Summary

Tomoo Gokita presents more than 100 new fictional record sleeves at agnès b. galerie boutique.The Tokyo exhibition runs September 12 through November 8, 2026.Venue-exclusive screen-printed T-shirts arrive September 11 for ¥8,800 JPY.

Tomoo Gokita is bringing more than 100 imaginary record sleeves to agnès b. galerie boutique in Tokyo. Opening September 12, GOKITA RECORDS turns the album-cover format into a space for the artist’s drawings, humor and love of subculture.

The exhibition builds on Gokita Records, a series made between 2002 and 2018 and shown at his 2018 PEEKABOO exhibition at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery. While Gokita has designed covers for musicians including Towa Tei, YMO and METAFIVE, these fictional sleeves are free from the need to represent an actual recording. The new works continue that approach, moving between illustration and painting.

Alongside the exhibition, agnès b. will release venue-exclusive, hand-screen-printed T-shirts featuring newly drawn artwork. The tees come in black and white, in sizes M through XXL, priced at ¥8,800 JPY including tax. Sales begin at the gallery boutique on September 11 at 7 p.m. JST.

GOKITA RECORDS runs from September 12 through November 8, 2026. The gallery is open from noon to 7 p.m. and closes on Mondays, except September 21 and October 12.

agnès b. galerie boutique
La Fleur Minami-Aoyama 2F
5-7-25 Minami-Aoyama, Minato-ku
Tokyo, Japan

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“A process like this is a gift,” Lucien Smith said on his show, Delay of Game. The installation comprises four new “Rain Paintings,” the series that first put him on the map in 2012. “I let the market and outside criticism dictate my practice, and that was a mistake. Life has taken me full circle. I think it is time to return to the process I was given.”

A legacy of uncompromising rediscovery is left by Smith, a contemporary artist that pushed the boundaries of painting and art industry who has passed away at age 37. From fine art to film to restaurants, Smith held an indelible presence in the downtown scene, and in the hours since his death was confirmed, fixtures across art, fashion, and music have flooded the internet, sharing stories of how, more than just key player in the fabric of New York City, Smith was one of its architects.

A sensationalized rise-and-fall could have been the easy end to a twenty-something’s career. But for Smith it was the beginning. He spent the last decade alchemizing his journey into a platform for young artists, all while reinventing his own practice, and the art world playbook, along the way.

Born in Los Angeles in 1989, Smith came onto the scene upon graduating from Cooper Union in 2011. His two-person thesis show, Imagined Nostalgia, introduced his now-iconic “Rain Paintings” — works created by blasting paint-filled fire extinguishers on canvases, sparking a new taste for mid-century abstraction. And collectors came running.

His 2014 piece, “Hobbes, The Rain Man, and My Friend Barney / Under the Sycamore Tree,” sold on the secondary auction market $389,000 USD – scaling up its initial price by 38-times its initial price. Not long after, however, the early-2010s art market bared its teeth. Smith became the poster child of the era’s fads, along with its tides of criticism. He made a sudden exit from the city, in search for his voice without the market pressure. “Art was about money everywhere I looked. It was scary,” he said. “I was pushed into being an artist so fast that I didn’t have the chance to look at what I was doing, or wanted for the future.”

Rather than playing into the commercial gallery game, Smith took a step back. In 2015, he stopped working directly with galleries, and fled to a country home in Montauk to start afresh. It was there he embarked on new chapter of his practice: helping emerging artists similarly find their footing.

A year later, he launched Serving the People (STP), a non-profit focused on nurturing opportunity, community, and experimentation as a homegrown hub for young talent. STP, which regularly hosts workshops and meetings, has since blossomed into a global creative network, which includes the likes of Tremaine Emory, Heron Preston, and Virgil Abloh, who hosted a collaborative show with the artist in 2018. Smith also debuted a body of escapism-focused work at Frieze LA 2020 in STP’s inaugural exhibition, Fear Eats the Soil.

“I feel like an emerging artist again,” Smith told Hypebeast ahead of the LA exhibition, during a studio visit in 2020. “When you think about art, it’s the ability to create something from within.”

Though critical and outspoken of its pitfalls, Smith was never fully “against the art market and gallery system,” He continued to exhibit work from time to time, stepping into new technical territory beyond traditional painting and sculpture. Some of his most recent shows, Burn Down the House and People Are Strange, for example, featured airbrush paintings created with robotic arm. Both shows were anchored in perceptive introspections around his own career and society’s obsession with celebrity.

Last year, Smith sought a new way to nourish his community — by feeding them. He revived FOOD, the legendary artist-run eatery, in 2025. At Canal and Eldridge, he stepped into the role of restaurateur. Often seen chatting up friends outside the spot or bustling behind the counters, Smith carried its founders’— artists Carol Goodden, Tina Girouard, and Gordon Matta-Clarks’ —original vision, creating a haunt for artists to enjoy company around, well, food. The restaurant, as indicated on Instagram, is closed until further notice, though a memorial dinner service was held on September 8.

While hospitality was a first for Smith, FOOD was actually right on brand for him. “It’s important that the staff feel like they’re the real centerpiece of the restaurant because without them, there’s no operation,” Smith said during a lunch service last winter, echoing the ethos he laid down through STP. It was a perfect marriage of what he’d become known for: uplifting emerging artists, be it visual or culinary, bringing them together, and, above all, playing by his own rules.

Shortly before his passing, Smith took a trip back to Rain Paintings, the works that started it all. At Camp Hero, an abandoned baseball field in Montauk last month, he airbrushed four massive canvases for Delay of Game, still scheduled to open September 12 at Tripoli Gallery. In a call-back to his early practice, we can’t help but think of this 2013 Artsy interview with titan dealer Alberto Mugrabi. When asked why the artist was next-up, Mugrabi explained: “I will be watching Lucien Smith because he brings me sunshine in the rain.”

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Over the last 50 years, L’Occitane en Provence has crafted skincare, fragrances and home collections from botanical ingredients, forming a connection to nature that runs deep through every campaign and collaboration. As the Maison marks its milestone anniversary this year, it now reveals a new ballet project that tells the story of its culture from the soil to the soul.

