"We're constantly striving to strike a balance between work that respects academic rules of composition, established visual codes and good readability, with something more spontaneous, adventurous, playful, even naive."
The splendid art nouveau Les Brigittines is a Belgian culinary institution, where chef Dirk Myny has overseen the kitchen for 35 years. He daringly reinterprets classic Flemish recipes with dishes such as smoked eel mousse and succulent pork belly with a tart cherry ale vinaigrette.
Kamrooz Aram is everywhere this year, from Mumbai Art Week to the Whitney Biennial, and critic Aruna D'Souza is grateful. She pens a beautiful meditation on his work, reading his abstract paintings as not simply a denunciation of Western modernism nor a reassertion of Islamic visual motifs, but something else entirely - something gestural, exuberant, riotous, and incomparably his own.
Hong Kong's particular and seductive Metabolist city planning is an ode to consumption as a great totalizer of culture, and to contemporary art as merely a niche commodity form among many others.
"These paintings merge the landscape and the intimacy of windows through the framing of the car, bridging the two realms I've typically explored separately. The car becomes a meditation on transition, on existing simultaneously here and elsewhere."
Home Sweet Home is an exhibition at MAD curated by Connie Hüsser that examines the concept of home through the typology of the . The project brings together more than 75 birdhouse designs by Belgian and international designers, including Sabine Marcelis, Muller Van Severen, Max Lamb, Philippe Malouin, Shishi San, and others. Through this collective body of work, the exhibition positions the birdhouse as a design object that connects architecture, care, and coexistence across species.
Belleville has always been a little bit rowdy, whether it meant to be or not. Long before it was folded into Paris in 1860, it existed as its own working-class wine village perched on a hill, slightly removed from the city both geographically and ideologically. In recent years, as Paris's 10th and 11th arrondissements have slid fully into hipster territory, and even the gritty Barbès neighborhood feels increasingly polished, Belleville has held onto its identity with surprising resolve.
Designed by Vi.architectuuratelier, De Zwarte Fles office renovation stands on the village square of Zwijnaarde near Gent, Belgium and brings new working life to a former country house shaped by four centuries of change. The project combines a restoration with a compact office addition fronted by a decorative facade, allowing the historic building to return to a residential presence while supporting a contemporary studio program.
Looking at old art gives me a sense of craftsmanship, of what can be achieved with paint. There is nothing comparable with Tefaf. The atmosphere of quality is unmatched. Contemporary art collectors are discovering value in historical works and the fair's curatorial standards, representing a potential shift in how different collector demographics engage with art across temporal boundaries.
The heavy brick mass of the early twentieth century warehouse stands steady at the corner, its facades still marked by decorative lintels and deep-set openings. Above, two added floors sit within a perforated aluminum veil that glows softly at dusk. The metal skin reads as a light canopy hovering over the old masonry, a precise intervention that contrasts the museum's new public life with its working past. See designboom's previous coverage here.
On Franklin Street in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood, one non-commercial gallery fosters 'a small, stubbornly human space for friction.' Friction—the ubiquitous buzzword that captures the simultaneous delight and discomfort of doing things the slow way—is at the heart of artists Pap Souleye Fall and Char Jeré's current show at Subtitled NYC. It also reflects the overall spirit of this little exhibition space and of a burgeoning movement to reject our culture of optimization in favor of a bumpier, more intimate, less alienating experience.
This first edition book of Shakespearean poems was published by Kelmscott Press, the private press founded by the English designer and author William Morris in 1891. This example is covered in an opulent, bejewelled binding from the renowned London bookbinders Sangorski and Sutcliffe. The decoration, set with mother-of-pearl and more than 100 precious stones, takes inspiration from the sonnets inside.
The longer we wait, the more difficult it will become to remedy the damage. Since 2019, state funding had all but dried up, forcing the foundation to auction works to raise funds to continue the restoration of both the iconic building and its many site-specific works.
Fontana is a rare example of a woman Old Master, one of only a few who managed to attain career success on her own and was the first woman elected to the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome. This painting is one of the most ambitious from her early career. Reflecting visual references to Michelangelo-a departure from her usual reference to Correggio and Raphael-the vibrant hues and dramatic composition reflect prevailing Florentine trends of the late 16th century.
If you've walked around any of France's cosmopolitan cities in recent years, you're sure to have come across some stunning murals. Painted onto the side of buildings, in hidden corners, and just about anywhere an artist can paint, street art is booming. We're not talking old-school graffiti here, hastily sprayed names on walls, and anti-social stuff like that. Today's street art is commissioned by city or town councils and created by prominent street artists from around the globe says Suzanne Pearson.
Behind its seemingly polished framework, To Empty Out emerges as an exhibition beautifully rife with contradictions that overlay serious and playful themes according to Grzybacz, who often sets out to "clash the forces" of gravity and levity through his chosen subjects. Through sublime florals, bawdy scenes, and raw portraits of social life, Grzybacz balances contemplation and observation, navigating between painterly precision and intuitive expression in this deeply personal exhibition.
When a 22-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88) was asked how he typically began a piece, his answer was simple: "I suppose I would start with a head." That instinct-almost a reflex-sits at the core of a remarkable group of early works on paper that remained largely unseen during his lifetime. The Basquiat: Headstrong exhibition, which opens this month at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, is set to become the first comprehensive showing devoted to the artist's depictions of the human head.
