Marian Goodman Gallery’s new Tribeca headquarters, where their inaugural exhibition Your Patience is Appreciated will take place from October 26th to December 14th

After 40 years on 57th Street, the historic New York institution Marian Goodman Gallery has announced their move to a headquarters in new art-centre Tribeca, a space of almost double the size. Cleo Scott speaks with Partners Philipp Kaiser and Rose Lord about the importance of the artist, the changing tides of the New York art world, and continuing founder Marian Goodman’s legacy as one of the most respected on the global contemporary art stage

LUX: How have your individual backgrounds influenced your approach to curating and running the Marian Goodman Gallery? What has been your overall vision for the Gallery?

Rose Lord: I’ve worked at the Gallery for 22 years, which is incredible. I’ve spent a lot of time with Marian over the years, and learned so much from her. Her way of looking at the world and dealing with artists and collectors has been very formative. I think that the five Partners of the Gallery, the directors, and the people working in all three galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris share the same vision. We’re trying to create a forum to show exemplary artists, but also create a kind of platform for discussion with the artists and share their ideas that can impact the world, impact society.

Philipp Kaiser: Yes, absolutely. That’s the reason why I wouldn’t have considered another gallery to join. I was in the museum world before my time at the Gallery and worked in institutions in three different countries. Marian has respect towards the institutional mission, and never wanted to compete with it. I feel the Gallery itself is an institution.

Marian Goodman with her five partners, from left to right: Rose Lord, Leslie Nolan, Philipp Kaiser, Marian Goodman, Junette Teng, and Emily-Jane Kirwan

LUX: You are two of the five Partners of the Gallery, established by Marian Goodman to ensure continuity. How does the launch of the Tribeca flagship provide continuity for the Gallery’s legacy?

PK: We set up this structure of five Partners to establish a structure for stability and the next chapter for the Gallery. Marian brought together such a special group of artists, and we want to move the Gallery into the future.

RL: When Marian opened the Gallery on 57th Street it was one of the centres of the art world, but these centres have shifted over the last 43 years. You could say to Chelsea, but then also to Tribeca. It was big decision for us to move from midtown, but it was informed by wanting to be part of a community again, wanting to be surrounded by other artist-centric galleries. I think one of the things that we learned from Marian is to keep a gallery relevant, you must keep moving with the times. And we’re doing that: we’re moving to Tribeca, we opened a gallery in LA last year, we’ve been taking on new artists. A gallery cannot remain static. It must be a living organism that plugs into the discussions that are going on around it.

Installation for Marian Goodman’s inaugural show Your Patience is Appreciated in the new Tribeca space, featuring work from Julie Mehretu, Gabriel Orozco, and Nairy Baghramian

LUX: Are there any elements of this development that will break from the tradition of Marian Goodman?

PK: Absolutely not. The Tribeca space is a commitment to have our headquarters in New York. There’s always the temptation to grow and have more galleries, but Marian has never done that. She always was thoughtful about growth and maintaining the rigor of the Gallery, and we have been continuing this vision.

LUX: Marian Goodman currently represents 47 artists. A strength of the Gallery is that it is very selective with the artists that you choose to represent. With the expansion of your headquarters in New York, are you also hoping to expand your representation, and if so, how will you balance this expansion with your selective roster?

RL: The first thing to say is we want to keep with the tradition, but we want to find a way to build on that tradition and into the future. We have already added quite a lot of artists over the last two years, such as Daniel Boyd, Delcy Morelos, Andrea Fraser, and Tavares Strachan. We try to be very careful and not just add artists left and right. We want to be in dialogue with them.

Unghia e foglie di alloro by Giuseppe Penone, a work made of glass and laurel leaves that will feature in the Gallery’s inaugural exhibition

PK: Exactly, but these days it’s a bit of a different situation. You have to be faster, because many of the big galleries are much more speculative than they were 10 years ago. But I believe there is a real integrity in our artists, who really dive into conceptualism and social concerns. This runs through the program, and that’s also why the different generations within our program highly respect each other.

RL: That’s been the challenge of the opening show to weave together this kind of history, this narrative, and different generations, the different types of work.

LUX: Your inaugural exhibition ‘Your Patience Is Appreciated: An Inaugural Show’ features some 75 works across media. How did you select the artists and works featured at the Tribeca launch? Are there any broad themes or messages you hope to convey through the selection of these works?

PK: Well, we wanted to include all of the artists that we represent. Everybody at the Gallery was involved in the creation of the exhibition, which brings together both historical and new pieces. For me, curatorially, it was kind of a challenging puzzle to create a narrative over three different floors. How do you summarise a group of distinct artists? How do you put them under one roof? How do you create a meaningful exhibition about what you’ve been doing for the last 47 years, that also looks to the future?

Pierre Huyghe’s timekeeper piece, titled Timekeeper Drill Core (MGG 57th St), carries a piece of the 57th street Gallery to the Tribeca headquarters

RL: We have these two ‘Timekeeper’ pieces that Pierre Huyghe made for our Gallery. It’s kind of like the rings of a tree; he scours through the different layers of paint in the Gallery walls from our former 57th street location. The Gallery at 57th Street was frequently painted black and white, and some artists asked for specifically coloured walls for their exhibitions. So the work by Pierre is literally a visual history of the 57th Street Gallery – you see these different colours and layers of the Gallery’s history.

PK: What I’ve tried to establish is a cross-generational conversation between the artists. There’s kind of a Duchampian thread that runs through the building, themes, and artists. You see, for example, Pierre’s rings on the ground floor, and then on the second floor, there’s a wall drawing by Giuseppe Penone. There’s a piece of paper with his fingerprints, and then he made all these lines around the fingerprints bigger and bigger and bigger until it’s like, over three-meter diameter. So, Pierre’s and Giuseppe’s pieces are in conversation; they form the same type of pattern and become reflections on identity and time. And I think that’s why we chose the title Your Patience is Appreciated. It addresses expectations of change, and reflects the duration of what we’re doing, and that we’re in this for the long run.

