Summary

InScope, formerly Scope Art Show, will open its inaugural edition from December 1 through December 6 during the upcoming Miami Art WeekThe fair is designed to make collecting personal, allowing for deeper connections between artists, galleries, and collectorsProgramming includes talks, performances, tours, wellness events, and large-scale feature projects from Alake Shilling, Aurora Mititelu, Blue Floor Project, Ceren Arslan, Jason Hackenwerth, Nurse, Rabi Towing, and Swoon

InScope is the new fair joining Miami this December, and, designed for discovery, it’s looking to shake things up during the city’s upcoming Art Week.

The inaugural edition will hit the sands on Ocean Drive at 8th Street between December 1 and 6, planting its indoor and outdoor art installations, gallery pavilions, and social spaces across 220,000 square feet. Built around curiosity and connection, the event introduces a new format designed to bring artists, galleries, and collectors together in encounters that feel personal. “Art gives those conversations a starting point,” said InScope’s CEO and Co-founder Matt Middleton. “Our ambition is for people to leave with the relationships they came for and the inspiration they didn’t expect.”

While the full gallery list is coming soon, its day-to-night programming so far offers a promising mix of talks, performances, tours, and wellness events. And its Feature Projects roster is already looking stacked. The first wave of announced projects includes Alake Shilling (Tlaloc Studios), Aurora Mititelu, Blue Floor Project (Fuze and Baha Mar), Ceren Arslan, Jason Hackenwerth (CAMP Gallery), Nurse (Walshy Fire), Rabi Towing, and Swoon.

And while this marks the debut edition, the minds behind it aren’t the new kids on the block. Headed by Middleton, Alexis Hubshman, Hayley River Smith, and the former SCOPE Art Show team, InScope leans on 25 years of championing artists and galleries to reconsider and create space for diverse perspectives and experiences. The art of collecting arrives with a sense of excitement and belonging, whether you're a first-time buyer or a seasoned pro.

“There isn’t only one way to experience art,” Smith, InScope’s director and recent State of Art featuree, explained. “We want to give people reasons to spend time, ask questions, and find something that stays with them.”

InScope will hold its inaugural edition from December 1 through 6 in Miami Beach. For those heading to Art Week, you can secure your early bird tickets today.

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Summary

Phillips’ Hong Kong Evening Sale brings together 20 modern and contemporary art lots.Gerhard Richter, Zeng Fanzhi and Zao Wou-Ki headline the auction.The sale takes place on today at Phillips’ West Kowloon headquarters.

Phillips is bringing together a special selection of modern and contemporary art for its Hong Kong Evening Sale today with 20 lots spanning influential artists across generations and geographies. Held at the auction house’s Asia headquarters in West Kowloon, the sale is led by works from Gerhard Richter, Zao Wou-Ki and Zeng Fanzhi, each representing a formative moment within the artist’s practice. The broader lineup also includes names such as Hajime Sorayama, Lauren Quin, Natee Utarit, Yayoi Kusama and Issy Wood, with Phillips emphasizing rarity, provenance and art-historical significance across the offering.

At the forefront is Gerhard Richter’s "Abstraktes Bild (522-1)" from 1983, estimated at $18 million - $25 million HKD (approx. $2.31 million - $3.21 million USD). Created during Richter’s celebrated “Wild Abstracts” period and the same year he relocated from Düsseldorf to Cologne, the work captures his increasingly mature use of the squeegee, layering vivid passages of color through a process that deliberately balances control and chance. Its provenance further distinguishes the painting: it was acquired directly from Richter by curator Kasper König and later included in the landmark Gerhard Richter. Bilder 1962–1985 retrospective, which travelled through major European institutions.

Two significant Asian works further reinforce the sale’s focus on pivotal transitions. Zeng Fanzhi’s "Mask Series No. 4" from 1994, estimated at $11 million - $16 million HKD (approx. $1.41 million - $2.05 million USD), dates to the inaugural year of his now-iconic Mask series and features an unusually rare double-seated composition. Produced shortly after Zeng moved from Wuhan to Beijing, the painting uses its masked figures to reflect tensions around identity, conformity and urban transformation in 1990s China.

Zao Wou-Ki’s "Sans titre (La Théière)" from 1951, meanwhile, is estimated at 10million-15 million HKD (approx. $1.28 million - $1.92 million USD) and captures the artist at another crucial turning point: following his encounter with Paul Klee, recognizable still-life forms begin to dissolve into the calligraphic gestures, spatial freedom and cross-cultural abstraction that would define his mature work.

Phillips’ Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale takes place at 4:30 p.m. HKT on September 30, with public viewing running through the same day at its West Kowloon galleries.

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For Al Diaz, the history of SAMO© has never been as simple as the story that followed it. Created with Jean-Michel Basquiat in the late 1970s, SAMO© has since been folded into the mythology surrounding Basquiat, often described as an alias, a conventional graffiti tag or shorthand for “Same Old Shit.” Diaz sees it differently. What the two teenagers developed was closer to an invented product: a series of cryptic, satirical messages written for anyone walking the streets of downtown New York, not just other graffiti writers.

Nearly five decades later, Diaz is still pushing back against the simplified version of that history. “I’m not going to stand around and listen to a history that you’re part of being told incorrectly,” he says. “I’m not one to sit there quietly.”

That conversation carries into ‘SAMO: TRANSATLANTICATION,’ Diaz’s first solo exhibition in London, which opened September 25 at D’Stassi Art. Alongside new SAMO© canvases, the exhibition presents works from his ongoing subway-signage series and mixed-media practice, offering a broader picture of an artist whose relationship with language has continued to evolve well beyond the project he created as a teenager.

We spoke with Diaz about the real origins of SAMO©, working with Basquiat before the mythology took over, why “Same Old Shit” misses the point, and what it means to revisit that history nearly 50 years later.

How did this exhibition come about, and what’s your relationship with the gallery?
I think I met one of the guys from the gallery, Michael Howes, maybe in 2019 or ’20, about six years ago. And we did a collaboration with an artist that we were representing.

And then after that, we ran an edition of two images of prints. And we did that, and then we stayed in touch over the last few years. And they’d been talking about doing a show primarily focusing on the SAMO stuff, which is something I did with Basquiat back in 1978.

You revived SAMO in 2016. What made you return to it after so many years?
The whole thing was motivated by the fact that SAMO had become this globally recognized graffiti because of the association with Basquiat. But the story had been skewed over the decades, the fact that I was the other half of SAMO, and the fact that I was the actual graffiti artist. Because Basquiat, okay, he did some writing on the walls and stuff like that, but he was not part of what people assume when one says “graffiti artist,” the New York City subway, that whole movement. He was not really part of that.

And SAMO was not subway graffiti, nor was it really a tag per se. It was not part of that subculture. It was something coming from a completely different place. It was more conceptual art, really conceptual writing.

Was part of that return about correcting the history around SAMO and your role in it?
I wanted to clarify what it was, to actually do actual SAMOs so that people could see and read and understand that it wasn’t what they thought it was, for the most part. Because of bad information, the internet, copy-paste information from dubious sources, etc., etc. That’s how a lot of our history is obtained and proliferated, and that’s just wrong.

So it was my obligation to clarify it. And that’s why in 2016 I revived SAMO. It’s not that I was trying to jump on the bus, jump on the bandwagon or anything. It was because it was something that was 50 percent mine. The point is that if it was being celebrated, then you would have to celebrate the entire story, and me as well.

I’m not going to stand around and listen to a history that you’re part of being told incorrectly. I can’t do that. I’m not one to sit there quietly.

"People always think that it somehow stands for, or translates to, 'same old shit,' but it’s not that."

Who was Al Diaz before SAMO?
Well, I was born in the Lower East Side, and I’m bilingual, Puerto Rican. So language became something of value from a very young age. When you speak two languages, from my experience, you develop a value for it, because you can do all sorts of different things with the language. You kind of shift in thinking and dreaming; you have to shift in and out of a linguistic format. And then you can combine the two.

I grew up in the Lower East Side in a housing project during the ’60s and ’70s. I also spent some time up in Washington Heights, which is arguably the spawning ground for New York City graffiti culture. Around the age of 12, in 1971, I became really attracted to that. It wasn’t something that was seen much in the neighborhood I grew up in, in the Lower East Side, so I sort of imported it.

