AUGUST PLAYLIST
SP LIST: ART EXHIBITIONS & BOOKS
Jenna Gribbon, Rainbows in Shadows, at Gallery Massimo Decarlo in Milan
from June 6 to September 6, 2025
This is Gribbon’s first solo show in Milan and is both a celebration of loving, queer domesticity, featuring her platinum-haired partner Mackenzie Scott (better known under her indie rock author alias, Torres), and a meditation on the subtle, often overlooked aspects of everyday experiences, with home acting as a refuge, all fully explored within the fluidity of perception.
"...To speak further of improbable magic, a rainbow is illusory in the sense that it can only be perceived under specific conditions, depending namely on two factors: there must droplets of water in the air to refract the light into the observer’s eyes and the observer must be at a vantage point from whence it can be perceived. The observer must be positioned with their back to the sun and their shadow before them—only then can they see a rainbow.”
Left: M and her looming shadow , 2025, oil on linen
Right: Kaleidoscopic normalcy, 2025, oil on linen
Left: S confronting the light, 2025, oil on linen
Right: Prismatic rituals, 2025, oil on linen
Left: Hallway camouflage, 2025, oil on linen
Right: Is it the brightness or the darkness that draws you in?, 2025, oil on linen
Fade to West: Paul Jasmin & Todd Weaver, at Fahey / Klein Gallery in Los Angeles
from July 10 to September 6, 2025
Bringing together the visionary work of these two artists, the exhibition immerses you in fleeting moments of LA’s restless, radiant spirit and its ephemeral and elusive beauty – like a love letter to the West Coast that glows and flickers, pulsing with memories and dreams. Curated just before the passing of Paul Jasmin, the exhibition pairs his evocative portraits and cinematic vignettes with Weaver’s ethereal scenes of nature, offering a dual portrait of a place defined by light, youth, and transience.
Left: Paul Jasmin, Josie and Paula, Hollywood, CA, 1991, © Paul Jasmin, courtesy of FaheyKlein Gallery, Los Angeles
Right: Todd Weaver, Century Above Los Angeles, 2014, © Todd Weaver, courtesy of FaheyKlein Gallery, Los Angeles
Left: Paul Jasmin, Josh, San Fernando Valley, 2003, © Paul Jasmin, courtesy of FaheyKlein Gallery, Los Angeles
Right: Paul Jasmin, Charlotte and Clint, Big Bear, 1998, © Paul Jasmin, courtesy of FaheyKlein Gallery, Los Angeles
Rick Owens, Temple of Love, at Palais Galliera in Paris
from June 28, 2025 to January 4, 2026
The godfather of goth’s exhibition will feature never-before-seen works including videos and installations, and over 100 fashion silhouettes, childhood books, and a recreation of the Californian bedroom he shared with wife Michèle Lamy.
Charting his journey from LA as a pattern-cutter where he launched his own label in 1992, to his arrival in Paris in 2003, the retrospective is the first exhibition in the city dedicated to the designer’s work, tracing the dark underworld of his imagination through a wide range of references, from novelist and critic Joris-Karl Huysmans to modern and contemporary art, and iconic Hollywood films of the early 20th century.
As the exhibition’s artistic director, Owens has also extended his visual spectacle outside of the museum, wrapping the statues on the building façade in a fabric embroidered with sequins, and in the Galliera gardens, thirty brutalist sculptures, created just for the exhibition, will recall pieces from his furniture line. The gardens are also designed with his beloved Californian vines and plants in mind.
A meditation on love, beauty and diversity, presented in a monumental setting, transforming the museum into a temple dedicated to creation, this is a must-see for any fashion fan and historian, and of course, everyone in Owens “tribe”, who will flock to the Galliera like a goth moth to a flame.
Left: Portrait of Rick Owens, © Danielle Levitt
Right: Rizzoli Couverture of the catalogue Rick Owens Temple of Love, © Owenscorp
Left: Faye, Las Palmas Ave, Hollywood, Collection Slab Ah01, © Gino Sullivan
Right: Essayages Pour La Collection Hommes Babel Pe19, Palais Bourbon, Paris, 19 Juin 2018, © Owenscorp
Left: Autoportrait, Las Palmas Ave, 2002, © Rick Owens
Right: Tyrone, Collection Hommes Strobe Ah22, © Danielle Levitt
Katie Burnett’s New York Louis Vuitton Fashion Eye Series
Holding up a distorting mirror to New York, in her signature playful and experimental aesthetic, is stylist-turned-photographer Katie Burnett, in a new book for Louis Vuitton’s Fashion Eye series.
Burnett – known for her audacious image making, turns her lens to an abstract, B&W ode to the big apple, tapping into its beating heart and iconic landmarks in a collage-like style.
The subway, sidewalk signs, the Statue of Liberty, all framed in an intimate and intriguing portrait of a pulsing city steeped in contrasts, with one shot capturing fashion mannequins in a shop window with legs elongated, as tall as the reflected backdrop of skyscrapers.
Shot over two consecutive summers "without any fixed ideas", and just an iPhone in hand, Burnett took to the streets, as the protagonist creating her own visual time capsule of the city that never sleeps.