Installation of the third floor of the exhibition, featuring wallpaper and work by Annette Messager, Richard Deacon, and Tony Cragg

LUX: What are your aspirations for the Gallery beyond this launch? Are there future projects or collaborations in the pipeline?

PK: The first show in the new year will be a two-person show. The new Tribeca space has these two gallery floors that enable us to have interesting conversations between different artists. It will be a conversation between An-My Lê, who came as a refugee from Vietnam to the United States, and Boris Mikhailov, a Ukrainian photographer who hasn’t really been properly shown in the US. We feel this is going to be a show that resonates following the election, and the time we’re living in.

We’re also excited to announce an exhibition of Tavares Strachan’s work in March 2025, and following that, a show of Pierre Huyghe’s work in May 2025. Pierre hasn’t had a gallery show for a very, very long time, and some of these works will be premiered in the US. We’ve been wanting to program a show with Pierre in the Gallery for a long time, but he’s just had too many museum shows and big projects. And now, finally, May 2025.

https://www.mariangoodman.com/

The hotel, in harmony with its forested location

Tucked above the village of Sils, the Waldhaus hotel offers a blend of natural beauty and 20th-century design. A LUX editor reflects on their retreat, where the surrounding forest and timeless atmosphere offers a sanctuary for artists and wanderers alike

Waldhaus literally means “forest house” in German and, if you walk out of the grand doors of the Waldhaus hotel perched on a rock above the tiny village of Sils, turn left along the path leading through an ancient larch and pine forest and disappear along the mountain slope, you could walk for days without ever emerging from the canopy of the forest above and the humus of the ground below. It is a near-infinite ecosystem of fungi and plants that work in one with the trees, insects and animals to keep this great Alpine forest alive.

A framed view from the Rock Room

You could, in theory, walk for thousands of kilometres circumnavigating the Alps and never emerge from the forest. But that would be a shame, as the Waldhaus, which opened in 1908, is itself just so delicious.

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Unlike some grand Swiss hotels, this is a creative and authentic tribute to 20th-century design, its interior architecture genuinely and lovingly created by generations of owners.

A game of tennis, Waldhaus Sils-Style

It is made to be at one with the forest and many of its picture windows look not over and out of the woods, but inside them, framing them like a Jasper Goodall photograph. The Waldhaus is where writers and artists, including some of the most celebrated in the German-speaking world, have come for generations to relax and be inspired.

It is a hotel as imagined by a poet, the service just formal enough but never oppressive, the food never showy but perfectly made from local ingredients, including a nightly bouillon – always made with a different stock – that is a demonstration of how clear soup is a tonic for the soul.

A space where 20th-century design meets timeless creativity

The hotel, which has 140 rooms and suites, is neither a summer nor a winter resort: it is a place to disappear to and be inspired, whatever the season, and if you wish to vanish up the beautiful hidden valleys of the Engadine above on a summertime walk, or spend the day in winter sports in some of the celebrated mountainsides of adjacent St Moritz, you can.

Read more: A palatial stay at St Regis Hotel, Venice

This is a place for artists – visual, musical, literary – first and foremost. It would never be so gauche as to proclaim that it is so; it just is.

waldhaus-sils.ch

The Marchese Lamberto di Frescobaldi with LUX Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai

Italy’s greatest wine, and now a cult collectible, Masseto is the wine every wealthy collector wants to add to their cellar. But is it as good as its stellar reputation? At a rare tasting hosted by the Marchese di Frescobaldi in London, Darius Sanai sought the answer

Wine is often cited alongside art and classic cars as a collectible, but there are some fundamental differences between the worlds great wines and its great artworks and motors.

The most notable is its ephemerality.

You can collect and enjoy a Fontana artwork for decades; likewise, you can jump into your Ferrari F50 and tear around the back roads of Tuscany any time you like.

But to enjoy a wine, you must also destroy it, or at least consume it. A tasting of great and rare wines is a more special occasion even than visiting an art collection or driving the rarest classic in the world: these are the first and last time these particular bottles will ever be tasted.

A harvest of the Masseto vineyard

That came to mind as I arrived for a pretty special tasting across 10 vintages of Masseto, which has, in just 25 years – an instant in fine wine terms – established itself as Italy’s greatest, or at least certainly most celebrated, red wine.

The price of Masseto has increased exponentially over the last few years, as wealthy collectors and consumers around the world fight for it, while production remains as limited as it ever was.

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The Marchese Lamberto di Frescobaldi, scion of the ancient Florentine family, who hosted the tasting, even told us that family members were restricted to buying – not being given – three bottles a year each. And what, someone asked, if they had children, would they also get three bottles each? “No, “he replied, “your children are your problem“.

The Marchese is a lucid and entertaining host, his dry humour manifesting itself at unexpected moments so; for example, on tasting one of the rarest wines, he commented that he was going to spit it, as professionals do, into the spitoon provided, but then decided to “spit backwards”.

The futuristic construction of the entrance to the Masseto winery

Masseto comes from a very interesting vineyard location, a little plateau very close to the coast in Tuscany, so near that you can see and feel the sea from some of the vineyards. To the other side are the endless forests of the Massa Marittima, beyond which is Tuscany’s more arid interior and other famous wine areas such as Montalcino. Although the climate has become warmer in recent years, sea breezes and summer rains allow Masseto to have that unique combination of richness and freshness, combined with all its other elements.

But what makes a truly great wine, and does it really deserve to join the pantheon of global legends, such as Château Latour and Domaine de la Romanée Conti?

The Masseto plot is unique; a hill of almost 7 hectares with blue clay soil, with some layers of clay rock-hard and forming solid boulders.