I was seeking an identity, I guess, at the age of 12. And I became a graffiti artist.

How did you end up meeting Basquiat?
I was always involved in art since I was a kid, so I ended up going to the High School of Art and Design. But I was there for three years during the strongest parts of my involvement in graffiti culture, and as a result I kind of flunked out, because I was more focused on doing graffiti than on trying to finish school.

By the 11th grade, I was asked to leave, and they suggested an alternative, experimental school. And that’s where I met Jean-Michel. That’s when I met Jean-Michel Basquiat at City-As-School, the experimental alternative school I mentioned. We became friends. And then the SAMO graffiti would come about a year after we had known each other.

You’ve called SAMO an “imaginary product.” What was the idea behind that?
People always think that it somehow stands for, or translates to, “same old shit,” but it’s not that. The word itself was derived from “same old, same old,” but it could have been anything. It just became SAMO because it was a word we were using. It was part of our vernacular, our lexicon, within a group of friends. So we gave it a different meaning.

Jean-Michel wrote a story for our school newspaper, which we were both part of. It was a fantasy about some guy who had a kiosk that sold religions. And the special of the day, the religion he was trying to sell to this person who came in asking about religions, was called SAMO. So this word we were using amongst our friends had now transformed into this religion.

Then we took it one step further. We made these pamphlets with drawings of people who had experienced SAMO. It was like testimonies. What we were trying to do was create a cult or religion, something that offered life-changing results. We never explained what it did exactly, but somehow it was gonna change your life. It was a parody on the whole cult and religion thing. It could even be a drug.

What do you remember most about working with Basquiat before all the fame and mythology?
Well, he was kind of a soft-spoken person, but he was very deliberate and very certain about what he wanted to do. He was also super articulate, so his sentences in terms of what we were doing together were always pretty good. On that particular project, we worked pretty well together.

He was still young, about a year and a half younger than me, so I had kind of a big-brother relationship with him. But he was quite mature, and he had great ideas, and he was funny. He was super, piercingly intelligent. Really sharp.

"Graffiti is a very insular community. Graffiti artists basically write graffiti for other graffiti artists."

How did that turn into the SAMO statements people saw on the street?
We started writing these descriptions: “SAMO as an alternative to God.” “SAMO for you.” “SAMO as an end to mind-wash religion, nowhere politics, and bogus philosophy.” “SAMO as an end to mass-produced individuality.”

All these nicely worded phrases that would catch people’s attention, and they would be like, “What is this?” That’s how it started, and that’s where we took off with it. We would write them together and edit each other, reject some, and keep a format of very draftsman-type handwriting so that it looked like block print, nothing like a tag.

Graffiti is a very insular community. Graffiti artists basically write graffiti for other graffiti artists. What we were doing was different. We were doing it for the general public, hence the block lettering. Like I said, it was not a tag; it was a message. That’s what really made it completely distinct.

Where does ‘Transatlantication’ come from?
I made it up. It was kind of challenging coming up with a title. I wanted to do something that was directional, something that states something about the actual location. So “transatlantic,” this being my first show in London. I thought it was a good play on words, and they went for it.

What else are you showing alongside the SAMO works?
The signage, what I refer to as my text signage or subway signage, there are three of those pieces that are actually hand-painted. I generally do a lot of printing with these, but these are on canvas and I actually painted the letters. I use stencils to get the basic form of the letter, but these are hand-painted. And then I have a few of my mixed-media pieces that I’m offering.

It has a street art kind of edge to it, but there’s a certain street art motif or cliché that I try to run away from, like the 10 million Mickey Mouses and all that stuff. It’s not that interesting. So it’s a little more mature than straight street art.

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Summary

David Hockneys' 1995 work "Dog Painting 17" will be auctioned at Christie's London on October 14The painting, which depicts his first dachshund, Stanley, curled up on a bed, is just one of six works from the artist's "Dog Series" believed to be in private hands

Just as iconic as David Hockney’s draw to Californian pools or the rolling hills of Yorkshire, as real Hockney heads know, was his love for his dogs, Stanley and Boodgie. The dachshunds starred in his painted “Dog Series," created between 1994 and 1995. And for the first time, one of them is hitting the auction block.

“Dog Painting 17” (1995) heads to Christie’s London on October 14, carrying an estimate of £1.5 million to £2.5 million GBP ($1.99 million to $3.3 million USD). The painting figures Stanley fast asleep, curled up in a dog bed, and is only one of six from the series believed to be in private hands, according to the house, with the rest in the keeping of the David Hockney Foundation. “This is such an exciting painting for us,” said Tessa Lord, Christie’s head of postwar and contemporary art. “The rarity is kind of extraordinary.”

While the piece embodies the spontaneity and textural fluidity of Hockney’s brushwork, “Dog Painting 17” also highlights an important chapter for the late British legend. It was created during a time of immense grief for Hockney, having lost several friends to AIDS and one of his closest to pancreatic cancer. His dogs, and the dog paintings, provided some much-needed light in a dark period.

“He felt such a loss of love, this was kind of a catharsis for him,” Lord continued. “I love the fact that there is this kind of innocence to it but it is so much more than that. There’s a universality to it … it’s so much more than just a portrait of a dog.”

“Dog Painting 17” will be on view at Christie’s London galleries between October 8 and when it goes under the hammer during Frieze London.

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Summary

'State of Art' is a new HypeArt series inviting artists, curators, collectors and other leading voices to weigh in on the ideas, debates and cultural shifts shaping contemporary art. Through intimate questions and personal recommendations, the series offers a closer look at what is exciting the art world, what needs to change and where things may be heading next.

For decades, gallery representation was seen as a major sign that an artist had made it. Galleries opened doors to collectors, institutions and curators, while artists depended on them to build visibility, establish a market and grow their careers. That dynamic is starting to shift.

Artists can now build global audiences, sell work directly, stage their own shows and create communities without waiting for traditional gatekeepers. But for Hayley River Smith, director of InScope (formerly Scope Art Show), that does not mean galleries are losing their relevance. It means the relationship between artists and galleries has to change.

For the latest edition of Hypeart’s ‘State of Art,’ Smith talks about what meaningful representation looks like in 2026, whether the traditional 50/50 split still holds up and why belief, trust and real investment in an artist may matter more than representation alone.

"What people are craving now is real connection beyond what is transactional."

Do artists still need galleries? Why or why not?

For me the question isn't whether artists need galleries anymore rather what we want that relationship to be. We have spent a long time painstakingly applauding what is predictable. We know what a gallery is supposed to do, what an artist is supposed to do, what a fair is supposed to look like, and what success is supposed to look like. We have reached a point where we're looking at that model grimacing while we all continue to participate in the sameness of it all.

Artists have more ways to build audiences and sell work directly than ever before, but that doesn't mean the relationships are less important. The opposite is true.

What people are craving now is real connection beyond what is transactional. The best gallery relationship can offer exactly that: someone who knows the artist, understands the work, takes a risk on it, and is invested in where that practice could go rather than simply what can be sold this season. Artists still need people who believe in their work and are willing to build something with them. Sometimes that's a gallery. Sometimes it isn't.

What can a gallery provide an artist today that they can't easily build for themselves?

Relationships and belief are the two biggest things. An artist can build an audience online, sell directly, create their own exhibitions, and communicate with collectors without traditional intermediaries. However building deep, lasting relationships across collectors, museums, curators, institutions and other artists takes time.

With galleries there is value in having someone else in your corner. Someone who is willing to say, “I believe this is important,” before the market has necessarily confirmed it. And that is very different from simply providing access to buyers.

Has social media changed the balance of power between artists and galleries?

Social media has given a significant amount of power back to artists, but equally it has provided galleries more creative tools to promote artists than ever before. Artists have reclaimed an enormous amount of control over how they present themselves, tell their own stories and reach audiences. Increasingly, collectors are discovering artists directly through social media and then looking to galleries and fairs to further understand, contextualize or vet the work. That is a significant shift from a model where galleries were often the primary gateway between an artist and their audience.

But social media has also exposed something interesting: access isn't the same as connection. You can have millions of people looking at your work and still not have a meaningful relationship with the person who collects it.

