United Arab Emirates. As the official fair partner for Frieze […]

Irish artist Patrick Graham and Northern Irish artist Cathy Wilkes have been named the winners of Dublin Gallery Weekend’s inaugural Francis Bacon Awards for Irish Visual Arts. Graham is the recipient of the €25,000 (about $29,000) Lifetime Achievement Award, while Wilkes is being honored with the €15,000 (about $17,000) Mid-Career Artist Award. Born in County […]

Though I spent six hours sauntering through the neighborhood for the 30th iteration of Gowanus Open Studios (GOS) on Saturday afternoon, I barely covered a tenth of the over 100 participating sites. Scattered throughout GOS' post-industrial labyrinth of stairwells, hallways, and nondescript entrances was a love letter to the notorious canal and the creative community formed along its banks, capturing the neighborhood's past and present as it hurtles toward its future as a shiny waterfront development. In the literal sense, I encountered a fair bit of plein air work spotlighting water remediation efforts on the canal and documenting familiar street corners before they change in the blink of an eye, as...

Melissa Brown has worn cat-eye makeup every day since she was a teenager. I can’t help but associate it with her paintings, where the sacred and profane converge amid mirrored surfaces, shop windows, psychics’ tables, and bedroom altars. The cat-eye flick is dramatic and powerful, dating back to ancient Egypt, where women wore mineral liner for its health properties and as protection against the evil eye. To connote the layering of our daily experience, Brown collages a spectrum of techniques: photography, plein-air painting, CMYK printing, airbrush, and stencil. Sometimes her paintings come with QR codes that send the viewer to an animation. Her painting “Commute” (2020) shows a hand with long...

Prairie, a Chicago gallery that helped put a range of cutting-edge artists on the path to success, will close after nine years. The gallery announced its closure on Friday by revealing that its forthcoming exhibition, a group show called “Retrospective,” would be its final one. “This will be our last show,” the gallery wrote on Instagram. Founded in 2017 by Tim Mann and Jack Schneider as an artist-run space, the gallery had a name that referred to “the ecosystem that thrived in and around Chicago prior to the region’s colonization and industrialization,” per a description written for a prior edition of Chicago Exhibition Week. It sought to show art in a setting that was “free from the pressures...

In surreal tableaux, mythological creatures interact with flora and fauna within dream-like realms. Insects, stars, metaphysical tendrils, and all-seeing eyes accompany human bodies with the heads of raptors. Rithika Merchant’s strange yet alluring symmetry contains what may be esoteric rituals or communions with the natural world. Each speculative, fable-like narrative taps into our collective anxiety about the environment and hope for healing. Merchant’s vibrant new body of work centers on hybrid creatures and a sense of the sacred, comprising the Mumbai-based artist’s solo exhibition The Dreaming Realm at Galerie LJ. She harnesses elemental phenomena like the earth, plants, fire, water, and the stars...

When the Bayeux Tapestry returns to Normandy next summer after its 10-month sojourn to London, the 11th-century textile will be re-presented in a new way that more closely resembles how it currently looks at the British Museum in London. Previously, reports Le Monde, the 770-pound, 220-foot-long embroidered cloth had been displayed vertically at the Bayeux Museum, which is closed for renovations and scheduled to reopen in October 2027. At the British Museum, however, it has been displayed flat, in a darkened exhibition hall. When it goes back on view in Normandy, it will be reinstalled on a slanted table. Catherine Pégard, France’s Minister of Culture, posted on X that the tapestry’s presentation was...

Protesters assembled around Bogota’s National Museum of Colombia over the weekend after the removal of more than 30 objects “related to the struggles of the LGBTQ+ movement, feminism, and the political left,” according to the digital news source Colombia One. As reported, “The decision by Abelardo De La Espriella’s government, announced last Friday, turned the area around the museum into a site of public demonstrations against what protesters describe as ‘an attempt to impose an ideological view of the country’s history.’” The protests on Saturday and Sunday included anti-censorship sentiment and political theater but also clashes with the police, who used water cannons and riot-control...