Assessment from critics is one element, and so is the ability to age. We won’t know about the latter definitively for a few decades at least – the first vintages appeared in the late 1980s– but we tasted vintages back to the 1990s , on this elegant occasion, the first for several years given by the house. And the wines were, overwhelmingly, magnificent, and also showed a remarkable variety between vintages and ability to develop character and complexity over the years.

Masseto is a delicious wine – something that cannot always be said of the worlds great wines, some of which are rather austere – but it is also a magnificently sophisticated one, combining qualities rarely found together in a bottle – if ever. It has a character and profile all of its own. For those reason it certainly ranks among the very greatest.

A Masseto vintage from 2005, one of the many featured in this evening of tastings

Tasting notes by Darius Sanai

Masseto 2021
Like sitting on the highest spire of the Duomo in Milan and looking at Monte Rosa and the Alps, deep in snow, in the distance

Masseto 2016
This wine is being on a Riva, on a still June day on Lake Garda, and hearing the bells of the little church at Bardolino ringing out across the water: it has warmth, freshness and soul

Masseto 2015
Have you ever arrived at La Scala in Milan, in your tuxedo or couture gown, in a Blu Chiaro Metalizzato Ferrari 575 (manual gearbox version), swept up the red carpet and sat in a box to hear Placido Domingo perform Tosca? The Masseto 2015 is that whole experience, in a bottle; but don’t experience it for another five years

Masseto 2013
The delicacy of a Murano glass combined with the richness of palette of its hand-painted colouring

Masseto 2009
Lunch on a July day on the terrace at the Splendido in Portofino. It’s a rich wine, from a hot year, but somehow still has life and complexity, no heaviness

A view of the Masseto cellar, which stores the range of vintages tasted by Darius Sanai

Masseto 2006
Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet. Mysterious, difficult, then seductive and transfixing

Masseto 2005
“Tradition is the soft landing of our fears” – Lamberto Frescobaldi. This quote intrigued me so much that I forgot to make any notes about this vintage. Lamberto was speaking about how wine estates need to adapt and change.

Read more: Cristal evening with Louis Roederer’s Frédéric Rouzaud

Masseto 1999
At 25 years old, this wine is Walter Santeso, playing Paparazzo, in La Dolce Vita. A classic, that’s all

Masseto 1996
If a great wine is one that keeps evolving with age, this is a true great. On blind tasting I would have had it down as a Cheval Blanc, such is its power and delicatesse, and ability to keep evolving, and its perfume

Masseto 1995
Sophie Loren in Two Women, with a kind of unbridled joy of sophistication

masseto.com

‘Geller’, 2024, on display at Bernard Frize’s upcoming exhibition at the LA branch of Marian Goodman Gallery.

Bernard Frize is an artist who lets the materials decide for him. A French painter who has been developing his uniquely industrial practice over the past 45 years, leading gallery Marian Goodman announced their representation of him in 2024. Ahead of his inaugural solo exhibition at Marian Goodman’s Los Angeles space, Cleo Scott asks him about process, materiality, and the role of the artist

LUX: Your works are centred around the process of creation. Can you take me through your process of creation of ‘Tama’, which will be on display in your upcoming exhibition at Marian Goodman in LA?

Bernard Frize: I’ve always liked the fact that my paintings are multicoloured, in other words that I don’t choose the colours and mix them. These paintings are very simple: large brushstrokes crossing the canvas vertically; there is an overload of paint on both edges because there is no beginning or end – could I say that the edges are in their raw state? In fact, I paint in both directions and I stop the brushstrokes before the end of the canvas. The latency, the veil which covers what has not yet explanation, but shows its potential, this is what I wish to call in these paintings.

Bernard Frize photographed before his work

LUX: Your works ‘Tama’, ‘Kario’, and ‘Voni’ appear to have been made using the same process of creation. What is the relationship between your works, focusing on process and materiality?

BF: I’m always fascinated by the dissolution of the image into its materiality or by the creation of images from their raw components.

It reminds me of the birth of Aphrodite on the shore of Paphos and I like to imagine how to describe a picture, her body emerging from the waves, which could also be interpreted as a plunge into the sea. There is always this temporal ambiguity in the image, between diving and emerging, doing and undoing; each gesture stopped at a moment in its course could have been something different if we had thought of other options. The paint is wet and then dries.

I went to Paphos a long time ago and stared at the beautiful sea; now, the place of Aphrodite’s birth has become a waterpark.

When doing a painting, either there is no goal, no objective, or there are means and processes for doing something. There is no idea without its material inscription. I like processes to embody ways of thinking. There is always a sequence of operations necessary for the organisation of a painting; I like this organisation and its possibility to be the motif of a painting, because after all, the subject of a painting is what makes it exist, not only what it represents, but also how it is represented. The word itself, representation tells us that it is presented two times.

Bernard Frize’s ‘Voni’, which will be on display at his upcoming exhibition at the LA branch at Marian Goodman Gallery.

LUX: You have said ‘the method has disappeared under the conditions of its realisation’ in your work. Does this create a tension between your experience of creation and the viewer’s experience of its realisation?

BF: I will always feel and understand my painting in a different way than a viewer. A painting is not showing a recipe. Its description will, I hope, never exhaust what is in it. Why can we stay long minutes in front a painting in a museum, come back, and find again pleasure to see it? Isn’t it incredible that a canvas could provoke feelings and thoughts? Do we ever think about the painter? We mostly think about ourselves, how we receive the painting and decipher how the elements we look at are stimulating thoughts and feelings.

I always had some warmth enveloping me and a feeling of completeness from my visit in a museum. I am not receptive to all the paintings but looking at those which move me – and this is often changing – give me a feeling of wealth, of exhaustion. I hope my work can do the same; a work of art does not talk, does not say anything and will never be replaced by sentences. We read explanations on plates in the museums, do they satisfy our feelings?