All pictures by Katie Burnett, from Fashion Eye Louis Vuitton Book
Nick Waplington, We dance in mysteries / the Isaac Mizrahi photographs at Hamiltons Gallery in London
from June 27 to September 23, 2025
In the 1990s – then a young Royal College of Art graduate – Nick Waplington was introduced to fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi by legendary photographer Richard Avedon. In a bold twist of fate, their meeting would spark a three-year collaboration during which Waplington created a series of photos documenting behind-the-scenes at Mizrahi’s studio in downtown Manhattan. By day, he candidly captured the chaotic creativity of the designer’s Wooster Street studio, including supermodels Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Veronica Webb in the rigorous process of fittings and adjustments. But as day turned to night, he turned his lens to New York’s electric house and techno scene, shooting the energy of infamous clubs like The Sound Factory and Save the Robots.
Tracing a time when fashion, art, and music converged and boundaries were evolving, the photos evoke a sense of nostalgia for a time when there was a tangible sense of togetherness, a belief in hope, in music’s purpose, celebrating the euphoria of life.
Untitled from the Series We Dance In Mysteries, 1989-1995 No. WDM 196
Left top: Untitled from the Series We Dance In Mysteries, 1989-1995 No. WDM 186
Left bottom: Untitled from the Series We Dance In Mysteries, 1989-1995 No. WDM 192
Right: Untitled from the Series We Dance In Mysteries, 1989-1995 No. WDM 209
David Armstrong: Fashion, edited by Matte Editions
The pioneering work of David Armstrong, the iconic New York-based fashion photographer of the early 2000s, was never published in print until critic and curator Vince Aletti and photographer and publisher Matthew Leifheit, teamed up to create David Armstrong: Fashion, the artist’s first posthumous monograph.
A collection of 107 works for fashion magazines and brands made between 2002 and 2010, many of which were never seen, bring to life Armstrong’s undying love of beauty, expressed through his signature black-and-white fashion portraits, along with three short conversations with Lisa Love, co-executor of his estate; Marie-Amélie Sauvé, his first fashion stylist; and Ethan James Green, his model, assistant, and protégé.
All pictures by David Armstrong, from Fashion Book
Queer Lens: A History of Photography at the Getty Center in Los Angeles
from June 17 to September 28, 2025
Aside from documenting queerness through a lens, this exhibition also traces photography’s ability to record lives that often had to be hidden in plain sight. Take early visual experiments such as the 1848 daguerreotype Two Women Embracing and the idealised male nudes of Baron Wilhelm von Gloede – many of these images were privately commissioned or circulated in coded ways, and some were preserved only through careful archival work by collectors or queer custodians.
This is a rare and layered look at queer history through over 270 vintage prints, personal ephemera, books, and zines, exploring photography’s role in shaping and affirming the vibrant tapestry of the LGBTQ+ community, featuring works from Berenice Abbott, Claude Cahun, Robert Mapplethorpe, Edmund Teske and Man Ray’s iconic portrait of Marcel Duchamp as his female alter ego to images documenting the first-ever Pride march.
The show is structured in nine sections, including one of the standout spaces, “Friends of Dorothy: A Portrait Gallery”, a salon-style room filled with the faces of more than 100 notable LGBTQ+ figures, including Frida Kahlo by Imogen Cunningham, John Waters by Peter Hujar, Jean Cocteau by Man Ray and Langston Hughes by Gordon Parks.
Left: Angela Scheirl [now A. Hans Scheirl], 1993, Catherine Opie, Silver-dye bleach print, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Helen Kornblum in honor of Roxana Marcoci, © Catherine Opie, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London and Naples
Right: Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe, Curator; Photographer, 1974, Francesco Scavullo, Gelatin silver print, Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, © International Center of Photography and, Francesco Scavullo Trust Beneficiaries
Left: Untitled, 1927, James Van Der Zee, Gelatin silver print, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection, gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen and The Boeing Company, FA 97.177, © James Van Der Zee Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Image courtesy Henry Art Gallery
Right: Two Young Men Kissing in Photo Booth, about 1953, Joseph John Bertrund Belanger, Gelatin silver print, ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, Los Angeles
NFANG/BEGINNING: BERLIN 1994-99 by Christian Stemmler, edited by IDEA
This isn’t the kind of photobook you’d find on your typical coffee table. It’s an unfiltered personal visual history of the creative playground East Berlin became after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A city at the height of its creative energy in the 1990s, when Christian was just 17 and had dropped out of school and threw himself into the squat and club scene. His camera captured the raw, everyday beauty of a generation that lived like the party would never end.
All pictures by Christian Stemmler, from ANFANG BEGINNING Book
Left: Ava and Kim in Café Sludge in Heini, Heinersdorfer Str. 11, December 1994
Right: Cover of ANFANG BEGINNING
Left: Ines with birthday present at Tina’s place in Lichtenberg, April 1997
Right top: Ines and 2 hotties on the swing at Piepshow in KitKatClub, March 1996
Right bottom: Me and Dana at Kottbusser Tor U8 metro station, February 1996
Molli, Franzi (now Zohra), Yvonne, René and friends in Ronny’s place in Ackerstraße, September 1995
Text by Kate Lawson