We're living through a moment where everyone has more access, but I we're simultaneously realizing how valuable genuine human relationships and trust are. Social media can create discovery, but it doesn't replace trusted relationships, advocacy and long-term investment required to build a sustainable career.

This doesn’t make galleries irrelevant. It makes their role more accountable. If an artist can build visibility and access independently, then galleries have to be clearer about what they uniquely bring to the relationship and how they are investing in the artist beyond simply benefiting from the audience they have already built.

"It's less about fitting artists into an existing structure and more about asking what structure can best support the artist and their practice."

Can an artist build a serious, lasting career outside of the traditional gallery system?

Yes. There are more pathways than there have ever been. But the takeaway shouldn't be that we no longer need institutions or galleries. The takeaway is that those spaces are no longer the only way in.

A lot of things that look like isolated crises—the gallery model, direct sales, social media and many more—are connected. They are signs that the way people want to participate in the art world is evolving and this is great. We need to stop pretending that this is the art industry of 2005. As an industry filled with creatives, we all need to think more creatively about the business and distribution model of 2026 and beyond.

The opportunity is to build new structures around that reality rather than simply trying to preserve the old ones. I genuinely enjoy seeing how artists are building their own pathways in this ever-evolving landscape. There is a lot we can learn from that. The way we work with artists should evolve in the same way. It's less about fitting artists into an existing structure and more about asking what structure can best support the artist and their practice.

What does gallery representation still signal to collectors, museums and institutions?

It can signal that there is a professional structure around an artist's practice, but that signal is becoming less definitive.

Representation used to be one of the clearest markers of legitimacy. Today, there are many ways for an artist to demonstrate seriousness: institutional exhibitions, residencies, independent projects, communities they've built, collectors they've developed, collaborations, and the work itself.
Ultimately, the question is shifting from “Who represents this artist?” to “Who believes in this artist, and why?”

If artists can sell directly to collectors, what makes giving a gallery 50% worthwhile?

If an artist is giving up 50%, there needs to be a meaningful exchange of value. That can be relationships, advocacy, exhibitions, institutional placement, production, logistics, market development and, importantly, long-term investment.

The 50/50 model cannot continue in the way it exists today. Artists have more power than ever through social media, direct access to audiences and collectors, and the communities they are building around their own practices. They are also increasingly investing in themselves.
If the relationship is purely transactional, 50% feels increasingly difficult to justify. If an artist is bringing the audience, the community, the cultural relevance and a significant amount of investment in their own practice, then a gallery has to be clear about what it is bringing in return.

But there is another kind of value that is harder to quantify: being part of something with someone. If the relationship is genuinely collaborative and the gallery is helping build something that neither party could build as well alone, the equation changes. It takes working with the right people to make that split worth it.

Artists are inherently investing in their work and in building their own careers. The galleries have to invest as well. We're moving toward a moment where artists will be much more willing to ask whether the traditional split actually reflects the value being created on both sides—and that's a conversation the industry should be having and one that we will certainly be having at InScope this year.

"Are we creating new opportunities, introducing new people, taking risks, and actually expanding the artist's world?"

Are galleries still built to nurture artists long term, or has the relationship become more transactional?

There are certainly transactional relationships, but that is not the whole picture. The growing discomfort with transactional relationships is part of what is driving change. A transactional relationship can get you a sale. It can't necessarily build you a career.

We also need to be honest about the fact that galleries sometimes rely heavily on the communities and networks that artists have already built without making the same level of investment back into those artists. An artist brings their collectors, their peers, their cultural credibility, their audience and suddenly that community becomes part of the gallery's business model. But are we investing in that community in return? Are we creating new opportunities, introducing new people, taking risks, and actually expanding the artist's world?

That's where the relationship can become transactional very quickly. People are looking for more meaningful relationships across the art world because relying solely on transactions doesn't create longevity. There is a desire for something with a little more risk, curiosity and humanity.
Galleries have an enormous opportunity here. Those that understand that an artist's community isn't simply a resource to be tapped, but something to be genuinely invested in, will be the ones that build lasting relationships.

If you were an emerging artist today, would gallery representation still be one of your main goals?

I'd make building a meaningful practice and community the goal, and then find the people—whether that's a gallery, curator, collector, institution or other artists—who genuinely want to build alongside me.

Emerging artists today have an incredible advantage. They don't have to wait for permission to begin. And that's the biggest change we're seeing. The question is no longer simply “How do I get into the system?” It's becoming “What kind of system do I actually want to participate in?”

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On Friday, September 11, New Balance hosted the Ryuichi Sakamoto & Tin Drum | KAGAMI+ New Balance Day at VS. in Osaka's Grand Green Osaka.

New Balance is sponsoring "Ryuichi Sakamoto & Tin Drum | KAGAMI+," currently running at the same venue. The exhibition features "KAGAMI+," an expanded version of "KAGAMI" created over the last four years of Sakamoto's life with New York-based creative studio Tin Drum, tailored specifically for its Japan debut. Visitors wear specialized, transparent headsets that utilize proprietary 3D visual technology to reproduce Sakamoto's presence and performance, creating the sensation that he is playing right in front of them.

The relationship between Ryuichi Sakamoto and New Balance began in 1992, when the artist started wearing the brand's shoes. In 2003, he appeared in a commercial for the label, and their connection deepened over the years through musical collaborations and the joint development of shoes and bags. New Balance Day was organized as a way to pass down the spirit of "craftsmanship" shared by Sakamoto and New Balance—a brand dedicated to manufacturing since its founding—to the next generation.

The event featured a talk session with musician Ayatake Ezaki as a guest, alongside freelance editor Soken Ito, who had a close relationship with Sakamoto.

Ezaki, who had experienced "KAGAMI+" beforehand, viewed the exhibition through a musician's lens and was particularly drawn to Sakamoto's feet. While standard concert footage typically focuses on the artist's hands, "KAGAMI+" allows viewers to observe from any angle they choose. "With the piano, controlling resonance and extending sound beautifully actually involves incredibly detailed work with both the right and left feet," Ezaki explained, noting that the ability to closely study the pedal work is a unique feature of the "KAGAMI+" experience. He also revealed an unexpected discovery: after watching Sakamoto's fingering from a close distance, he thought, "His hands are larger than I expected." For Ezaki, who never met Sakamoto in person, "KAGAMI+" served as an opportunity to understand not just the performance, but the physical reality of the artist.

Ezaki also commended the preservation of the performing body as data, calling it "a highly valuable archive from a creator's perspective." During the pandemic, he himself experimented with attaching sensors to his bandmates to capture motion data and have 3D avatars perform. That experience made him realize the potential of preserving a drummer's physicality, posture, and even their aura.

When Ito brought up Sakamoto's relationship with New Balance—noting that he "stumbled upon them on a European tour over 30 years ago and has been wearing them ever since"—Ezaki agreed, saying, "When I find something I like, I keep using it too." Offering a musician's perspective, he added, "During a tour, you walk far more than people imagine, going back and forth between rehearsals, the venue, and the after-party. Every time that happens, I hope to find a great pair of sneakers." When asked about his footwear for the day, he smiled and replied, "It really makes walking easier when the sole is solid."

The event also featured a performance by Ezaki, inspired by "KAGAMI+." He played two unreleased songs. One was tentatively titled "Rain," conceived on a bullet train during heavy rain while traveling for his current 47-prefecture tour. The other was inspired by the complex, chordal resonance of the shō, a traditional Japanese wind instrument, which came to him after viewing "KAGAMI+" and the video installation "TIME, TIME" (a collaboration between Sakamoto and artist Shiro Takatani).

Discussing "Rain," Ezaki likened the sound of raindrops hitting different materials to percussion, marveling that "if you listen closely, the exact same sound never happens twice." Ito then shared a story about Sakamoto, who would also go out into the garden when it rained to record the sounds.

The Q&A portion in the second half of the talk turned to Ezaki's own creative process. When asked what he does when he hits a wall in music production, his answer was "taking a walk" and "taking a shower." He mentioned that he often records melodies that come to him during walks into his smartphone's voice memos, and the location data on those files notes places like "Yurakucho" and "Minami-Aoyama."