Hi-Fructose co-founder Atta visited three 21c Museum Hotels in four days to explored their galleries and the towns around them. Here is his report! 21c locations combine actual contemporary art museum gallery exhibitions which are free and open to the general public (whether you stay there or not) with fine dining.  Depending on the location, […]
The post Hi-Fructose Field Trip: We Visited Three 21c Museum Hotels in Four Days first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

New York’s Massey Klein Gallery will close its doors after nine years, saying that after initial success, the numbers no longer add up to pay for its showroom on the Lower East Side and support the dealers’ family and the gallery’s artists. Husband-and-wife team Garrett Klein and Ryan Massey felt called by their Christian faith to open the gallery, and say they’ll continue on with nomadic projects. They announced the closure in a Saturday Instagram post. The gallery’s current show, of Kate McQuillen, is extended through November 20. The gallery has participated in prominent fairs including the Armory Show and NADA in New York, Untitled in Miami, and the Dallas Art Fair. At NADA New York in 2025,...

VERTICAL PLANTERS ENCLOSE FOUR-LEVEL RESIDENCE IN SÃO PAULO
 
Designed by Isay Weinfeld with landscape architecture by Rodrigo Oliveira, 111 House is a four-level residence in São Paulo, Brazil, created for a family of contemporary art collectors. Positioned on a compact urban plot, the house organizes its footprint along the left site boundary, leaving a lush, full-depth garden strip along the right side. This arrangement allows the primary living spaces, breakfast room, and upper-level bedrooms to open directly onto outdoor greenery, optimizing natural light and cross-ventilation across every level. A rear setback further opens up the lower level, creating a sunken lightwell court that brings illumination...

New subdivisions are spreading across Westside, Bennington, and Elkhorn faster than most city maps can keep up. As properties get... Read More

Art doesn’t always have to hang on a gallery wall. Sometimes, it finds its way onto a denim jacket, a... Read More

Following an eighteen-month deadlocked negotiation between MCH Group, the Swiss-based owner of five international Art Basel fairs, and the city of Miami Beach, the fair has announced that it will stay in Florida through 2031. MCH Group argued that the city’s fee to use the convention center every December was too high and threatened to […]

The British Museum in London announced a £30 million ($40 million) gift from a longstanding supporter on October 17, according to Artnet News. It will go towards the implementation of the museum’s Masterplan redevelopment. The donor’s identity has not been revealed. The £1 billion Masterplan project is among the most comprehensive transformations in the history […]

Sin Sin Man explores transformation, intuition and renewal in Solar Return.

French demonstrators blocked the entrance doors to the Louvre this morning, amid nationwide protests over the state of public schools and the rising cost of living. Saturday saw marches around the country, and law enforcement officials said that they made more than 2,400 arrests and cited incidents of property destruction and looting. Artnet shared an […]

Combining elemental rhythms with human-made materials, DRIFT’s latest sculptural choreography invites visitors to consider their connection to nature in an interactive experience influenced by the planet’s intrinsic processes and systems. “Aeolus” is named for the ancient Greek deity of the wind and comprises an environment characterized by numerous glass rods with tiny lights inside. These are activated by visitors’ movements. “Like wind itself, the work only fully exists through interaction,” say Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, founders of the Amsterdam-based design studio in a statement. “It is both still and in motion, fixed yet constantly changing.” Light and glass were chosen to...

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured some remarkable phenomena in space, from the Horsehead Nebula to the unbelievable “Pillars of Creation.” Things just got a little bit wilder with brilliant images of the Lion Nebula (NGC 2392) captured by the telescope’s NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument). The shape is formed by the remains of a dying star now at a phase known as a white dwarf, when a very dense stellar core remains as it sheds its outer layers. On NGC 2392, the bright center looks like a little nose. “The central dying star is so hot that its radiation is ‘cooking’ everything from the inside and producing a bubble of ionized hydrogen gas as it does,”...

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Patrick DeWitt on Instagram

Sometimes, the first time you hear an oeuvre, it becomes the definitive performance for you.

Our critics assess Kansas's own Ben Bliss in a (nearly) all-American program performed at the Park Avenue Armory and Vocal Arts DC.

An elegant rendition, and an artistically true one.