Teaming up with French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, who recently collaborated with Musée d'Orsay and Fondation Louis Vuitton, the project develops from his pioneering contemporary ballet portfolio. Preljocaj began by delving into the written work of L’Occitane en Provence founder Olivier Baussan. Touching on the Maison’s foundational gestures of sowing, cultivating and harvesting, these unseen excerpts – including The Subtle Alchemy of the Drip and The Metamorphosis of Matter – helped the choreographer understand its ethos and find similarities in ballet’s expressive movement.

“We share the same sensitivity to the subtle,” shared Baussan in a recent interview on the collaborative process behind the project. “He works with the movement of bodies; I work with plants and stories. Yet, deep down, we are both seeking to reveal something that isn’t immediately visible.”

The artistic dialogue between ballet and beauty evolved into a 20-minute dance piece titled D’un geste simple, translating to From a simple gesture. Set against the backdrop of lavender fields in Provence, France, the choreography interpreted the way L’Occitane en Provence harvests flowers and distills oils into products through bold moves.

Reflecting on the performance, Baussan went on to say, “Beauty often arises from slowness, from attention, and from repeated gestures. In an ever-accelerating world, this is an invitation to rediscover the rhythm of life. Here, language unfolds into body, light, and music, becoming a collective work. This is undoubtedly the most beautiful fate of a story: to no longer belong to the one who wrote it.”

Watch the full performance above or visit YouTube to go behind the scenes of the process.

Discover the Lavender Collection by heading to L’Occitane en Provence’s website or boutiques now. You can explore more about the Maison's history on its dedicated page.

Read more at Hypebeast

Summary

Gagosian hosts Deana Lawson’s debut gallery solo show in New York from September 10 to October 24, 2026.The exhibition debuts Edge Control, a series recontextualizing beauty store surveillance stills.Works include luminous mirror-framed photographs, glass holograms, and large-scale portraits.

Gagosian will present its inaugural solo exhibition of works by acclaimed artist Deana Lawson, opening on September 10, 2026, at 541 West 24th Street in New York and running through October 24.

The presentation features a dynamic selection of mirror-framed photographs, holograms, and recent large-scale portraits that collectively explore issues of personhood, surveillance, and control within late capitalist society. A central highlight is the debut of selections from Edge Control, a photographic series initiated in 2023 in which Lawson recontextualizes surveillance stills captured at U.S. beauty supply stores. Borrowing its title from both a gel used to lay down hairlines and the literal systems of image-based policing, the series reimagines surveillance imagery - marked by deep-horizon blues and greens - while intervening to protect the identities of those pictured.

Expanding on Edge Control, the exhibition also introduces new glass-encased holograms inspired in part by Philip K. Dick’s 1977 dystopian novel A Scanner Darkly and its conceptual "scramble suits" that obscure a wearer's identity. These futuristic works are presented alongside Lawson’s signature, highly detailed domestic portraits. Drawing structural inspiration from 17th-century Dutch paintings and family photo albums, her large-scale figures gaze directly at the camera, asserting a vivid palette of deep greens, mauves, yellows, and browns. Grounded in intimate collaborations between the artist and her subjects, the exhibition highlights the transformative potential of beauty culture and human agency against a backdrop of contemporary paranoia and widespread surveillance.

Gagosian NYC
541 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011, USA

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Daniel Arsham’s latest zen garden performance could be the makings of your great-grandchildren’s favorite whisky. Four dancers move through a circular bed of barley at S50 in Seongsu, Seoul, sweeping, raking, and gliding through the sea of grains in meditative gestures. While this barley likely won’t hit the mill, the “Dawn Of Our Spirit” experience was inspired by traditional whisky-making, culminating in its last act: the reveal of The Balvenie’s 88-year-old Single Scotch Malt.

Distilled in 1931 and bottled in 2019 by Malt Master Kelsey McKechnie, The Balvenie’s oldest (and rarest) edition leads its new 1931 Collection. When it came time to debut the bottle during Frieze Seoul, the label tapped Arsham for a sculptural casing and companion performance that embodies its generations-long devotion to craft, technique, and tradition, while also feeling artistically at home.

The story behind the bottle begins with Arsham’s first trip to the distillery in Speyside, Scotland, said to be the heart of whisky country. “One of the things that struck me was the handmade quality of everything. It's technical, but very craft in a way, so I pulled out a lot of materials I saw.” Arsham said, sitting across from Hypebeast at The Distiller’s Library inside the Shilla Hotel. “We went through a lot of different processes around the [bottle’s] design,” with several “experimental” mockups behind him. “In the end, the preciousness of that liquid really needs to be considered.”

The liquid itself lay in a hand-blown crystal decanter detailed with 18-karat gold gilding, a stopper made from a decommissioned copper still, and a neck taking after the “Balvenie Ball,” the unique still shape which gives the whisky its famed honeyed flavor. Arsham also created the architecture housing the form. Its face features eight fluid layers of hand-patinated copper, evoking textures and hues found throughout the still safe, while 88 thinly layered sections of oak on the back refer to the European oak sherry butt where it was first poured. “It’s the whisky when it’s moving through time,” he explained. “When you look at the sculpture, it's moving through the copper, into the wood, and then into your glass.”

Beyond closing the cask of the 88-year-old, 1931 was a defining year for the label, which then opened its Home Malt Floor, still in operation. In today’s whisky game, the labor-intensive floor malting is seen as old-school. But for The Balvenie, it’s the bedrock to its heritage craft and timeless taste.

From initial whiffs of earthy barley to Sukyung Yoo’s choreography, which oscillates between lyrical and sharp, intense movements, the collaborative performance takes you from Seoul to Speyside upon walking through the doors of S50. “It’s still a very handmade process,” said Arsham, who directed the performance. “Sometimes we lose a little bit of that seeing it just on a shelf or having it at home. We tried together to bring some of that into the experience and tell that story.”