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They give, at most, a context for the painting, and most people read them but do not look at the paintings more than the time it takes to read. The viewer and I have different goals; my work is to be as clear as possible to offer satisfying and intellectual pleasure which lasts and could be renewed.

Frize’s acrylic and resin painting ‘Irfan’, 2024, as part of Frize’s inaugural solo show.

LUX: How does the space of the Marian Goodman gallery in LA interact with your works?

BF: I have no idea! I only know the beautiful cardboard model that the French branch of Marian Goodman Gallery offered me. I printed the reproduction of my paintings and hang them into the model. I know that when I will see the real space, I will have another experience and I will hang the paintings.

LUX: Why have you chosen to be represented by Marian Goodman?

BF: I had the chance to meet Philip Kaiser a long time ago when he was working in the Kunsthalle Basel and always appreciated his curatorial vision. I was thrilled when he proposed me to join the gallery; I suppose everyone in the art world pays respect for the achievement of Marian Goodman’s gallery and for the exhibitions of the artists it is working with. There was, for me, no doubt that being represented by the gallery would be a great opportunity.

In ‘Yudzon’, the transparency of the layers reveal ‘the creation of images from their raw components’.

LUX: Are there any values – aesthetic or philosophical – that you share with the gallery?

BF: A gallery is a business; painting is a business too. I’ve spent many years, if not the majority of my adult life, without earning much from painting. I believe one continues to do what one likes not for the money but because one is driven. At one point, I had the chance to work with galleries who helped me to live from my work and found ways to distribute my work.  There are many good artists at Marian Goodman Gallery who seem difficult to sell. I suppose it is a balance between the artists who sell well and those who don’t very much. The quality of their work is not a question. The aesthetic or philosophical qualities of these artists are not meeting market value, but aesthetic or intellectual ones. Meanwhile, the gallery respect them and decided to support them. Most galleries today would not do this, or would not afford it.

Read more: LUX curates for Richard Mille

I suppose running a gallery is an intellectual journey with companions you admire and you want to give them time to develop. In reverse, many galleries would not exist without the support of artists.

In my understanding, Marian Gallery is “old-fashioned” like one would say there is tradition in quality; there is a deep belief that good art is not always meeting the request of the market and it is important to give time to the time when the art is the main preoccupation.

Bernard Frize will be exhibiting his work at Marian Goodman, Los Angeles, from November 16th. 

Daniel Buren at Mount Nelson, 2023

When luxury titan LVMH bought the chic hotel and travel group Belmond, it catalysed an artistic photographic collaboration that encapsulates the shift towards the experiential. Belmond’s Arnaud Champenois speaks to LUX about the vision

Luxury hotels are not usually synonymous with daring photographic art: play it safe and show what the property looks like is the regular mantra. Not so with Belmond, the British brand that owns 46 gems such as Villa San Michele in Florence and the Copacabana Palace in Rio.

View from La Residencia, Mallorca (Photographed by François Halard)

Since its acquisition by LVMH in 2019, the group has been creating whimsical and sophisticated art images in collaboration with Galleria Continua in a project titled Mitico. The latest edition, its third, takes place this year with French master Daniel Buren. It’s all part of a shift from physical goods to experiences.

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“The term ‘experiential travel’ has evolved. Modern luxury travellers now want something different,” says Belmond’s Senior VP of Marketing and Communications, Arnaud Champenois.

Splendido hotel, Portofino (Marco Valmarana, courtesy of Belmond and Galleria Continua)

“Tick-box, fast and thoughtless travel is in the past. Travellers want to go much deeper into a destination, rather than purely seeing it and ticking it off their list.

Read more: Arnaud Champenois on preserving heritage and transforming experiences

Mount Nelson, Cape Town (Photographed by Rosie Marks)

They want to stay longer, try local delicacies, enjoy traditional music and crafts, understand the people, discover the real local treasures. They want to live the stories, not just hear them.”

Samantha Welsh

belmond.com/mitico

Frédéric Rouzaud, Maria Sukkar and Darius Sanai

LUX and Louis Roederer co-hosted an event for collectors of art, design and champagne where Frédéric Rouzaud, Maria Sukkar and Darius Sanai had a lively panel discussion about art, sustainability and responsibility. Some rare and celebrated champagnes from the Maison were served, including Cristal Vinotheque Rose 2002 and Cristal Vinotheque 1996, from magnum

Frédéric Rouzaud, Darius Sanai and Maria Sukkar

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Alexandra Tilling, Richard Billett, Samantha Welsh, Lorna Mourad, Malek Sukkar, Ege Gürmeriçliler, Nadim Mourad

Read more: Louis Roederer Photography Prize for Sustainability

Philippe Starck designed the label for Roederer’s zero added sugar Brut Nature

Maria Sukkar, Jennifer Boghossian, Lorna Mourad, Malek Sukkar and Rob Boghossian

Lorna Mourad, Jennifer Boghossian, Rob Boghossian, Ege Gürmeriçliler, Darius Sanai, Laurent Ganem, Maria Sukkar, Laurent Ganem, Anne Pierre d’Albis Ganem,
Nadim Mourad, Richard Billett, Samantha Welsh, Malek Sukkar

Anne Pierre d’Albis Ganem, Ege Gürmeriçliler, Samantha Welsh and Maria Sukkar

Frédéric Rouzaud, Darius Sanai and Maria Sukkar

Louis Roederer’s cristal rosé

www.louis-roederer.com

Fritz Burkard, a Swiss car collector, is renowned for his collection of vintage cars, called the Pearl Collection

Back in August, Fritz Burkard made waves when his Bugatti Type 59 won the celebrated Pebble Beach Best of Show. The swiss car collector speaks with Fabienne Amez-Droz about his idea to open a new private museum in Switzerland to see his cars, and the roots of his passion

LUX: How long have you been passionate about vintage cars, and when did you start with the Pearl Collection?