The world's leading tenor garners a tepid response at Carnegie Hall's season opener featuring the Berliner Philharmoniker.

A nude figure with frazzled hair lies in bed, the sickly colored linens draped across their upper body. Fingertips glowing red as if inflamed, the character grasps a navy phone and stares catatonically at the screen. A vibrant infinity symbol is superimposed on the scene, emerging as endless loops of energy and mesmerization from the device. The all-too-relatable portrait is part of a suite of new works by Robin F. Williams capturing the omnipotent techno-dystopia we’re collectively barreling toward. Extrapolating on the ways humanity and machines merge, the Brooklyn-based artist presents a mystical vision of another world infused with pop culture and art history. “Merminator” (2026), oil on linen, 60 x...

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Patricia Reyes’s Website
Patricia Reyes on Instagram

Federico Veronesi received the top honor of the 2026 Wildlife Photographer of the Year for his poignant black-and-white image of a female elephant carrying her deceased calf. The portrait represents a rare insight into animals’ habits we have yet to fully understand and demonstrates the power of timing and persistence in photography. Veronesi had been tracking elephants in the Huab River Valley of Namibia when he encountered some unusual drag marks on the earth. He eventually caught up with the family, and the adult emerged with the calf’s leg wedged between her trunk and tusk. “Behaviours centering on death have been observed in both Asian and African elephants, including vocalisations, guarding the...

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Shuto Okayasu’s Website
Shuto Okayasu on Instagram

Yue Zhang
I’m an illustrator/ graphic designer currently based in Beijing. Through illustration, I make connections to everyday life, seeking out beauty in the midst of chaos. My work gives visual form to inner feelings and experiences. I see each creative process as an adventure, specializing in the translation of text into vibrant visual narratives.
This zine《Let’s go to the park》 is an experimental work on visual language, creating narrative solely through visual imagery. It came from some moments when I was just zoning out in the park: from the amusing interactions between a dog and its owner, the swirling ripples in the fountain, the sudden downpour of rain… I blended these unrelated moments...

Eva Verbeeck  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Eva Verbeeck’s Website
Eva Verbeeck on Instagram

By Kristine Schomaker I keep thinking about Nomadland. Fern driving her van across that enormous American landscape. Not running from something. Moving toward something she could not quite name yet. That feeling of needing less. Of being, as Dominique Moody says, at home in the world. NOMAD: Dominique Moody and the Assemblage of Home is on view at the Armory Arts Center in Pasadena through January 16, 2027, part of the year-long city celebration for the centennials of Route 66 and the...

 
When we say ‘think of the colour yellow’, what comes up for you? Our latest photobook, THE COLOUR LIBRARY: YELLOW, is bursting with inspiration, from delicate blossoms and ripe lemons to eye-catching clothing and sunny décor.
Across 100 photos, our photographers celebrate all things yellow: some chanced upon in the street or in nature, others meticulously planned. Of course, there are loads of different hues that count as yellow, from acidic brights to mustard, egg yolk, and canary. You’ll find them all in the book!
The cover image, by Jo Martindale, submerges us in a ball pit of yellow plastic balls: it’s immersive, fun, and hard to look away. The yellow we find around us definitely has multiple...

By Jody Zellen Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery September 3–November 22, 2026 Susan Silton has never been an artist attached to a single medium. Her practice, which spans more than forty years, interweaves photography, design, performance, sculpture, video, audio, and installation. Working as a graphic designer in the 1970s and ’80s shaped her visual acuity and formal sensibilities. Her production is conceptually strong and visually coherent and very little is left to chance. It is a delight...