Then, standing before "KAGAMI+"—a work so focused on the concept of "leaving something behind"—Ezaki offered an unexpected response when asked if he, like Sakamoto, wanted to leave his own performances and physical form behind as an archive. "In today's world, everything—the things we're talking about today, the video, the photos, the audio—is likely going to be preserved in vivid detail as digital data. That's exactly why I feel like it's getting harder for things to fade away." This sentiment is reflected in his own creative work. One reason he releases music on vinyl records and cassette tapes is because they degrade over time. While "KAGAMI+" preserves Ryuichi Sakamoto's performance and physical presence for the future, its "unfading" experience inspired Ezaki to reflect, "At least at this point in time, I think I'm in the camp that wants to fade away."

RYUICHI SAKAMOTO & TIN DRUM KAGAMI+
Dates: Through Monday, October 12, 2026 (National Holiday)
Venue: VS.
Address: 6-86 Ofukacho, Kita-ku, Osaka-shi, Osaka
VS., North Park, Umekita Park, Grand Green Osaka
Hours: 10:00–20:00 (Reserved entry times)
Closed: Mondays (If a national holiday or part of a consecutive holiday weekend, closed on the following weekday)
Ticket Prices (Tax included):
・RED TICKET (Reserved entry time, includes exclusive visitor bonus) ¥15,000
"KAGAMI (MR content)" (Approx. 60 minutes)
*Includes wait and prep time
*Includes exclusive visitor bonus 7-inch analog record
*Free access to view multiple exhibition works
・BLUE TICKET (Reserved entry time) General Admission: ¥4,500 / Students: ¥2,500
"KAGAMI (MR content)" trial version (Approx. 30 minutes)
*Includes wait and prep time
*Free access to view multiple exhibition works
Official Website

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Summary

Los Angeles-based contemporary artist Ozzie Juarez and GUESS JEANS have partnered on a limited-edition line-up featuring two jacket-and-pant-denim sets and a graphic teeThe collab is available exclusively available at GUESS JEANS Melrose in Los AngelesA curation of Juarez's artworks is also on view in the store

These GUESS jeans just got an adorable upgrade thanks to Los Angeles-based Ozzie Juarez. The contemporary artist and brand have partnered on a limited-edition tee and matching set collab, available exclusively at GUESS JEANS’ Melrose outpost, printing Juarez’s cute ceramic-like animals straight onto denim.

Born and raised in South Los Angeles, Juarez, who also founded TLALOC Studios, uses his practice as a way to honor the city and his community is always up for him. Artifacts and icons from across the city, as well as his own cultural heritage, make their way into paintings, sculptures, and monumental public artworks, spanning everything from patterns in ancient Mesoamerican manuscripts to contemporary car culture and spills of nostalgic cartoons.

As of this past year, he’s been busy making paintings of cute animal characters housed in metallized frames, echoing the architectural vernacular of Los Angeles. The figures, which show his hard-and-soft range, are the stars of his go-around with GUESS JEANS.

The collection features two denim sets, each pairing pants with a classic trucker-style jacket, plus a graphic tee. Figures like a cheery zebra, droopy-eyed dog, baby duck, coquettish deer, and bird characters are scattered across garments: down the front leg and across the back pockets on the denim, and stretching the wingspan on the back of the jacket. A full-color zebra tee rounds out the lineup.

If you’ve spotted Juarez at an opening or a fair, you know he always arrives fitted, so a fashion collab comes as no surprise. Beyond the GUESS JEANS collection, his first with a major brand, a few years ago he also launched Corazón de Tierra, a jewelry line with artist Georgina Treviño.

The Ozzie Juarez x GUESS JEANS collection is available now exclusively at GUESS JEANS’ West Hollywood store at 8700 Melrose Avenue. A selection of Juarez’s artworks is also on display through October 14.

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Summary

Martin Margiela unveil his first Germany exhibition at Berlin's Konrad Fischer GalerieThe exhibition features new artworks that explore themes of privacy, intimacy, and architecture, elaborating on the artist's exploration of anonymity and the human form

Before Margiela left Margiela, he was known to many as the most elusive man in fashion. Even after retiring from the industry, deciding to dedicate himself to fine art, the Belgian luminary's devotion to the incognito and fraught relationship with the public eye continued to play a paramount role in his personal practice.

Take "Audience" (2026), one of the new sculptures in Martin Margiela in Berlin, his first exhibition in Germany at Konrad Fischer Galerie. 20 reclaimed cinema seats are stripped of their upholstery and replaced with cold plaster and acrylic casts. An object designed for shared viewing experiences can now only be looked at.

Like his exhibition at Tokyo’s Kudan House this past spring, Margiela’s Berlin show is another artful labyrinth. Paintings, sculptures, and assemblages unfold in a maze of partitions and veils, embedding an atmosphere of intimacy straight into the architecture.

Other pieces include a monumental white fur gate, boxer briefs flattened into tondos, a crown of hair overwritten with a Fibonacci spiral, and new Vortex sculptures, created from what appears to be bathroom tiling, together steeping viewers deeper into themes of privacy, absence, and human presence central to Margiela's artistry.

Martin Margiela in Berlin is now on view until December 19.

Konrad Fischer Galerie
Neue Grünstraße 12.
10179 Berlin

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"Verdy's Postal Service," a joint project between graphic artist VERDY and PARCO, officially opened at Shinsaibashi PARCO on Friday, September 18.

The project centers on the letter as a form of communication. Reflecting on how it came about, VERDY says, "I've been really close with the PARCO team ever since Shinsaibashi PARCO opened, and it started from us wanting to do something more interesting together." He had long thought it would be fun to open a shop dealing in mailboxes, letters and stationery, and with the PARCO team's support, he says, "that's finally become a reality."

Today, smartphones and social media let anyone send messages with ease. VERDY himself receives a flood of messages every day across LINE, DMs, email and more. Yet precisely because digital communication has become the norm, he has found himself newly drawn to "the warmth of something handwritten."

VERDY regularly exchanges letters in his own life, writing to family members on their birthdays and receiving letters from friends and fellow artists. "It struck me again how great it is to send a handwritten letter, so I wanted to turn that into something tangible," he explains of the thinking behind the project.

The shop at Shinsaibashi PARCO carries postcards and greeting cards featuring VERDY's characters VICK and VISTY, along with "V's COLLECTION," an original postcard series with guest collaborators TAPPEI, DAN and Haruto Tsuda. Marker pens, ballpoint pens and other letter-writing essentials round out the selection. An original mailbox designed by VERDY is also installed in-store, alongside a dedicated space where visitors can write and post letters on the spot. Going beyond product sales, the space aims to let visitors experience the full act of letter-based communication, from writing a letter to dropping it in the mailbox.

On the apparel side, the shop offers VICK-designed T-shirts, kids' T-shirts, tote bags and more. There is also a limited-quantity collaboration with doublet, which designed the shop staff's uniforms. doublet designer Masayuki Ino has created an airmail-inspired T-shirt drawn from the Verdy's Postal Service concept. Its standout feature: when folded into a set shape, it takes on the appearance of a single airmail letter.

Even as digital communication accelerates, Verdy's Postal Service rediscovers the value of the warmth that only handwriting can convey, and of the act of sending a letter itself. More than just a shop, this new project from VERDY and PARCO, launched out of Osaka, is a place to reconsider communication through letter-writing.

 

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Verdy's Postal Service
Address: B1, 1-8-3 Shinsaibashi PARCO, Shinsaibashisuji, Chuo-ku, Osaka, Osaka Prefecture
Hours: 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.

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Summary

Off-White™'s "10x10: Icons Reimagined" project invited 10 global creatives to reinterpret 10 iconic Off-White pieces, culminating in the "IMAGINARY PALACE" exhibition during Milan Fashion Week.The exhibition ran from September 23–24 at Off-White's Milan space, showcasing final pieces alongside their creative references and process.

Off-White™ unveiled its “10x10: Icons Reimagined” project with “IMAGINARY PALACE," a two-day exhibition during Milan Fashion Week, illuminating the exponential potential of creative collaboration.