Craft, material, and the survival of time are key to understanding Arsham’s practice, notably through his self-coined “fictional archaeology,” making The Balvenie collaboration a natural fit. His series, Eroded Classical Sculpture and Zen Garden, most clearly echoed through the project, explore questions of memory, traditions, and how they materialize and transform even hundreds of years on.“In whisky, nothing happens overnight,” said McKechnie, the current Malt Master overseeing nearly a century of inventory. “The fruits of today's craftspeople might not be tasted for generations.”

“Being able to release an 88-year-old really reaffirms this to everyone at the distillery, that all the hard work that we're putting in today is a real testament to persistence and patience. That's something I think Daniel understands beautifully.”

But the 88-year-old isn't just a record-breaker for the house; it's the oldest whisky ever released. When it came time to announce, however, carrying the new world record was just part of the story. “At The Balvenie, we are always in charge of our own destiny,” McKechnie said. “I love the thought of us doing something that changes the landscape of Scotch whisky. We've done it before. I relish the opportunity to do it again.”

Following its Seoul debut, the “Dawn Of Our Spirit” performance will make stops in New York, Shanghai, and Taipei. Check out The Balvenie's website for more information on The 1931 Collection.

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It’s clear skies ahead for Frieze Seoul 2026, even against the odds of shaky August rains. The mega fair rolled back into its fifth edition at COEX through September 5, and adding to the usual Gangnam crowd is an international influx of collectors, artists, and fairgoers shuffling to get in on the action.

Since first landing in 2021, Frieze Seoul has grown into one of the essential art-world dates in Asia. And along with a record 133 galleries from 30 countries in attendance are a few new moves. Spotlight and Material Practice debut as new curated sections, honing in on overlooked 20th-century artists, and dialogues between craft, contemporary art, and tradition, respectively. Focus, dedicated to younger galleries, sees a return, expanding beyond Asia for the first time.

As for the state of the market this go-around, the jury is still out. But sales so far have shown more energy put towards accessibly priced works, as well as younger artists and collectors, to switch things up.

So, what’s worth seeing? We hit the fair floor to find out. Read on for more on our five must-see booths at Frieze Seoul.

Caption, Booth F7

Yongjae Lee’s “Gaehwa 05” (2026) is among the first eye-catchers spotted down the Focus alley. Presented by Caption, located in Yongsan, Lee mounts a chorus of sepia-toned paintings and Nine Elephants sculptures, reworking images from the Smithsonian Archives — tattooed laborers and vignettes from Kim Gojong’s audience hall. The real work happens in the gaps of history, wary of letting us off resolution so easily. Throughout the fair, you’ll also spot Lee’s work on this year’s Frieze Uniform T-Shirt, created with Stone Island.

CON_, Booth F5

Minhee Kim gets glitchy at Tokyo-based CON_. The presentation, also found in Focus, digs into the complicated fantasy of “ideal” beauty. Drawing from ‘90s media, like manga and advertisements, Kim confronts her unease with these figures and the desire to become them. The perfect “PC” body is swapped for one that’s crystallized and vulnerable to malfunction. The new body of paintings and illustrations probes into our innermost questions of shame and desire, pushing beyond what’s promised when we’re shiny and new.

Mendes Wood DM, Booth B8

Subtle acts of disobedience draw a crowd. “Bomb” (2026) by Eunnam Hong hides menace beneath its codes of luxury and desire. Precious Okoyomon evokes eroticism, shame, and fragility in the shape of a shy, kneeling bear, hand over mouth; while Josi allures with an inky, layered work that invites physical presence through shadowy forms. Repping Brazil (and beyond), the extensive Mendes Wood DM selection feels well-rounded across medium and histories, also featuring Laís Amaral, Lucas Arruda, Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, Tomie Ohtake, Lygia Pape, Marina Perez Simão, Paulo Nazareth, Paulo Nimer Pjota, Mário Rubinski, Luiz Roque, Paula Siebra, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, and Kishio Suga.

Unaw Gallery, Booth S13

Gyutae Hwang’s photographs at UNAW Gallery shimmer in the sculpture- and painting-heavy crowd. Part of the new Spotlight section, dedicated to modernist titans outside of the Western canon, the solo presentation collects key works from the ‘60s to the early oughts by the pioneering experimental photographer. Hwang’s career is defined by an exploration of substance that pushed the possibilities of the medium past its traditions. “I suffer from curiosity,” he once said. “Curiosity led me to peer through a loupe, and that brought me all the way here.”

Galerie Kandlhofer, Booth A14

For its first outing at Frieze Seoul, Vienna-based Galerie Kandlhofer brings seven artists to its booth. A pair of Paco Koenig’s oil-on-aluminum works just beyond a sinuous metal bloom by So Young Park warrants its own few minutes of lingering, toeing the borders between life and death. Paulina Aumayr, amongst some of the youngest on view, contributes “Find a penny, pick it up. Who pays for your luck? (2)” (2026), another study of salvation just beyond reach.

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Summary

‘Latent’ marks VHILS’ first solo exhibition in Mallorca and the beginning of his collaboration with Baró.The show brings together carved doors, torn billboards, ceramic tile works and architectural debris, continuing his focus on memory, material and urban transformation.Taking its title from a light phenomenon inside Palma Cathedral, the exhibition centers on VHILS’ process of removing surface layers to reveal what was already hidden beneath.

For more than two decades, Alexandre Farto, better known as VHILS, has built a practice around subtraction. Rather than adding images to the surfaces around him, the Portuguese artist cuts, drills, tears and breaks into them, uncovering portraits from the layers of material and history already embedded within.

That process takes center stage in ‘Latent,’ VHILS’ first solo exhibition in Mallorca and the beginning of his collaboration with Baró. Opening during the 2026 edition of Nit de l’Art, the exhibition brings together several ongoing bodies of work across the gallery’s two main spaces.

The exhibition takes its name from an optical phenomenon that occurs inside Palma Cathedral, known locally as La Seu. Twice a year, sunlight passes through the cathedral’s vast rose window and projects its form onto the opposite wall, momentarily producing what appears to be a second rose window. Nothing new is introduced into the space. Instead, the architecture briefly reveals an image that was already contained within it.

