As the leaves begin to change and the air turns crisp, September heralds a new season of artistic and design exhibitions. This month, art enthusiasts and design aficionados can look forward to a diverse array of exhibitions and events that span continents and disciplines. From the immersive environments of Yayoi Kusama to the architectural explorations of Do Ho Suh this September promises a feast for the senses and the intellect.
The design world is abuzz with anticipation as major retrospectives, innovative installations, and focused explorations of individual practices take center stage. Whether you’re in New YorkSeoul or Amsterdam there’s something extraordinary to discover. Let’s dive into the highlights of this September’s design scene.
Wendell Castle: Living in New York
The Friedman Benda gallery in New York is set to host Wendell Castle: Living an exhibition that reconstructs the domestic world of the renowned furniture maker and sculptor Wendell Castle and his partner, ceramist Nancy Jurs. Curated by their daughter Alison Castle the exhibition draws inspiration from a 1973 House Beautiful feature on the couple’s home in Scottsville, New York.
Visitors will have the rare opportunity to see several works photographed in the 1973 interior, some of which are being shown publicly for the first time in decades. The exhibition features a range of domestic objects that evoke a kitchen, bedroom, living room, and dining room. Early pieces like Castle’s Chaise Rocker from 1962 and Environment from 1972 are displayed alongside later works, tracing the evolution of his sculptural approach to furniture while maintaining its relationship to everyday use.
Do Ho Suh’s Retrospective in Seoul
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul is hosting Do Ho Suh‘s largest exhibition to date, featuring around 500 works that span more than thirty years of his practice. This retrospective includes drawings, sculptures, videos, and installations that explore themes of home, migration, memory, and identity.
The exhibition reaches back to Suh’s student years in Seoul showcasing early material in a section called Seed Bank. It also features architectural installations such as Small Gate the Rubbing/Loving series, and Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul where translucent fabric reconstructs the ordinary details of homes the artist has lived in across different cities.
Yayoi Kusama’s Legacy in Amsterdam
A major retrospective of the legendary late artist Yayoi Kusama is arriving at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. This exhibition traces more than seventy years of her work, from her early practice in Matsumoto through her experimental years in New York and her later work in Tokyo. The retrospective includes painting, sculpture, drawing, fashion, collage, installation, and documentation of happenings.
The Amsterdam exhibition is the final stop of a European retrospective organized with Fondation Beyeler and Museum Ludwig. Alongside familiar works, visitors can see historical pieces rarely shown in Europe and recent installations, including a new version of one of Kusama’s immersive environments.
Remedios Varo in Denmark
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark is presenting the first major museum exhibition in Europe devoted to Remedios Varo. This exhibition brings together more than 70 works from across the Spanish-Mexican surrealist’s career, including early paintings from Barcelona and Paris as well as works from her most productive years in Mexico during the 1950s and early 1960s.
Varo’s strange interiors and imaginary landscapes bring scientific inquiry into contact with mythology, mysticism, mechanics, and the occult. The exhibition features paintings populated by hybrid creatures, travelers, and eccentric machines, joined by drawings, notebooks, and archival material that provide a broader view of the references and ideas behind her precisely constructed surrealist world.
Water Works in Tokyo
The TOTO GALLERY·MA in Tokyo is hosting Water Works: in the Flow of Making an exhibition by the Berlin-based collective raumlaborberlin. This exhibition extends the collective’s long-running experiments around water, public space, and collective forms of urban life. It gathers earlier water-related projects alongside new work developed in Japan where the group has been exploring Tokyo Bay as a space for architecture and everyday use beyond the city’s fixed ground.
A workshop with students from the Shibaura Institute of Technology feeds directly into the show, with participants working with bamboo and inflatable materials to create innovative installations.