The “10x10: Icons Reimagined” project manifested earlier this year, inviting 10 global creative forces to approach 10 of its most recognizable icons as blank canvases — starting points for personal interpretation, experimentation, and rebellion. From musicians Scott Mescudi and A$AP Nast to designers Ava Nirui, Yuta Hosokawa, Raul Lopez, and Guillermo Andrade to multidisciplinary creatives Renell Medrano, Veneda Carter, Stéphane Ashpool, and Bafic, every 10x10 creator committed to following their personal vision, hacking the system, and taking their icon into the future by questioning everything. 

Spanning different disciplines, perspectives, and communities, the project replaced fixed rules with individual points of view. The resulting works are not homages, but continuations, opening the Off-White™ archive to transformation, allowing its legacy to evolve through the voices shaping culture and design today.

Grammy Award-winning musician and fashion designer Scott Mescudi returns the "Out Of Office” sneaker to its sport codes while proposing the product as a platform — embracing use, movement, and freedom of expression. Photographer and director Renell Medrano applies her distinct perspective to new eyewear, turning her blank canvas into an investigation of looking, being seen, and perspective. Fashion designer and creative director Ava Nirui transforms the T-shirt, bringing her signature gender-neutral viewpoint and ’90s youth culture nostalgia to an everyday Off-White™ uniform and a social platform for identity, belonging, and community. 424’s designer and founder Guillermo Andrade approaches denim as an archive of memory, construction, and what came before — pairing his deep design expertise with the concept of Virgil as the muse. Designer and stylist Veneda Carter reconceptualizes Off-White’s “METEOR” motif as a visual reference, exploring the relationship between absence, form, and the body. 

Meanwhile, Readymade founder and designer Yuta Hosokawa reconstructs the hoodie through layers, proportions, and traces of its previous identity. Photographer, director, and multi-disciplinary artist Bafic takes Off-White’s founding space between black and white into the realm of lived experience, gathering reflections on our younger selves. Luar founder and creative director Raul Lopez shifts the Off-White™ Jitney bag through scale, shape, and perspective, weaving the philosophies of New York City and the Dominican Republic that he explores in his fashion brand’s boundary-breaking designs. French fashion designer and creative director Stéphane Ashpool repositions the familiar codes of the varsity jacket, using his unorthodox approach from his Parisian fashion label and retailer Pigalle to demonstrate how a change in perspective can transform what we think we know. Multi-hyphenate A$AP Mob member A$AP Nast reconstructs the clock to question time itself, focusing on how it is experienced rather than how it is measured — paying homage to Virgil’s ability to bend time and be everywhere at once.

Across 10 individual rooms, from September 23rd to the 24th, at Off-White™’s Milan home at Via Orobia 13, the final “10x10: Icons Reimagined” objects coexist with references, materials, and the environments that led to their creation. Together with conversations and interactive workshops, the exhibition invited visitors not only to see the work, but to enter the distinct creative universes behind them. 10 creatives, 10 icons, and 10 interpretations became a potent reminder that the Off-White legacy is conceived not as something fixed, but as material for what comes next.

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Summary

“Nike: Form Follows Motion” traces the brand from early running experiments to Air, Flyknit and Vaporfly.Archival prototypes, sketches and cultural ephemera show how Nike sneakers moved from performance tools into music, fashion and street culture.

Before the Swoosh became shorthand, there were sketches, prototypes and plenty of trial and error. “Nike: Form Follows Motion,” now on view at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design, looks back at more than 50 years of the brand, from Bill Bowerman’s early waffle-sole experiments to Air Max, Jordans, Flyknit and Vaporfly. Originally organized by the Vitra Design Museum, the show pulls from Nike’s internal archive of more than 200,000 objects.

Waffle Trainers, Air Force 1s, Air Jordans and Vaporflys all make an appearance, but there’s more to look at than the familiar footwear hits we've written so much about. Early samples, prototypes, sketches and old testing equipment show how some of these ideas actually started, often looking pretty far removed from the finished products we know now.

The exhibition starts with Nike’s running roots before moving into the Air era. Frank Rudy’s early testing machine and air-bag prototypes are here, alongside material tracing Nike’s expansion into basketball, tennis, football and skateboarding. Michael Jordan, Serena Williams and LeBron James appear throughout, as do its legendary designers including Tinker Hatfield, Diane Katz and Eric Avar.

Things get a little more technical from there. Nike Free, Flyknit and Vaporfly lead into the brand’s work around biomechanics, material research and the Nike Sport Research Lab. It’s a side of Nike that tends to get buried underneath the bigger cultural moments, but it explains a lot about how the shoes ended up looking the way they do.

And for the last part of the show, it moves further away from pure performance and into the wider cultural domain. Fifty footwear examples sit alongside music videos, collaborations and other material tracing Nike through streetwear, fashion, music and sneaker cosigns. The Air Force 1, for example, became inseparable from hip-hop, while the Dunk found another life through skateboarding long after its basketball origins. Some sneakers became important for reasons that had very little to do with what they were originally designed for.

The best parts of "Form Follows Motion" are probably the unfinished ones. The weird prototypes, old sketches and technical experiments offer a better look at Nike than another lineup of famous sneakers. You get to see some of the thinking before shoes became Swoosh icons.

“Nike: Form Follows Motion” is on view at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York through March 7, 2027.

Museum of Arts and Design
2 Columbus Circle
New York, NY 10019

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Danish eyewear brand LINDBERG returns to The Armory Show in New York with new site-specific installations crafted by Fabrizio Corneli. Landing in its Enigma of Vision exhibition, the experiential works are molded by light and shadows to question changing perspectives.

The exhibition comprises two core installations, which are designed to interact with each other to transform the surrounding space. For “Seed,” a cone-shaped form with a built-in light, Corneli directs his signature practice into carving the surface, illuminating a globe image on the wall. Meanwhile, “Eyecatcher” is formed from the brand’s metal frames to explore how the originally minimalist objects can be reworked into a striking sculpture.

Through Enigma of Vision, LINDBERG brings visitors in to discover new and unconventional ways of seeing. As well as supporting its long-term commitment as a patron of the arts, it ties into the brand’s mission of working with galleries, artists and institutions that elevate its own craftsmanship in engineering sleek eyewear.

Speaking on the exhibition, Founder, President and CEO of Kering Eyewear, Roberto Vedovotto, shared, “LINDBERG’s collaboration with Corneli is a natural extension of the brand’s design philosophy, where technical mastery and artistic expression converge to challenge perception and reveal beauty through simplicity.”

The Enigma of Vision exhibition runs from September 24 - 27, 2026, at The Armory Show 2026. Find out more on LINDBERG's website.

The Armory Show
429 11th Ave.
New York, NY 10001

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End-of-August escapes are officially behind us, and the arty pour of out-of-towners means one thing, New York: the fall season is in session. Buzz around the 2026 Armory Show is well underway, and galleries cued up to shake off the summer slowdown and bring their A-game to the fairs and beyond.

The fall fair circuit arrived a little later than years prior, pushed to the end of the month to avoid the usual overlap with Fashion Week and the U.S. Open, and a breather from Frieze Seoul. But September has been far from sleepy.

A stellar run of gallery openings and major museum shows has already taken root in the run-up to the five main events — The Armory, Independent 20th Century, SPRING/BREAK, U-Haul Art Fair, and the Printed Matter Book Fair — with a few more heavy-hitters waiting in the wings. We toured around the city to round up nine can’t-miss exhibitions, and unlike the fairs, they’ll be on well into next month. Walk, don’t run.

Lynda Benglis’ KNOTTING, TYING, FOLDING at Pace Gallery

With Fashion Week on the mind, a visit to Lynda Benglis’ wall hangs is a must. After all, it was works like “Toyopet Crown” (1989) and “Vega” (1982) that inspired Jonathan Anderson’s Dior couture debut in January, where we saw sartorial interpretations of the artist’s metal pleats sent straight down the runway.

Benglis has been wielding this playful, fearless spirit since the 1960s, emerging alongside Postminimalism, when her wax paintings put her on the scene. She traded muted palettes for vivid colors and visceral surfaces. The ongoing exhibition at Pace Gallery in Chelsea hosts a constellation of sculptures created over the last five decades, spotlighting her ceaseless curiosity when it comes to material experimentation. From her early “Sparkle Knot IV” (1972) to her more recent “Elephant Necklace” (2017), it’s a masterclass in what she calls the “extremes of coloration and texturing.”

On view until October 24.