Fritz Burkard: I bought my first classic car when I was twenty. It was a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro, and I got it for 4,000 Swiss francs at the time. That car means a lot to me. I still have it, and next week I’m getting it fully restored from the ground up.

For the first time in the history of the Pebble Beach Concours d’élégance, Best of Show was awarded to a preservation car—a Bugatti Type 59

LUX: How do you decide which cars to add to your collection, given that it has such a variety of different cars? (Very original, very dramatic and very beautiful)

FB: I don’t see much of a difference between buying a car and buying art. Cars, especially vintage ones, are pure art to me. I don’t follow a specific plan or checklist when adding cars to my collection; I go with my gut feeling.

Sometimes, I come across beautiful cars, but if I don’t feel a strong emotional connection, I won’t buy them. Essentially, I’ve gathered cars that I personally like, which makes my collection a diverse patchwork. That’s what makes it interesting. If you have a collection filled with just supercars, you start to lose the individuality of each car. But with contrast, each car stands out for its uniqueness. I’m also only interested in original cars.

LUX: How many cars are in the collection?

FB: There are about 80 to 90 cars in total.

The Bugatti was one of 214 cars from 16 countries and 29 states that competed at Pebble Beach, California

LUX: Is it important how the cars are arranged in the space?

FB: Definitely. We’ve just moved all the cars into the space, which we’ve been planning for two years. I didn’t have a clear plan initially, but there’s an area where I always wanted to do something special.

We’re still moving cars around because sometimes the combinations don’t work. I listen to my gut feeling because the collection is for me more than anyone else.

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LUX: Will the collection be seen by friends only or will interested car fans or collectors be able to have a look at it aswell?

FB: I want the collection to be accessible to everyone, especially children, so they can experience and fall in love with these types of cars. Right now, it’s more of a private space, but at a later stage, people will be able to book tours via a website.

It’ll be a limited number of people, as I want it to be an experience where they can open the cars and even sit in them. I want to avoid chaos, especially since it’s so close to my living space. There will be a driveway in the middle, so each car can be taken out and driven.

Despite these successes, for Fritz the vehicles are more than mere acquisitions – he believes that a love of such machinery comes from the heart and the most important thing in a car is your smile

LUX: What is one of your favourite cars in your collection?

FB: Not really. I have a handful of favourite ones depending on the memories they’ve created for me and my daughters. For example, my Chevrolet Camaro isn’t a show-stopper, but for my university friends and me, it holds a lot of meaning. We can’t wait to take a road trip and feel like we’re 22 again. That’s what it’s all about.

LUX: What is the most important thing in a car to you?

FB: For me, the most important thing is what I call the “Smile-o-meter.” It doesn’t have a brand, year, or price tag—it just makes you happy. That’s what driving should be about—having fun and feeling happiness with the people important to you.

LUX: What are your thoughts on supercars?

FB: I do have modern cars, especially modern Bugattis. They are breathtaking and unmatched by any other brand. However, if I had to choose between a modern and a classic Bugatti for a tour, it would always be the classic one.

The driving experience is more exciting—you become part of the machine. Modern Bugattis, on the other hand, feel like comfortable beasts. The era of pure performance is over for me. Today, what matters is the experience, comfort, luxury, details, and design.

For example, ETH Zurich built a car that accelerates from 0 to 60 km/h in 0.8 seconds. Do we really need that? What excites me more are cars that offer a complete experience.

Read more: The new Mercedes-Maybach SL luxury sports car

LUX: What do you think of the designs of modern hypercars?

FB: Many modern hypercar designs don’t convince me, though I can appreciate them for what they are. Bugatti, with its new models, is still breathtaking—simple and smooth. Other brands, like Pagani, don’t hit my taste, but they still make bold design statements that appeal to others.

That’s perfectly fine. There are many different ways to approach design, and that diversity is what makes the industry fun. The passion people have for classic cars is something I really appreciate, but I’m less fond of being around pure investors, as they miss the point.

The Pearl Collection is known for using its vehicles enthusiastically, rather than just leaving them on static display

LUX: Can you share the history of this particular Bugatti you won the Pebble Beach with? How did you acquire it?

FB: I acquired the car during COVID at an auction. It was born in 1934 for the Grand Prix and originally painted blue. It won a Grand Prix and placed third in Monaco with René Dreyfus, who later became a French Resistance hero.

King Leopold of Belgium then bought it, and it was repainted black with a yellow stripe, Belgium’s racing colors. It changed hands several times, but nobody ever restored it—they just kept it running. That’s the secret to preservation: always keep the car running.

When we got it, we discovered the original Bugatti license plate under the black paint. We restored it to its 1937 condition, as it was when King Leopold bought it. I drove it every morning at Pebble Beach for two to three hours along the Pacific coastline.

Even on the morning of the Concours, I took it out. To me, that’s what a car is made for—not just to look at, but to drive, feel, and experience.

Burkard is planning to make his Pearl Collection even more approachable to car enthusiasts by setting up a showroom in Zug where you can schedule appointments to see the cars

LUX: How did it feel to win Pebble Beach as the first European, and especially Swiss, person?

FB: It was overwhelming. For 73 years, only Americans and Asians had won, so I was thrilled that a preservation car and a Bugatti won, especially this Bugatti, one of the most successful racing Bugattis of the 1930s.

There’s a funny story behind it. After the show, we were initially sent off to our parking spot, and we were happy, thinking we had won in our segment. But then they called us back, “Fritz Burkhard, please return to the stage!”

We were in a panic, almost packed up to leave! Standing there as one of the final four, with my friend Philipp Sarasin also nominated, was surreal. When they announced the win, I completely lost it. I knew what it meant for me, the car, and for Pebble Beach: the first European car to win, and a preservation car at that. It was a huge moment!