The phenomenon closely mirrors VHILS’ approach to making work. Beginning with an existing surface, the artist removes or breaks through its layers until another image emerges. Across ‘Latent,’ abandoned doors are carved into faces, advertising billboards are cut apart until their surfaces resemble archaeological sites and ceramic tiles become the foundation for portraits. Elsewhere, fragments recovered from demolished buildings are transformed into sculptural works that retain traces of their former environments.

Together, the works extend VHILS’ longstanding investigation into the relationship between cities and the people who inhabit them. Materials typically treated as disposable become records of development, displacement and collective memory, with the artist approaching architecture less as a backdrop than as something capable of absorbing human experience.

At its core, ‘Latent’ asks a question that has followed VHILS throughout his practice: what can a surface hold beyond what we initially see? ‘Latent’ opens at Baró Mallorca on September 19, 2026 and will remain on view through March 2027.

Baró Mallorca
Carrer de Can Sanç
13, Centre, 07001 Palma
Illes Balears, Spain

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Summary

The Balvenie unveils an 88-year-old Single Malt Scotch Whisky, its oldest whisky yetDaniel Arsham has designed the bottle and sculptural presentation of the whisky in a collaboration, titled 'The Dawn of Our Spirit,' alongside a performance premiering at Frieze SeoulThe collaboration includes a 12-year-old and 15-year-old Single Malt Scotch Whisky, inspired by the historic release

Ask a malt master, or any whisky lover: time is a quiet but seriously powerful player. And, as of late, The Balvenie knows it best. The Scottish label unveiled its 1931 Collection, led by an 88-year-old Single Malt Scotch, making it the distillery's — and the world's — oldest whisky ever released. Naturally, such a monumental edition called for a presentation to match, and who better than Daniel Arsham to give it a time-graced touch.

The 88-year-old whisky is an all-around ode to The Balvenie's Speyside distillery. With just 17 bottles in existence, the hand-blown, 18ct gold-engraved crystal decanter takes shape after the copper stills behind its unique profile. The sculptural housing is also finished with eight hand-patinated layers, inspired by the oxidized hues and textures found throughout the distillery. Meanwhile, the back is created from 88 layers of rich oak, nodding to casks in which the whisky was first laid down.

Those familiar with Arsham's work will also notice a resemblance to the artist's Bronze Eroded series, where icons, classical and contemporary, are cast as artifacts excavated from a distant future. "This collaboration has brought these themes together naturally," expressed Arsham, whose work explores memory, history, and material transformation. "I wanted to create something that feels both ancient and contemporary, to make the passage of time tangible."

The 1931 Collection also includes a publicly available 12-year-old and 15-year-old limited-edition Single Malt Scotch Whisky, with presentations by Arsham, echoing the verdigris patina and copper tones of the 88-year-old.

As for the profile, the whisky contains notes of buttery fudge, mint leaf, leather, and floral heather tones, with toffee, warm spice, and honey landing on the palate — an experience The Balvenie's Malt Master, Kelsey McKechnie, likens to "the serene silence of evergreen woods."

1931 was a defining year for The Balvenie, even beyond the pour of its most recent release. It also saw the opening of its Home Malt Floor, which continues to operate today. It's there that the whisky lay, tended to for decades by craftspeople. By 2019, it had "reached perfection." "Exceptional in both substance and significance, I quietly instructed for it to be bottled and locked away for safekeeping," McKechnie said.

To debut the collection, The Balvenie is hosting a run of sensorial performances directed by Arsham during Frieze Seoul 2026, bringing a slice of Scotland to Space S50 in Seongdong. Check out The Balvenie's website to learn more.

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Summary

Matt McCormick presents ‘Long Distance Call,’ his first solo exhibition with Ruttkowski;68 in New York.The show explores how images shift in meaning as they are repeated, inherited, remembered and circulated over time.Spanning painting, sculpture, installation, works on paper and film, McCormick blurs the line between lived experience, memory and cultural mythology.

Matt McCormick is set to present ‘Long Distance Call,’ his first solo exhibition with Ruttkowski;68, opening at the gallery’s New York space this September.

Working across painting, sculpture, installation, works on paper and film, McCormick builds a visual world where memory, popular imagery and personal history are difficult to separate. His work has long pulled from the iconography of American life, but in ‘Long Distance Call,’ the emphasis shifts toward the way those images are carried forward and reshaped over time. As the gallery describes it, “pictures rarely reach us intact.” Instead, they are “repeated, reproduced, retold, and passed between people and across generations,” accumulating new meanings with every encounter.

That instability sits at the center of the exhibition. McCormick places images rooted in his own experience alongside those inherited from family, encountered through photographs or absorbed from the wider culture, without establishing a clear hierarchy between them.

The show also considers the gap between making an image and eventually encountering it. Ruttkowski;68 describes that distance as “at once elastic and idiosyncratic,” a space where context can shift and an image can become detached from the circumstances that first produced it.

Rather than attempting to restore those references to some original meaning, ‘Long Distance Call’ looks at what remains after they have traveled: the associations, memories and projections that ultimately become part of the image itself.

Matt McCormick’s ‘Long Distance Call’ is on view at Ruttkowski;68 New York from September 10 through October 17, 2026.

Ruttkowski;68
46 Cortlandt Alley
New York, NY 10013

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Summary

'3rd Poem' marks Es Devlin’s first solo exhibition in Korea.The show spans more than 30 years of work across light, sound, drawing, architecture and moving image.Visitors are folded into the exhibition through participatory works that explore presence, memory and collective experience.

Es Devlin has spent much of her career thinking about what happens when people enter a space together. Her stages and installations have surrounded audiences with light, sound and architecture, often blurring the line between spectator and participant. For her first solo exhibition in Korea, that relationship between people, place and attention takes center stage.

Titled 3rd Poem: Es Devlin, Come Home Again,the exhibition takes over FUTURA SEOUL in Bukchon through January 17, 2027. Spanning more than 30 years of Devlin’s practice, the show brings together drawing, sculpture, moving image, books, sound and light around a recurring idea in her work: presence.