Pace Gallery
540 W 25th St,
New York, NY 10001

Joseph Yaeger’s Agita at Gladstone Gallery

Looking at a Joseph Yaeger painting feels like walking into a movie halfway through. The subjects, anonymized and cropped, are distant from where they emerged. Yet sympathy for their startled, often muffled, affliction nonetheless persists. It keeps you there.

Agita debuts a new suite of works from the acclaimed painter, known for filtering his pieces through ideas of privacy and desire. Watercolors atop gessoed linen luminously reveal themselves, albeit in velvety, muted tones. The tension doesn’t come from what is quiet, but what is silenced, like memory so successfully repressed it becomes just barely out of reach.

On view until October 31.

Gladstone Gallery
515 W 24th St,
New York, NY 10011

Alix Vernet’s Landmarks at Chapter NY

An archive of language — stripped from signs, overheard encounters, and monuments — is treated as a purifying force in Alix Vernet’s condenser coil sculptures. Taken from air conditioners, aluminum fins brushed into luxuriantly lettered words, the artist turns a critical eye towards unassuming aspects of industrial infrastructure, like these authorities of air and comfort.

The works grew out of the artist’s time casting façades and letterforms, while perched on fire escapes. She became drawn to the backs of AC units, where dust, moisture, oxidation, maintenance, and years of exposure collected, and thus recorded the life of the city.

Machine parts, not just overlooked, but not meant to be seen, are finished in words as tender as “baby” or “boy.” Foundational units of urban ecosystems take on a more fragile character. Damage, intentional or accidental, becomes difficult to discern. The sculptures carry the tension of rising temperatures and climate politics without needing to spell it out so literally.

On view until October 17.

Chapter NY
60 Walker St,
New York, NY 10013

Arthur Jafa’s I Am Tony at New Museum

One of our most highly anticipated museum shows, Arthur Jafa’s New Museum takeover did not disappoint. It’s the first to “encapsulate the full breadth of his practice,” per the museum, featuring over three decades of painting, large-scale video and film installations, sculptures, and archival objects on view, anchored by Love is the Message, The Message is Death (2016) and The White Album (2018), his most celebrated works, of course.

Jafa has spent his career tracing the many facets of Black American life. Be it through music, classic films, and comic book characters, even TikToks, his work aims an unflinching eye toward both a nation’s unsettling history and our contemporary obsession with “content,” urging you to confront it, metabolize it, long after you leave the museum doors.

On view until January 3, 2027.

New Museum
235 Bowery,
New York, NY 10002

Asher Liftin’s Recent Works at 125 Newbury

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Peering into 125 Newbury from the corner of Canal and Walk, Asher Liftin’s works appear as pointillized photographs. Grainy snapshots of passersby in window reflections, a bouquet of flowers, and a herd of moving trains. Up close, dots and lines drip and tremble, near bursting at times, revealing a painstaking touch of hand.

A Liftin work is always unmistakably his. Having graduated from Yale University with degrees in Art and Cognitive Science, a shared commitment to image-making and image-processing — a trick of the eye — is present in every drawing and painting. This body of titularly recent works not only highlights everyday moments, but finds a way to care for them dearly. Each garners a good 10 minutes just to marvel over.

On view until October 31.

125 Newbury
395 Broadway,
New York, NY 10013

Taryn Simon’s Father Country, I Do Love You at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

In the words of Taryn Simon’s father: “America is the best story on earth, if you could find someone to tell it.” And amid a rather messy semiquincentennial, what better timing for Father Country, I Do Love You?

Simon traces the life of an unnamed federal agent. Divided into 42 chapters, with 42 distinct colors, she uses photography, installation, sculpture, and video to wake up conspiracies and dive head-first into the strange corners of American life, following the agent through devotion, violence, and loss. While highly conceptual, her work is not abstract, each emerging from a very specific person, testament, or moment in history, elaborated in the wall texts.

Save for the “Kleroterion” (2024), all of the work is new. It’s also deeply personal. The show is dedicated to her father, an ex-government worker turned pinball machine seller, structured to resemble his grapple with Alzheimer’s. The largest piece, in fact, is a billiards run that snakes down the entirety of the rotunda.

On view until March 14, 2027.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 5th Ave,
New York, NY 10128

Gordon Parks’ Voices in the Mirror at Jack Shainman Gallery

Gordon Parks is one of the most important American photographers. His art continues to shape the way we talk about history by prioritizing the inner worlds of the people who lived it. “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs,” he once said. “I knew at that point I had to have a camera.”

The artist’s namesake foundation celebrates its 20th anniversary with a monumental show at Jack Shainman’s Tribeca outpost, showcasing 65 of his most iconic images. Setting the tone with Parks’ searing portraits of Muhammad Ali, published in Life as a series called “The Redemption of the Champion,” the exhibition captures the enduring struggle for equality and beauty of Black American life, namely in the South, interspersed with contributions from his subjects, Ava DuVernay, Thelma Golden, and more all throughout.

On view until November 6.

Jack Shainman
46 Lafayette St,
New York, NY 10013

Eddie R. Aparicio’s Rubberneckers at Jeffrey Deitch

Rubberneck is the freeway slowdown when a car crashes on the opposite side. Eddie R. Aparicio, an Angeleno, sees it as a metaphor for our relationship to disaster, more often than not, fed through the safety of the glass window.

Aparicio’s new show at Jeffrey Deitch brings a slice of Los Angeles to New York; a light on its infrastructural injustice in particular. Featuring new hand-sewn works, rubber tree casts, amber sculptures, and paintings, all of which emerged in the aftermath of the city’s fires, the artist looks to trees, urban systems, personal keepsakes, and totemic forms to carry traces of who came before.

In the center ascends “Muñecas de transmisión,” his 2024 commission for Prospect.6. Dolls dressed in family garments make up electrical transmission towers. Initially they were arranged after North Hollywood, but now, they can’t help but bring the decommissioned towers that first sparked the Eaton fires to mind.

On view until October 31.

Jeffrey Deitch
18 Wooster St,
New York, NY 10013

Lee Bul’s The Anatomy of Every Setting Sun at Hauser & Wirth

We’ll end on Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea, which doubles as a launch pad into Lee Bul’s science fiction universe. The massive silver zeppelin, “Willing To Be Vulnerable—Metalized Balloon” (2015–2016/2020), is the steed. The South Korean artist first made her name in the 90s with her cyborgs and has spent decades committed to the tensions between utopia and dystopia, technology and the fragility of human ambition.

Her first go-around with the mega-gallery since coming on as a signee last year, the exhibition premieres new work from three of her ongoing series: Untitled (Willing To Be Vulnerable – Velvet), Perdu, and CTCS. Scenes of escape from explosive apocalyptic landscapes are laid down in mother-of-pearl on rich velvets. Seven-foot stainless steel cyborg sculptures take up space in the front gallery, their wings (or broken paneled limbs) outstretched. Exploring decay and control, her latest show gives us a vision of humanity trying to outsmart nature. Suddenly her once-distant future feels unsettlingly close to home.

On view until October 24.

Hauser & Wirth
542 W 22nd St,
New York, NY 10011

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Summary

Five illustrators from ASOBISYSTEM's creator label Akaku are showing and selling original work at UNDER R TokyoEach artist designed an exclusive graphic T-shirt for the exhibition, offered in white and blackThe show frames its lineup of retro-leaning and manga-rooted styles as a meeting point for art, fashion and Harajuku culture

Akaku and UNDER R are teaming up on "Youth Knows No Boundaries," an art exhibition running at UNDER R Tokyo from October 9 to October 22. The show brings together five illustrators from Akaku, the creator label run by Japanese culture production company ASOBISYSTEM. Each artist is showing original work for sale alongside a limited T-shirt made for the exhibition.

The merchandise mirrors the lineup. There are five T-shirts, one per artist, each available in white or black. In the product images, each artist's work is printed in monochrome on the chest, with the black-and-white treatment tying five very different styles together. The shirts were made specifically for the show and join the artists' original pieces on sale at the venue.