The four curators of the “Women and Speed” show: Maria Sukkar, Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, Maryam Eisler and Angeliki Kim Perfetti

When Richard Mille, the super-luxury watch brand, asked LUX magazine to create an exhibition in their Mayfair boutique during London’s Frieze Art Fair, we engaged four female collectors-curators to create an original narrative around the topic of “Women and Speed”. But why does the subject feel like an unconventional – even contradictory – pairing? Woman have often been depicted as slow, pensive, gentle subjects in art. Meanwhile, the male subject has raced from the oil-painted battle scene to the quick flash of the photograph as they drive past in fast cars, with women the ever-bystander.

Our curators, Maria Sukkar, Maryam Eisler, Angeliki Kim Perfetti and Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, challenged that narrative.

The result was a stunning and original show featuring works by artists including Tracey Emin, Marina Abramović and Mary McCartney, and including iconic works such as Warhol‘s polaroid of Blondie’s Debbie Harry and American artist Jordan Watson‘s depiction of a female racing driver. There were also celebrated works by the likes of Helmut Newton, Nassia Inglessis, Fernand Fonssagrives, Maryam Eisler, and a stunning digital artwork by Six N. Five.

Guests of the opening included the crème de la crème of the London and international collecting world.

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Linda Bassatne, Maria Sukkar, Jo Glynn-Smith, Dina Nasser Khadivi and Alice Harvey

Francesca Ariani and Chloë Lopez

Samantha Welsh, Angeliki Kim Perfetti, Maria Sukkar, Darius Sanai and Maryam Eisler in the Richard Mille flagship store on Old Bond Street where the art curation took place

Tim Jeffries and Maryam Eisler

Jordan Watson with his artwork “Fast and Futurist” and Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, enjoying the George Condo issue of LUX

Megan Reynolds and Chloë Lopez

Maryam Eisler, Tim Jeffries, Rachel Verghis and Darius Sanai in front of the Mary McCartney work “Kate, Kate, Kate”

Jordan Watson and Tarka Russell

Darius Sanai, Maryam Eisler, Maria Sukkar and Katy Wickremesinghe

Jonathan Glynn Smith and Nick Sullivan

Nassia Inglessis, Margot Mottaz and Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst

Alexander James and Marcello Polito

Maryam Eisler, Michele Codoni, and Angeliki Kim Perfetti

Angeliki Kim Perfetti and Annabelle Scholar

The curators: Maria Sukkar, Maryam Eisler, Angeliki Kim Perfetti and Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst – with special thanks to Michael Hoppen, Tim Jeffries, Mary McCartney and Superblue.

Director: Darius Sanai, Editor-in-chief, LUX magazine

Some of Spirit Now’s London members during a meeting to decide the shortlist for the 2024 Prize, ahead of Frieze

An art prize awarded by some of London’s leading art collectors, in collaboration with Frieze Art Fair and the University of Cambridge, has announced Bambou Gili, Asemahle and Shafei Xia as its 2024 winners. Taya Suleyman reports

Bambou Gili, Asemahle Ntlonti, and Shafei Xia are the winners of the Spirit Now London Acquisition Prize announced at Frieze London. The prize, which celebrates emerging female artists of the age of 40 or below in collaboration with The Women’s Art Collection, was awarded by sixteen members from the Spirit of Giving Committee chaired by Marie-Laurie de Clermont-Tonnerre, founder and director of Spirit Now London, alongside Harriet Loffler, curator of The Women’s Art Collection.

Bambou Gili, announced as one of the winners, is known for her surreal, figurative oil paintings that reference art historical compositions but through a contemporaneous lens that employs esoteric tonal palettes. Reflecting on contemporary life, friendships, and interiority, Gili creates an imagined community of affection and care. With a palette of blues, greens, and turquoise, Legally Stev (2024) reflects Gili’s interest in observing intimate moments from afar.

Gili’s latest oil painting for Frieze, Legally Stev (2024), portrays a close confidante of the artist in a moment of quiet repose, capturing an intimate sense of rest and reflection

Asemahle Ntlonti took home the prize for her deeply expressive paintings, which emerge from building up and stripping away material. Her ancestral homeland in the Eastern Cape of South Africa is a source of inspiration as her work is filled with nostalgia and longing, painting cracked, mud-veined surfaces that evoke the land’s deep emotional resonance. Her paintings become a poignant inquiry into ancestry, history, and the search for belonging.

Working directly on the floor to fully engage her body in the process, Ntlonti gradually builds her pieces by instinctively layering and removing material as seen in this painting Uhambo (2024)

Multi-media artist, Shafei Xia was also named a winner. Drawing from the bold, sensual style of Japanese shunga and 19th-century Chinese erotic paintings, Xia explores the complex dimensions of love—its passion, jealousy, and even violence—through a lens of elegance and refinement. Her work celebrates female creativity, championing its diversity in all its forms.

Xia’s Fight and the Party (2024), watercolour on sandal paper, evokes a delicate balance between tension and harmony, capturing the intricacies of power dynamics, playfulness, and emotional intensity

A new chapter unfolds for the winners, whose works will soon be acquired and donated to The Women’s Art Collection at Murray Edwards College at The University of Cambridge, which aims to provide a platform for female artists in response to the ongoing underrepresentation of women in museums. Their work will join a collection of over 600 works, including those by notable artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Tracey Emin, and Lubaina Himid.

Within the realm of art and philanthropy, Spirit Now London is an exclusive international community comprised of art patrons, collectors, and friends. The organisation aims to support cultural institutions, promote women and emerging artists, as well as providing financial support for art exhibitions.

Members gain private access to exhibitions, intimate art events, and discussions that encourage thoughtful explorations of contemporary creativity. By facilitating connections among art lovers and cultural visionaries, Spirit Now London seeks to foster a vibrant community that champions emerging talent, enriches the cultural dialogue, and reshapes the narratives of contemporary art.

spiritnowlondon.com

Winner of Claridge’s first Royal Academy Schools Art Prize, the young performance artist Daria Blum has taken to their ArtSpace to point fingers at you – no, me – no, her. 