The exhibition opens with "Infinite Library," where drawings and films are projected across shelves filled with upside-down books. The structure eventually opens to reveal "Mirror Maze," an environment of reflective glass that folds the visitor into the work itself.

Elsewhere, "Line of Light" began with Devlin waking one morning to a narrow strip of illumination. At Futura Seoul, the installation connects artificial light inside the building with the natural landscape beyond it. Upstairs, "Screenshare" transforms hundreds of sketchbooks accumulated over Devlin’s career into a monumental moving image of drawings, notes and fragments from past projects.

At the center of the exhibition is a new iteration of "Come Home Again." Originally rooted in Devlin’s encounters with threatened species in London, the work now brings together animals and plants from both London and Seoul through drawing, spoken voices and choral recordings, expanding the exhibition’s idea of presence beyond the human.

Participation continues with "Collective Portrait," where visitors sit across from strangers and draw one another at a shared table, leaving the portraits behind to accumulate throughout the run of the show.

Rather than presenting a straightforward retrospective, 3rd Poem operates more like a living environment, where strangers read, draw, reflect and briefly share the same space before moving on.

'3rd Poem: Es Devlin, Come Home Again' is on view at FUTURA SEOUL through January 17, 2027.

FUTURA SEOUL
61 Bukchon-ro,
Jongno District, Seoul
South Korea

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Summary

Grade10 and Gana Art have formed ZZZ, a joint venture built to develop South Korea's trading card and collectibles ecosystemThe venture debuts during Seoul Art Week with THEMGOOD in Itaewon, headlined by a record-scale Van Gogh Pikachu installation and two rare complete setsThe launch arrives as South Korea's collectible-card-games market is projected to more than double by 2033

Grade10 and Gana Art have launched ZZZ, a joint venture aimed at placing trading cards inside South Korea's high-end art and collectibles world. The partnership makes its public debut with THEMGOOD, an exhibition opening in Itaewon during Seoul Art Week, that treats rare cards with the curatorial framing usually reserved for fine art.

The venture pairs two different kinds of expertise. Grade10, Asia's premier trading-card venture and a division of MemeStrategy, brings its footing in the card industry, while Gana Art contributes a curatorial perspective and an international cultural network. The stated aim is an integrated ecosystem spanning exhibitions and card festivals, collector-community programs, and trading services on and offline, built to serve a Korean collector base that both companies describe as increasingly sophisticated.

"ZZZ represents the next phase of Grade10's commitment to build durable collector infrastructure across Asia," said Ray Chan, Chief Executive Officer of MemeStrategy and Grade10, framing the venture as a bridge between Grade10's industry reach and Gana Art's cultural standing. The gallery, for its part, positions the effort as an extension of its curatorial mission. "Trading cards are a vibrant visual culture with global resonance, and South Korea has a discerning community ready to encounter this area in new ways," said Sierra Yun, Director of Marketing and Sales at Gana Art.

That ambition is anchored by the objects on show. THEMGOOD's centerpiece is a 500-card installation of "Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat" promos, each in PSA Gem Mint 10 condition, which Grade10 identifies as the world's largest display of the graded card by count. The promo originated in the Van Gogh Museum's 2023 collaboration with The Pokémon Company, marking the museum's 50th anniversary, and quickly became one of the era's most recognizable Pokémon cards. Alongside it sits a complete 50-card Louis Vuitton x Takashi Murakami set in PSA 10, shown publicly in South Korea for the first time and described as one of only three known complete sets worldwide, plus a complete 102-card 1996 first-edition Japanese Pokémon Base Set at the same top grade.

The timing tracks a fast-moving market. South Korea's collectible-card-games market is projected to grow from US$500 million USD in 2025 to US$1.28 billion USD by 2033, a compound annual growth rate of 12.5%, according to Straits Research, while Grand View Research separately calls trading cards the fastest-growing segment of the country's broader collectibles market. THEMGOOD also builds on Grade10 and Gana Art's recent work with Seoul Auction, which staged a high-end Pokémon-card exhibition and private sale in Seoul in July 2026, an early signal of the appetite ZZZ is now moving to serve.

THEMGOOD opens with an invitation-only reception in Itaewon on September 3 during Seoul Art Week, with a private showcase to follow later this year.

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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.

Anne-Laure Lemaitre has long been interested in what happens when art is given more room to move.

Based in New York, the curator specializes in large-scale, in-situ projects, splitting her time between consulting for a range of clients, including Fortune 500 companies, and managing curatorial programs centered on emerging artists. Rather than treating architecture as a backdrop, her work often considers how an artwork can respond to, occupy and transform the space around it.

It makes sense, then, that two of the exhibitions that have stayed with her most this year took place far outside the conventional gallery model. One unfolded inside an empty Brooklyn office, while another took over six floors of a building in Jersey City. For Lemaitre, their appeal was not simply their scale, but the ambition behind them: independent curatorial projects using underutilized spaces to create something rigorous, unexpected and alive.

That same appetite for work that expands beyond familiar formats runs through her assessment of the art world in 2026. She sees an industry in transition, but also one filled with artists and organizers testing new ways of working, gathering and reaching audiences.

For the latest edition of State of Art, Lemaitre discusses the exhibitions still on her mind, Lesley-Anne Cao’s haunting "Amphibian Palm," the artists she would invite to dinner and why she gives the art world a B-minus.

What’s the one show from the first half of this year that you can't stop thinking about?

There are a few, but I'll mention two. Both are very different, but function on a similar principle.

The first would be The Gallery's WeWork (oralmoral), an evolving group show put together by Florian Meisenberg in an empty office space in Brooklyn. It showcased site-responsive works by so many artists I respect and adore, such as Cato Ouyang, Craig Jun Lee, Kyle Clairmont Jacques, Shaina Tabak, Brian Oakes, Anna K.E., Fin Simonetti and Pol Morton, among many others. It also offered free daily co-working space for artists alongside extensive, thorough and sharp programming on site.