The illustrators share a sense of nostalgia, and each takes it somewhere different. Kayoubi mixes a contemporary edge with the look of 1980s and 1990s illustration, a "new retro" style that has led to apparel collaborations and CD cover commissions. Natsumi Sato works in saturated, 1990s-inspired pop colors and is best known for "peloringirl," her ongoing series built around a girl sticking out her tongue. The series was collected in her first book, THE VISUAL Natsumi Sato Art Book PELORINGIRL, in June 2024. Her client work includes corporate advertising, album art, merchandise and animated music videos.

The other three push in their own directions. NAKAKI PANTZ has built a following for her portraits of women who come across as strong, cute and self-assured, and her work appears across fashion campaigns, advertising and music video design. Illustrator and manga artist Chiaki Harada turns the gloomy, pent-up feelings everyone carries into brightly colored work that swings between horror, retro and celebratory imagery. She bills herself as an insult-maker for well-behaved kids, and her career spans exhibitions in Japan and abroad, collaboration cafés, apparel and even film appearances. Natsumi Yoshida rounds out the group with gentle, peaceful work in a nostalgic palette, with credits in corporate advertising and collaborations with games and anime.

Akaku is built around drawing. ASOBISYSTEM set it up to represent illustrators, animators, calligraphers and other artists whose work starts with the hand, and it extends beyond management into exhibitions and product development to bring Japanese illustration to audiences at home and overseas. ASOBISYSTEM manages talent that embodies Japanese pop culture and produces music festivals, and it is widely known for launching Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's career. UNDER R, the Ron Herman-affiliated space hosting the show, pitches the exhibition as a place where art, fashion and Harajuku culture overlap.

Youth Knows No Boundaries runs from October 9 to October 22, at UNDER R Tokyo.

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Ryoji Ikeda, the artist who works between France and Japan, launched his largest-ever solo exhibition in Korea on Thursday, September 24, 2026, at Jeju Island’s alternative space, House of Refuse. Set within a concrete ruin left abandoned for more than 20 years before its renovation, the exhibition presents large-scale sensory installations, including three new works and two new versions making their world premieres. Here, we report on the exhibition in full, alongside scenes from Ikeda’s live performance on site.

One of the exhibition’s highlights is The Critical Paths, a work born from collaborative research with the Estonian Genome Center at the University of Tartu. Genomic data from 100,000 people is transformed into light and sound, while suspended LED screens and floor-to-ceiling mirrors create an endless corridor of data. As visitors move through this space, where the accumulated history of human change converges, they themselves become part of a vast fragment of data.

Also making its world premiere, the irreducible fills a pitch-black gallery with millions of digits displayed on a massive LED screen and extended infinitely through mirrors underfoot. Though physically visualized, it presents the realm of the “mathematical sublime”—something the human eye and brain can never fully process. Other works include the irreducible [nº13], which prints more than one million digits onto 35mm film inside a light box that at first appears to be a still image, and Spin, where an ultra-high-precision laser rotating at high speed creates the illusion of a three-dimensional structure. Together, these works vividly reveal the limits of human perception in today’s data-driven society.

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The opening also featured a rare live performance by Ikeda himself. Dressed entirely in black and wearing sunglasses, he operated 10 turntables simultaneously for the first time in roughly 20 years. In contrast to the meticulous calculation and precision of his works, the mechanical sounds and high frequencies generated by turntables spinning at different speeds collided in complex ways, creating an acoustic space shaped by chance. Against the backdrop of untouched forest, the impersonal concrete structure of the former ruin, and data and light calculated to an almost excessive degree, this exhibition is undoubtedly one of Asia’s most essential media-art experiences right now.

RYOJI IKEDA — Solo Exhibition
Dates: Thursday, September 24, 2026–Sunday, January 18, 2027
Venue: House of Refuse (735 Haso-ro, Aewol-eup, Jeju, South Korea)
Hours: 10:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m. (last entry at 6:00 p.m.)
Admission: KRW 23,000
Reservation Site

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Summary

The Armory Show returns to New York from September 24–27 with more than 230 galleries at the Javits Center.From solo presentations to material-driven installations, Hypeart highlights the booths worth seeking out across the 2026 fair.

The Armory Show returns to New York from September 24–27, bringing more than 230 galleries to the Javits Center for its 2026 edition. A fixture of the city’s fall art calendar, this year’s fair spans established names and younger programs, with the Focus section turning its attention to Caribbean art and Platform presenting a series of large-scale, site-specific works that move beyond the traditional booth format.

With that much ground to cover, the strongest presentations are often the ones that reward a closer look. Across the fair, artists are working through personal archives, inherited histories, material experimentation and collective memory in ways that feel especially immediate. From textiles rooted in family and cultural legacy to paintings shaped by pilgrimage, migration and place, these are some of the booths worth seeking out at The Armory Show 2026.

Zoë Pulley at Superposition Gallery, Booth P10

Superposition Gallery will present new work by Brooklyn-based artist Zoë Pulley at The Armory Show, marking her first solo presentation in New York and debut with the gallery. Drawing from the archive of her grandmother, Philadelphia fashion designer Sandra Olivia Moon Hightower, Pulley transforms garments, press clippings and personal documentation into large-scale textile works that explore how Black creative histories are preserved, lost and reconstructed across generations.

Working through image transfer, collage and text, the new series reframes a deeply personal family archive within a wider conversation around memory, authorship and cultural legacy.

Kathia St. Hilaire at Perrotin, Booth 100

Drawing from her Haitian ancestry and upbringing in South Florida’s Afro-Caribbean communities, St. Hilaire uses printmaking, painting and collage to examine histories of migration, occupation and resistance. Her presentation at The Armory Show centers on Spiralism, the Haitian literary movement founded in the 1960s by Frankétienne in response to the violence of François Duvalier’s dictatorship.

Through layered symbols, carved imagery and collaged surfaces, St. Hilaire treats chaos as a force that can produce transformation rather than only destruction. Her process of printing, sanding away and rebuilding images mirrors that idea, turning histories of the Haitian Revolution, the Banana Wars and Vodun traditions into works that feel fragmented, cyclical and continually in motion.

Sasha Brodsky and Leroy Johnson at Margot Samel, Booth P8

Margot Samel will present work by Sasha Brodsky and the late Philadelphia artist Leroy Johnson at Booth P8. Johnson, who spent much of his life working across social services and education, built densely layered house sculptures from materials gathered during his daily commutes through the city. Using weathered signage, found objects, graffiti and architectural fragments, Johnson transformed the visual residue of Philadelphia into sculptural portraits of urban life. His works blur documentation and abstraction, preserving the marks of neighborhoods shaped by memory, labor and broader social forces.

Simon Benjamin at PATRON, Booth A1

PATRON will present a solo booth by Jamaican artist Simon Benjamin in The Armory Show’s Focus section, curated by Maria Elena Ortiz. At the center is a freestanding wooden structure modeled after a traditional Caribbean fish pot, holding paintings, sculpture and video that trace the ways extraction, labor and memory continue to shape the region.

Benjamin pulls from Jamaican maritime culture, archival photography and geological sampling, including core-like sculptures made from cornmeal, sand, resin and debris gathered from the island’s southern coast. Paintings based on images of Jamaican watermen and a two-channel video filmed from glass-bottom boats extend the presentation toward questions of tourism, migration, environmental change and the sea as both archive and contested space.

Raghav Babbar at Rajiv Menon Contemporary, Booth P44

Rajiv Menon Contemporary will present new work by India-born artist Raghav Babbar across its Los Angeles space and a dedicated booth at The Armory Show, marking his debut U.S. solo exhibition. Known for intimate portraiture, Babbar expands his focus toward the scale of collective experience through paintings inspired by the 2025 Maha Kumbh pilgrimage in North India.

Drawing from his time among millions of pilgrims, Babbar shifts between individual figures and the force of the crowd, capturing moments of exhaustion, devotion and contemplation. His earthen palette and dramatic use of light nod to the tradition of European history painting, while placing ordinary pilgrims at the center. The resulting works explore faith, mortality and collective identity through one of the largest gatherings in recent history.

Marcos Kueh at Galerie Ron Mandos, Booth 139

Born in Malaysia and now based in the Netherlands, Marcos Kueh works across textile and weaving to explore how inherited traditions can shift within contemporary life. Drawing from his Bornean heritage, Kueh looks to the ways textiles have historically carried stories, beliefs and collective memory, while also engaging the industrial weaving processes he encountered in Europe.