To celebrate the retrospective exhibition Future Pastime featuring the work of futurist Syd Mead opening at the Transamerica Pyramid Annex Gallery in San Francisco this evening, we are showing previews of paintings from the show as well as the full article which Silke Tudor wrote on the late legendary industrial designer in Hi-Fructose Issue 33. […]
The post Future Pastime: The Paintings of Late Futurist Syd Mead Arrives At The Transamerica Pyramid Center in San Francisco first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

The women look concerned, and weary. They are ready to repel an attack. The women look in love, but bored. “When are you leaving,” they might wonder. The women are only half-present. Matted hair, two eyes, a hand, and the rest have either turned inward or run away. The women are multifaceted. Their eyes are […]
The post Akika Kurata Explores Hidden Feelings in Her Paintings first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

In the “feminist west” that lives on Jennifer Nehrbass’s canvases, women ride horseback and hike in fashionable attire. They appear in head-and-shoulder portraits against fiery backgrounds and nude in pieces where figurative and landscape painting converge. In her work, Nehrbass challenges the common depictions of the U.S. West. “You would always have the man who […]
The post Jennifer Nehrbass Challenges the common depictions of the U.S. West first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

By Kristine Schomaker Friday night I stood at the AIDS Monument in West Hollywood and watched artists perform five-minute pieces in the open air as the sun went down. ACTION = LIFE, presented by LACE and the Performance Art Museum as part of Circa: Queer Histories Festival. A marathon of performances. So many friends. So much history in one place. I drove home still feeling it. Thinking about the first performance I ever saw that made me understand what my own work was actually about....

By Kristine Schomaker I learned yesterday that my friend Scott Froschauer died suddenly. I've known him for almost ten years, and I'm still trying to find a place to put this. Scott was a Shoebox artist, one of the early ones. We worked together on several projects, but the one I keep coming back to is an art salon we put together on consent, negotiation, and the male gaze, how the male posture of viewing women frames any sign of femininity as an invitation, and what it would mean to actually...

By Betty Ann Brown "In the end, photography for me is just an excuse to get to know the world."—Graciela Iturbide Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide creates haunting images that portray the people, places, and events of the extraordinary cultures and geographies of her home country. Iturbide has a unique artistic practice that involves living and working with the people she chooses to photograph. Her process has made possible the strange and wonderful depictions for which she is known. In...

With a creative lexicon featuring yarn, pixels, beeswax, and spray paint, Mexican artist Laura Ortiz Vega has created a new language for herself, one that speaks to the present and the past by using traditional and contemporary techniques, as well as rural and urban sensibilities, to create a body of work that synthesizes all her […]
The post Capturing Cultural memory with the Urban Embroidery of LAURA ORTIZ VEGA first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Paris Design Week and Maison & Objet are two parts of the same September design ecosystem in the French capital.

 
Right now, it’s more important than ever to celebrate the natural world and preserve the biodiversity and habitats around us. Enter FLORA: our latest photobook, which celebrates growth, resilience and organic beauty in flowers, trees and plant life.
In 100 images, photographers around the world share what they see, from much-loved gardens and atmospheric woodland to eye-catching blossom, daffodils, cacti, and a glimpse of cowslips and gorse in hedgerows. It’s not just about the countryside – urban nature shots are also in the mix.
If you feel more relaxed after looking at floral images, you’re not alone. A Japanese scientific study, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology (2020), found...

 
Exploring the people, places, and cultures that shape cities around the world, The City Series showcases images that respond to place not as a fixed subject, but as an idea shaped by experience, observation, and interpretation.
100 images of the city. Welcome to Cambridge.
Published by Shutter Hub Editions, and with a foreword by Alice Ryan, this beautiful collection of 100 images of Cambridge is a portrait of the city through the eyes of international photographers.
Order THE CITY SERIES: CAMBRIDGE here.
   
The photographers featured in THE CITY SERIES: CAMBRIDGE are: Zaklina Anderson, Robert Barcia, Viktor Barkhatov, Catherine Breslin, Tara Bucklow, Tiina Burton, Alison Carter, steven chandler, Alice...

It is credited with ‘democratising photography’ on a global level – and now Shutter Hub is making its most democratic move yet. As of this month, the organisation will pass into the control of the community it was built for, in what founder Karen Harvey MBE describes as ‘a logical next step: to make things more equitable we need multiple perspectives.’ The announcement follows Karen’s decision to remove paid memberships last year, making Shutter Hub ‘fully open-access and available at no cost to all’. It’s a typically altruistic move from the social entrepreneur: also the founder of Toiletries Amnesty, the award-winning NGO. She was made an MBE in 2024 for services to people living in hygiene...