The second is Six Artists. Six Floors. Six Solo Exhibitions., Gladwell Projects' takeover of six floors of a building in Jersey City to organize solo presentations by Chunghee Yunm, Vamba Bility, Lisu Vega, Trevor Warren, Purvai Rai and Chiffon Thomas, a personal favorite. The quality of the show rivaled what you can see in major institutions. I’m quite in awe of what Christina Ine-Kimba Boyle organized on her own.

The scale and magnitude of both endeavors were thoroughly impressive. Both utilized vacant spaces to showcase rigorous curatorial projects with bite and a vision, and both felt incredibly fresh in an art world everyone seems convinced is in crisis.

Did any artwork actually make you feel something real this year, or has everything felt a little flat?

I’d say "Amphibian Palm" by Lesley-Anne Cao has definitely made an impact on me. The work presents a series of “books” in water tanks, with the pages flipping at random underwater.

It’s a visually striking and haunting work that brings to mind many layers of thought around accessibility, knowledge, bias and presence. It’s quite conceptual, yet mesmerizing and emotional. Lesley-Anne is the type of artist who makes me want to fall in love with art all over again.

I first saw a version of the work in the Philippines during a fair, then showed another iteration of it in Mexico City at THIRD BORN earlier this summer.

"I’d love to see more concrete, direct support for endeavors, artist-led or otherwise, that are navigating new ways to exist and connect with their public within our broader current context."

What's a show you have marked on your calendar for the rest of the year and why?

I usually don’t plan too far ahead when it comes to what I may see or why. I tend to be very impulsive and just schedule as I go.

If you had to give the 2026 art world a report card grade right now, what is it and why?

Probably a B-minus. I’m seeing so much emulation that I’m excited to see unfold, but I also understand it’s a transitional phase, which comes with quite a bit of growing pains and confusion.

What’s one trend in the art scene you want to see go away and what’s one you want to see more of?

I’d love to see fewer comments and analyses about the art world’s state, its shifts and what they may mean dominating conversations around art overall.

Instead, I’d love to see more concrete, direct support for endeavors, artist-led or otherwise, that are navigating new ways to exist and connect with their public within our broader current context.

If you can sum up the art world right now in exactly three words, what would they be?

Changing. Exciting. Challenging.

If you could grab a drink or meal with any artist tonight, living or dead, who would it be and what’s the first thing you’re asking them?

It kind of changes every day. Last week I would have said Öyvind Fahlström and would have asked him about his way of infusing political criticism and subversion into his practice.

Before that it could have been Derek Jarman, Ana Mendieta, Artemisia Gentileschi, Hélio Oiticica, Nam June Paik or so many others.

When it comes to living artists, David Hammons, Rossella Biscotti, Emeka Ogboh or perhaps, today, Francis Alÿs. I’d ask him how he has, over and over again, so magically created such powerful spaces for attention and emotion through simple gestures.

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Summary

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea is hosting a major solo exhibition by Do Ho SuhThe show features a career-spanning collection, including several of his colorful "fabric architecture" installations among unseen early works and recent textile collaborationsIt's open until February 9, 2027 with a special Seoul Box opening arriving in November

Many of us can't say we've been inside our favorite artist's houses, but for Do Ho Suh fans, the offer is always open. The South Korean artist just opened his largest show yet at The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (MMCA). Running until February 9, 2027, the exhibition gathers hundreds of unseen, iconic, and recent works in an unprecedented dive into his distinct practice.

Known for his colorful “fabric architecture” installations, Suh's work explores questions of family, memory, identity, displacement, and collectivity, often through the body or homes. His own experiences living in Korea, the United States, and Europe notably give way to the importance he places on perspective, be it literal, social, or political.

The ongoing MMCA showcase features over 500 pieces from across his three-decade practice, spanning installation, sculpture, drawing, and video. Several of his famed fabric installations — “Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul” (2024), “Nest/s” (2024), and “Rubbing/Loving: Seoul Home” (2013-2022) have a commanding presence. But so too are the sketches from his university years and intricate textile illustrations, created using a method developed with STPI Singapore.

 

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The works that first put Suh on the global stage, in fact, have no houses in them at all. Additional standouts include "Floor," his 2001 Venice Biennale piece made up of tens of thousands of plastic figures bearing the weight of the audience above, and “Some/One” (2001), a shimmering, hollow robe of military dog tags created during his mandatory service. The tension between individual and collective has always been there.

Suh is also debuting “Memory of Love” (2026). Created in collaboration with RE;CODE, the Korean label known for its upcycled and sustainably produced garments, the new jacket uses patches of fabric cut from his own family's clothing to create gentle pockets for keepsakes throughout the interior.

Check out the museum's website to book your tickets today.

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
30 Samcheong-ro,
Jongno District, Seoul

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Summary

Meguru Yamaguchi returns to Japan after 19 years in New York with his first major exhibition back home.VORTEX centers on a 4.6-meter work inspired by Sedona’s twisted trees and a new spin technique.Created publicly in Ginza, the exhibition has been extended through September 4.

After nearly two decades in New York, Meguru Yamaguchi has returned to Japan with something to prove.

His latest exhibition, VORTEX, takes over CALEIDO GINZA THE HUB with a monumental new work standing 4.6 meters tall. Originally opening on July 25, the exhibition has now been extended through September 4.

For Yamaguchi, the homecoming arrives with some friction. The artist returned to a Japanese art landscape where commercial pressures can favor smaller, more easily sellable works. Rather than adapting to that reality, he wanted his first major exhibition since moving back from Brooklyn to push firmly in the opposite direction.

The scale draws from his 19 years in New York, where encounters with monumental works by Frank Stella, Gerhard Richter and Katharina Grosse shaped his understanding of how art could interact with the energy of a city. He points in particular to the impact of seeing Kristin Baker at Deitch Projects, an experience he sought to recreate for audiences in Ginza.

At the center of the exhibition is VORTEX, a towering abstract work inspired by the twisted trees Yamaguchi encountered in Sedona, Arizona. Their spiraling forms led him to develop a new spin technique centered around the physical force of rotation, resulting in a work designed to envelop the viewer through sheer scale and movement.