LUX Magazine: What is the significance of the pointed finger?

Daria Blum: The gesture of the pointed finger has appeared repeatedly within my work, and in this performance I was interested in investigating its multiple meanings through subtle changes in direction and tension, using it to claim attention, cast a spell, blame, or ‘point the finger’. The sculptural works in the show also reference this act of deflection through the use of the pop filters, which are used to deflect air from reaching the microphone when speaking or singing into it. The mic stand sculptures emphasise the absence of the voice, which is an important aspect within the exhibition — I’ve been thinking about the demand for (live) performance, within my own practice as a ‘performance artist’ but also within the arts more broadly, and even though I ultimately ‘give in’ by performing this piece, there is a reluctance to speak, to sing, to be perceived.

In her performance for the exhibition ‘Daria Blum: Drip Drip Point Warp Spin Buckle Rot’, Blum stares down the audience, slowly directing her pointed finger to each member.

After her live performance, Blum makes her way through the audience and slips out the door at the back. The performance then takes on a digital aspect, transporting the audience into new worlds.

Blum appears on screen, continuing to point her finger as she makes her way through an abandoned 1970s office building.

Blum’s performance takes place amongst her ‘Redeflect’ installations that combine microphones, stands, and digital prints.

Gilles Dyan, Chairman and Founder of the Opera Gallery Group, appointed Isabelle de La Bruyère as the Chief Executive Officer of Opera Gallery Group

Former Christie’s big shot Isabelle de la Bruyere recently joined global gallery behemoth Opera Gallery as Group CEO. From her swanky offices above London’s Bond Street, she speaks with LUX about her mission to take Opera Gallery, whose reputation has been carved from selling big-ticket secondary market works to the wealthy from its luxury retail locations, to another level

LUX: What made you take on this challenge?

Isabelle de la Bruyère: I have been following Opera Gallery and its expansion for the last twenty years and have always admired the Chairman’s vision for the group.

When I first moved to the Middle East for Christie’s, I realised how intimidating the art world was for clients who didn’t know it well. Gilles Dyan, who founded Opera Gallery in Singapore in 1994, understood this and built a business that was welcoming and accessible to art enthusiasts and collectors, with artworks of all price points. He always placed his galleries in the most luxurious shopping districts, and had a very personal, hands-on approach that clients truly appreciated. He made the art buying process easy and personable, and he has built a very loyal clientele who appreciate this approach.

The company has grown in the last fifteen years and the identity of the group has changed tremendously, but the engagement and commitment we have to our clients, and to anyone walking into the gallery, has not.

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LUX: How do you envision shaping Opera Gallery’s future, and what strategies do you plan to implement to distinguish it in the contemporary art landscape?

IB: I think Opera is already very well placed, but I’m focussed on organising more curated, museum-quality shows across our various galleries. I think it is very important to work with curators, critics and historians who can bring a different perspective and audience.

We recently organised a fantastic show in London entitled ‘The Whole World Smiles With You’, which was curated Alayo Akinkugbe, writer, curator, and founder of the Instagram account: @Ablackhistoryofart, and host of the “A Shared Gaze” podcast, which facilitates conversations with Black contemporary artists from across the globe.

The exhibition featured works by well-known artists such as Amoako Boafo, Chris Ofili, and Deborah Roberts, along emerging artists such as Jazz Grant, Thelonious Stokes, and Noel Anderson. Through her vision, the exhibition interrogated various modes of figuration by contemporary Black artists, and challenged the Western canon by overtly reconfiguring renowned paintings and portraying figures in poses reminiscent of pre-twentieth-century European portraiture.

This exhibition was an opportunity for us to engage with a contemporary dialogue in a more academic way and facilitate a dialogue between an incredible group of artists working in a range of mediums. In partnership with London Gallery Weekend, we hosted the recording of Alayo’s ‘A Shared Gaze’ podcast.

In addition to a more curated approach, Opera is championing its artists and Artist Estate Representation with its “Artist-Led Approach.” Our core mission is to champion each of Opera Gallery’s artists’ identities, capturing the attention of visitors, and encouraging a connection between the audience and the artworks.

We are working with and representing more contemporary artists than ever before, recently adding the likes of Anselm Reyle, Gustavo Nazareno, and the legendary London-based artist Ron Arad to our roster. It is a great honour for us to work with such talented creatives, and we want to continue to extend our family of artists with whom we work.

The Whole World Smiles With You – exhibition in London, cred. Eva Herzog

Contemporary artist Gustavo Nazareno in his studio

LUX: Opera Gallery interlinks household names in contemporary and near-contemporary art with very emerging and largely unknown artists. How do you navigate this dynamic interplay?

IB: Artists are influenced one way or another by the past and their predecessors. The masters we show, such as Picasso, Dubuffet, Warhol, Haring, or Soulages, have often been studied, admired or have impacted many of the contemporary artists we work with. Thus to me it makes sense to showcase some of the masters with appropriate contemporary artists who may have adapted some stylistic language or beliefs from their precursors. We do focus more than ever on curation, however, and it is important for us that our exhibitions are visually appealing, but also cater to our clients’ tastes and budgets.

An artwork by Jean Dubuffet

LUX: Do you have any ‘guilty pleasures’ in art?

IB: Having always worked in 19th & 20th-century art, I rarely got to meet artists and even less work with them. Since joining Opera, however, all that changed and I now get to learn about the artist’s process directly from them, and understand their work in a much more personal and passionate way, which isn’t necessarily a “guilty pleasure” but a pleasure nonetheless!