A graduate of the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Kueh has developed a practice that moves between traditional techniques and modern production, using cloth as a space to think through identity, migration and cultural continuity. His work has been shown at institutions including Museum Voorlinden and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, alongside presentations in Japan, Malaysia and the Netherlands.

Paintings and Sculptures at Maruani Mercier, Booth 114

Maruani Mercier returns to The Armory Show with a cross-generational presentation spanning kinetic sculpture, postwar abstraction, contemporary figuration and material experimentation. George Rickey’s kinetic sculpture explores balance and motion, while Georg Karl Pfahler’s hard-edge paintings examine color, shape and space. Recent works by Peter Halley extend his signature language of cells and conduits, using vivid synthetic color to probe systems of isolation and control.

Elsewhere, Jaclyn Conley, Zaam Arif and Von Wolfe approach figuration through domestic space, memory and psychological tension, while Samuel de Saboia, Æmen Ededéen and Ross Bleckner push toward abstraction through gesture and layered materiality. Works by Francesco Clemente and Andy Warhol round out the booth, connecting these contemporary concerns to broader histories of portraiture, celebrity and representation.

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Summary

Digital auction platform JOOPITER has launched a global sale featuring two exceptionally rare Maiasaura peeblesorum dinosaur skeletonsThe offering includes an adult specimen named Koda estimated at up to 1.2 million USD and a juvenile specimen named Hank estimated at up to 800 thousand USDBoth composite mounts originate from Montana's Two Medicine Formation and will remain open for bidding through October 6

JOOPITER has officially announced the auction of Hank & Koda: Two Rare Maiasaura Skeletons, bringing a pair of 76-million-year-old dinosaur fossils to the global market. Offered as two separate lots expected to fetch up to $2 million USD combined, the sale features an adult and a juvenile specimen of Maiasaura peeblesorum, the duck-billed herbivore species celebrated for revealing the first scientific evidence of dinosaur parental care.

Excavated from the Linster Quarry within Montana’s Two Medicine Formation, the Late Cretaceous pair represents two distinct developmental stages of the same species. "Koda," the adult composite mount, measures 20.7 feet long and 8.5 feet tall, composed of 68% original fossil bone by count and estimated between $900,000 and $1,200,000 USD. "Hank," the juvenile composite mount, stands 6.3 feet tall and 13 feet long, containing 62% original fossil material with an estimate between $600,000 and $800,000 USD.

Prepared under the scientific direction of Dr. Frédéric Lacombat, both mounts incorporate 3D-printed and epoxy resin components in areas where original fossil bone was absent. Displayed side by side, the specimens demonstrate significant shifts in skull development, body proportions, and movement mechanics as the species matured, providing a rare physical representation of prehistoric family life.

Bidding for the JOOPITER "Hank & Koda" auction opened globally on September 22, 2026, and closes on October 6, 2026, exclusively via JOOPITER.

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MSCHF and Lexus unveil two new collaborative car sculptures in a pop-up exhibition in New York, open from September 24 through 26The works on view reconfigure a pair electrified Lexus vehicles, made to evoke the feeling of movement

MSCHF has gained a global rep for breaking (and bending) has gained a global rep for breaking (and bending) the status quo. Beyond the Big Red Boots, take this micro-micro-purse, for instance. Or the ATM installation at Art Basel Miami that ranked users by their account balance. Their latest project is no less twisted.

This Armory Week, the Perrotin-backed provocateur collective is linking up with Lexus to debut a new pair of car sculptures, as part of a pop-up exhibition, dubbed MOTOMORPHOSIS, at Chelsea Industrial, running from September 24 through 26.

The works on view rework two of the automaker's electrified vehicles — a Lexus RZ450e and Lexus RX450h+ — into seriously surreal pieces, made to evoke the feeling of movement, rather than movement itself. The first is stretched to loop, nose-to-tail, doomed to drive in a circle forever, in a piece called “Circle Car.” “Twisted Car,” nearby, twists the latter model into a “dramatic longitudinal torsion,” per the brand. Functional versions of the vehicles will be displayed alongside their sculptural counterparts.

MSCHF calls these pieces ‘Form Cars,’ perhaps inspired by a lineage of automotive artworks, like Pippa Garner's “Backwards Car” and “Karmann,” and Erwin Wurm's bubbly and bizarre sculptures.

“Most conversations about electrification focus on how a vehicle is powered. MOTOMORPHOSIS asks a different question: what can electricity power in our imagination?” said Lisa McQueen, Lexus's senior marketing manager. “Working with MSCHF allowed us to take the automobile beyond its familiar form and explore movement, transformation and possibility in an entirely new way.”

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Solange, Pink Pantheress, and Joe Burrow have partnered with Google Chrome for the "Unfinished Projects" public exhibition.The showcase features Solange's electricity-conducting sculpture, Pink Pantheress's customizable ballet flats, and Joe Burrow's bespoke crystal and marble chess set.The projects will be on display to the public at New York City's High Line Chelsea Market Passage from September 24 to 27.

Solange, Pink Pantheress, and Joe Burrow have partnered with Google Chrome to bring their “Unfinished Projects” to life at The High Line in New York City.

Everyone has a project from their past that was left unfinished. The multifaceted singer-songwriter and performance artist Solange is unveiling her most ambitious sculptural work yet: a public exhibition that conducts electricity and changes over time through human energy. Her large-scale sculpture builds on an unfinished piece from her 2019 Venice Biennale performance "In Past Pupils and Smiles," reflecting her decade-long interest in using sculpture to broaden performance into everyday audience interaction.

Pink Pantheress, the 25-year-old multi-platinum recording artist and producer, is tapping into nostalgia yet again for her project. Drawing on early-2000s UK garage music and club culture, her energetic sound is now extending into fashion, as she reinvents her go-to footwear — ballet flats — into colorful, customizable statement pieces, blending nostalgia with innovation.

Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow is combining his strategic gameplay and precision with his love for geology and chess — developing a bespoke crystal and marble chess set.

Google Chrome’s "Unfinished Projects" will be on display to the public on New York City's High Line Chelsea Market Passage from September 24–27.

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Christie's Hong Kong will present Jean-Michel Basquiat's 1984 painting Ancient Scientist as the headliner for its 20th and 21st Century Evening Sale on September 29Estimated between $7.2 million and $9.7 million USD the artwork features Basquiat's signature skull-like motif drawn from diverse cultural sourcesThe Fall Sales will also highlight major works by Yayoi Kusama Yoshitomo Nara Zao Wou-Ki and Gerhard Richter across its Evening and Day auctions

Christie's has announced that Jean-Michel Basquiat's 1984 canvas Ancient Scientist will lead its 20th and 21st Century Evening Sale in Hong Kong. Estimated to fetch between $7,200,000 and $9,700,000 USD, the lot serves as the headliner for the auction house's Fall 2026 schedule.

Executed during a landmark year in Basquiat’s career marked by his first solo touring museum exhibition, Ancient Scientist centers on a monumental skull-like figure. The composition incorporates visual references spanning traditional African and Oceanic sculpture, mythology, Renaissance art, human anatomy, and music. The offering builds on Christie's auction presence in Asia, following its 2021 sale of Basquiat's Warrior, which realized $41.8 million USD.

Joining the Basquiat headliner in the September 29 Evening Sale is Yayoi Kusama's A-Pumpkin (YHP), making its auction debut with an estimate of $6,200,000 to $8,700,000 USD. The evening catalog also features Zao Wou-Ki's newly rediscovered 1957 oil painting Sans titre (Untitled), estimated at $2,900,000 to $4,500,000 USD, alongside pieces by Anita Magsaysay-Ho ($1,200,000 to $1,500,000 USD) and Christine Ay Tjoe ($900,000 to $1,300,000 USD). The subsequent Day Sale on September 30 will offer Yoshitomo Nara's 1995 painting Q & A ($1,600,000 to $2,300,000 USD) alongside Gerhard Richter's 1990 canvas Abstraktes Bild ($1,100,000 to $1,500,000 USD).

The 20th and 21st Century Evening Sale takes place on September 29, 2026, followed by the 20th and 21st Century Day Sales on September 30, 2026, at Christie's Hong Kong.

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