The final stages of production were carried out publicly for a month behind the venue's glass facade, allowing pedestrians to watch the work take shape from the streets of Ginza. For Yamaguchi, the neighborhood itself became part of the project, its concentration of commerce, desire and movement feeding into the idea of the vortex.

The exhibition also marks the launch of CALEIDO ART PROJECT, a new initiative by Nisso Building and CEO Takayuki Onishi focused on working with artists to create site-specific expressions and new cultural hubs across the city.

A 15-minute documentary chronicling the live production process is also screening alongside exhibition-exclusive items. VORTEX is on view at CALEIDO GINZA THE HUB in Tokyo through September 4, 2026.

CALEIDO GINZA THE HUB
1F Nisso 26 Ginza Building
5-11-12 Ginza, Chuo-ku
Tokyo 104-0061
Japan

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Summary

Two independently built Polaroid archives meet for the first time in Monterrey.Phillip Leeds and YFIF document artists, musicians, designers and athletes across generations.The show looks at how repeated encounters can add up to a wider record of culture.

For more than two decades, Phillip Leeds has photographed the people moving through music, fashion and art with a Polaroid Big Shot. Thousands of miles south, Venezuelan artist Your Favorite Internet Friend, better known as YFIF, was building a remarkably similar archive of his own. Their work meets in Folie à Deux, a new exhibition at Colector in Monterrey.

Young Miko, Mac Miller, JAY-Z, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, Virgil Abloh, Naomi Campbell, SZA, Tyler, the Creator, Takashi Murakami and Daddy Yankee all appear in the show. Together, the portraits offer a loose snapshot of the scenes Leeds and YFIF have moved through over the years.

Leeds' archive grew out of New York before stretching west and across the Pacific. YFIF's developed through Venezuela and Latin America, documenting musicians, athletes and artists from inside the culture itself. Neither was following the other's lead, yet both landed on the same camera: the Polaroid Big Shot, a fixed-focus portrait camera introduced in 1971 and famously used by Andy Warhol.

They also share the same rule. The Polaroid is the final object. No negative, no second version, no endless reproduction. One image, one meeting. That feels especially pointed now, when images can be copied, altered or generated almost instantly. Every photograph here required two people to actually be in the same place at the same time.

The title, folie à deux, usually refers to a delusion shared by two people. Here, it describes something closer to a shared obsession arrived at independently: keep photographing long enough and the archive begins to tell the story of an era. The idea comes full circle when Leeds and YFIF photograph each other. One signs the back. The other hides behind his own Big Shot.

Folie à Deux is on view at Colector in Monterrey, Mexico, in August 2026.

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Summary

Princeton University Art Museum unveils Takeda Hideo’s Genpei: Defying Authority , showcasing all 22 screenprints.On view from August 30 - January 3, 2027, the artwork satirizes The Tale of the Heike, critiquing samurai ideals and romanticized violence.

This weekend, the Princeton University Art Museum will present Takeda Hideo's Genpei: Defying Authority. Curated by Kit Brooks, the museum's Curator of Asian Art, the exhibition brings together all 22 screenprints from the Japanese artist''s celebrated Genpei series (produced between 1985 and 1999) to the US for the very first time.

The showcase offers a provocative, modern reinterpretation of The Tale of the Heike, the 12th-century medieval war epic recounting the Genpei War between the rival Minamoto and Taira clans. Instead of glorifying samurai valor, Takeda’s prints employ bold colors, tattooed figures and satirical distortions to expose the absurdity and violence at the heart of the narrative.

The exhibition highlights Takeda’s irreverent approach to history, recasting legendary figures such as Yoshitsune and Taira no Kiyomori in grotesque, unsettling forms that undermine traditional ideals of masculinity and heroism. His use of full-body tattoos - an anachronistic reference to Japan’s modern criminal underworld - transforms the Genpei War into a clash of rival gangs rather than noble warriors.

As curator Kit Brooks explains: “I’ve been thinking about Takeda’s work ever since I first encountered it at the British Museum 19 years ago, so it’s an honor to present the complete Genpei series in the United States for the first time. Taken together, the exhibition is a rare opportunity to examine Takeda’s work in its full complexity. In the context of the Museum’s collections that span centuries of Japanese art, Genpei’s cynical perspective on Japanese history vividly captures the social upheavals and changing attitudes of the twentieth century.”

The exhibition features key works from the series that dismantle the conventional heroic narratives of warrior culture. In "The Mark of the Fan" (1985), Takeda transforms a famous historical moment of archery skill into a surreal composition where a warrior navigates a sea of submerged, tattooed limbs, while in "The Final Illness of Taira Kiyomori" (1985), the warlord is depicted tormented on his deathbed by a feverish, demonic presence.

Elsewhere, in "Surprise Attack at Hiyodorigoe" (1985), warriors ride naked women instead of horses down a steep incline, and in "The Death of Yoshitsune" (1999), legendary figures are rendered with deliberately ambiguous, feminized bodily traits at the moment of defeat.

On view in the museum's new Allen Adler & Frances Beatty Adler Gallery, the showcase pairs Takeda's complete silkscreen portfolio with contextual historical materials, postwar photography and an accompanying book that reevaluates Takeda's radical contribution to 20th-century printmaking.

Princeton University Art Museum
45 Elm Dr, Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

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Summary

Multidisciplinary artist Oscar Wang is creating a permanent, site-specific artwork made exclusively for Patina TianjinThe partnership grows out of Wang's method of treating a location's architecture and history as part of the work rather than its backdropWang and the hotel plan to extend the same creative narrative into cultural programming and a curated line of lifestyle products

Oscar Wang and Patina Tianjin have announced a collaboration built around a permanent artwork that Wang will create exclusively for the hotel. The project reflects the way the Shanghai-based artist tends to work, beginning not with a finished concept but with the site itself, and it will expand outward from the central piece into a broader program of cultural activity and a limited-edition collection

Wang's practice has always moved across art, design, space, and lifestyle, circling a single question: how material, scale, light, and movement shape the way people perceive a place. For him, a location is never a neutral stage on which an artwork is set. It is a working part of how the piece takes form. That is why his process usually opens with a period of close study, reading a building's history, its spatial logic, the way people move through it, and how it is used now, before he settles on the scale, materials, and form that will let art enter the space.

That instinct lines up closely with Patina's approach to folding art, design, and cultural exchange into the guest experience, and it gives the collaboration its footing. Rather than commission a standalone object, the two sides are treating the permanent artwork as a starting point and carrying its creative language into cultural content, lifestyle products, and public experiences. As Wang put it, "I have always believed that a site is not the backdrop to an artwork, but an integral part of how the work comes into being. Once you truly enter a space, its circulation, architectural scale, materials, light and existing traces all reshape your initial understanding. Patina's approach to local culture and contemporary experience means that this collaboration is not simply about placing an artwork in a space; it creates an opportunity for art to become part of the space and of everyday life."

The site research that his method depends on produced an unexpected turn. While tracing the location's history, the Patina Tianjin team found records tying Wang's own family to the city, and specifically to the former No. 4 Telephone Exchange next to the hotel's East Courtyard, where his maternal great-grandfather, Mr Zhang Ziqi, once worked. On a later visit, Wang stepped inside that building and was presented with related archives and a reproduction carrying Zhang Ziqi's handwritten signature. The discovery did not launch the project, but it deepened the very thing his practice is built to explore, the connection between a person and a place. "It was only after the collaboration began that I discovered this connection between my family and the former No. 4 Telephone Exchange beside the hotel," Wang said. "It came as a complete surprise. It did not change why we began the collaboration, but it changed the way I understood the site when I returned to it." He plans to keep that memory as a quiet thread inside the work rather than its headline, letting it sit alongside the building's history and the city's present-day life so the finished piece stays open to everyone who encounters it.

The artwork itself will occupy a key intersection of the hotel's public experience. Drawing on archival research, on-site observation, and material experimentation, Wang will respond to the architecture, the flow of movement through it, and its social character, testing how a piece can forge fresh links between historical context and contemporary life. That setting suits the material: Patina Tianjin comprises 17 restored heritage buildings in a historic cultural district, where classical architecture and Italianate window frames meet contemporary design across a series of garden courtyards.

Beyond the immersive artwork, Wang and Patina Tianjin plan to launch a limited-edition collaborative collection drawn from the same creative narrative, turning a single commission into an evolving body of cultural work. Stay tuned for further details of the creative concept and installation.

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Yayoi Kusama, one of the most defining voices in contemporary art, has passed away at 97. According to an official statement from her studio released on Thursday, she died at a hospital in Tokyo on August 14.

Known for her polka dots, pumpkins, mirrored rooms, and bright red bob, Kusama spent over seven decades nurturing an avant-garde practice that both transformed her deeply personal experiences into an unmistakable visual language and reshaped the experience of contemporary art for generations to follow.

Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, she began drawing flowers as a child as a way to cope with what would become lifelong hallucinations, namely visions of talking swarms of flowers. Dense fields of polka dots and repeated symbols were grounding amidst the vastness of the world.

Art was also a means of social critique. She used her work to confront ideas, like shame and desire, while embracing the “outsider” title in the context of the New York art scene. “I cannot imagine how I will be classified after my death,” she said in a 1965 interview. “It feels good to be an outsider.” Throughout her career, Kusama returned to themes of repetition and a concept she called “self-obliteration” — the dissolution of oneself into an endless universe — seen in Infinity Mirror Rooms, a series she started later that year.

Amongst her most famous pieces is “Narcissus Garden,” a rogue installation at the 1966 Venice Biennale. The “lake” of 1,500 reflective balls explores what it means to find salvation in vanity, especially within the context of the art world at the time. Kusama sold the balls for $2 each under the banner “Your narcissism for sale, ” before the Biennale shut it down.

In 1977, she checked herself into Seiwa mental hospital in Tokyo. The facility provided her with the stability her projects required. She lived there permanently, leaving during the daytime to work in her nearby studio. In the time since, she’s been the subject of dozens of major surveys and retrospectives around the world.

“She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul,” her studio wrote. “We will carry forward Kusama’s wishes and, through art, continue to bring hope and strength for the future to people around the world.”

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Summary

Anne Imhof will unveil 'House of Swans' at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong on September 25The exhibition features painting, installation, sculpture, video, and the artist's first ballet performance with Hong Kong BalletThe collection introduces the lore of the House of Swans, a fictional faction from Imhof's 2025 NYC performance, 'DOOM'

Hong Kong, make way for Anne Imhof. The German artist is coming to Tai Kwun Contemporary next month to premiere House of Swans, her first major solo in Asia.

The exhibition, curated by Ying Kwok and Tiffany Leung, features a monumental commission of new works that span oil paintings, bronze sculptures, sonic installations, and video. It takes shape as a series of “charged encounters” that “explore bodily presence, restriction, and authority,” per Tai Kwun, unfolding across the institution’s three floors.

A titular performance is also in the mix. The “House of Swans” ballet builds on the storyline laid out in the exhibition, “[following] a heroine struggling on her path to love through a chaotic cityscape” in an “imagined future.” It features musicians and dancers from the Hong Kong Ballet, alongside American ballet dancer and Imhof’s partner Devon Teuscher.

The piece takes after the final ballet sequence of DOOM, her most elaborate and massive performances to date, loosely based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, where she first met Teuscher. With nods to some of the genre’s classics, like Swan Lake and Giselle, the forthcoming performance clues us into the Swans' origin story, how it came to embody hope as the third house to the original's Capulet-Montague factions.

“I’m interested in [classical forms] such as ballet because I want to tell different stories,” Imhof said in a recent interview. “Because autocrats use ballet as a soft power tool par excellence, it doesn’t mean it’s theirs. This is almost like an attempt to claim it back.”

The exhibition will be on view from September 25 to January 3, 2027, with special performances slated for September 25 and 26, and others on deck through the show’s run. Check out Tai Kwun Contemporary’s website for more details.

Tai Kwun Contemporary
10 Hollywood Road,
Central, Hong Kong

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