I recently travelled with Ron Arad to Washington, D.C. and revisited the Watergate Hotel, which he worked upon and created various works for, through his eyes. It was a marvellous experience and one that got me to understand the man, the creative, and his art more deeply.

The same can be said with Manolo Valdes or Gustavo Nazareno, who are two artists we work very closely with and who teach me about their work on a weekly, if not daily, basis. At the end, passion comes with knowledge and the more I learn, the more I appreciate!

Isabelle de la Bruyère with Israeli avant-garde designer and artist Ron Arad

LUX: Art and Purpose: do they come hand in hand?

IB: Absolutely. Of course the notion of ‘purpose’ can take many forms, but in the creative space, I believe that great artworks and artists lead with purpose and a strong point of view. To me, it’s this incisive approach to the expression of feeling, experience, and belief that is most impactful and intrinsically provides a space for dialogue and the exchange of ideas.

Read more: Art collector Andrea Morante talks on artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar

I see creative expression as an essential part of human experience – seeing art that challenges us, or isn’t immediately obvious to us, makes us better empathisers, helps us think in different ways and in general enriches our lives and helps us keep an open mind to the world.

LUX: What is the biggest change the art world has seen since you joined Christie’s back in 1998?

IB: The greatest change is in the number of art collectors that buy artworks in the million-dollar bracket. When I first started in Christie’s Impressionist & Modern department, we had a list of one thousand clients that could spend at least one million dollars on a painting.

This number now seems ridiculously low in today’s world, and the number of art collectors and enthusiasts has grown with the globalisation and growing economies of the world. Collectors are no longer limited to a few families, but rather an expansive global base from all continents, each with the power to buy works in the seven figure range.

The world’s millionaire population has more than doubled in the last decade, and so has their interest in art, which has also become so much more accessible. There are more galleries, auctions, fairs, and private museums than ever before, which has helped foster new clientele.

We go where clients are nowadays, and Opera Gallery was one of the first art galleries to open up in Hong Kong, Dubai, Monaco and Aspen, as our founder understood the importance of being close to our clients. Globalisation of the art market has dramatically changed the way we work today, as well as the accessibility that has allowed for a more inclusive art world.

Opera Gallery London will be presenting an exhibition by Brazilian artist Gustavo from October 8th to November 9th, 2024.

www.operagallery.com

Cora Sheibani has been designing jewellery for over 20 years. Her pieces are almost exclusively made in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and France, by goldsmiths of the highest calibre

In our latest print issue, Ina Sarikhani writes about jeweller Cora Sheibani whose whimsically beautiful creations are the go-to for aesthetes in London.

Cora Sheibani is the best advertisement for her bespoke, colour-saturated jewellery. Voluble, and a vision with her brilliant red hair, she is eager to discuss her work, art-history references, technical production and gemology, but the eye is drawn to her striking smoky quartz, bronze and red-gold cuff. “I wear a big bracelet instead of high heels,” she explains.

Cora Sheibani has had jewellery exhibitions in many cities including London, Zurich, Geneva, Basel, St. Moritz, Paris, Copenhagen, Miami, Milan and New York

Her brand of exclusive is for every day as well as high days. The designer’s background is steeped in art. Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ettore Sottsass were represented by her art-dealer father and were family friends. When she was just four years old, she painted a canvas with Basquiat. Today it hangs in her hallway.

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This deep aestheticism is evident in her work, which has been exhibited from Miami to Milan. The collections, including Copper Mould, Clouds and Colour & Contradiction, are bold and cast in wild colour combinations. Think pink against fire opal; black onyx beads with slices of turquoise; gold butterfly earrings of garnets, peridots and heliodors.

Read more: LUX’s Artist in Residence – Annie Morris

She is renowned for jewelry that balances whimsy and sophistication, her designs feature playful motifs like clouds, pastries, and plant pots, alongside pieces with architectural and surreal elements.

This play of shape, colour and light is backed by exceptional craftsmanship, with collections made in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France, and each edition is unique. The pieces are intended to be of their time. They are also ageless – sitting as easily on Sheibani’s daughter, Aryana, as on herself. They are also, of course, enduring. As the designer says, “Jewellery just has a longer shelf life than other design.”

corasheibani.com

Mercedes-Benz is demonstrating their new Mercedes-Maybach SL with a diverse brand experience at Pebble Beach Automotive Week 2024

LUX travelled to Monterey and Pebble Beach, to join Mercedes-Benz for the worldwide launch of the new Mercedes-Maybach SL 680, a super-luxe open-topped touring car aimed at bringing 1960s St Tropez glamour to a new generation of wealthy consumers. Fabienne Amez-Droz joined them in her best Hermès headscarf and Ray-Bans

The annual Monterey Car Week and the famous Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance attracts many car enthusiasts and some of the biggest automotive brands of the world. On the western edge of California, lounges from the most renowned car brands were set up and displayed some of their best and newest car models.

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Among them was the Mercedes-Benz Star Lounge, where visitors could admire various historic Mercedes-Benz cars. But it didn’t stop at just looking at cars – you could even borrow a vintage Mercedes and test it along Highway 1 towards Carmel Valley.

Sunny California seems like a good place to launch the V8 convertible Maybach car. The Monogram Series is launched in either White Ambience or Red Ambience specification

Driving the 1971 Mercedes 280 SL convertible, surrounded by California’s scenery and the not-so-well-functioning radio music, it felt like a little time travel, making me feel like I was in an old school music video – so much I had almost lost track of time.

Read more: Electric dream: Mercedes-Benz EQS 450 review

After all the impressions of the Mercedes Benz star lounge, the highly anticipated evening launch event took place. Mercedes-Maybach introduced its SL 680 Monogram Series, a luxurious two-seater convertible defined by intricate patterning and striking two-tone finishes.

The Mercedes team notes that driving the SL Monogram Series is as smooth and quiet as can be expected from a Maybach. A noise-optimized exhaust system and top-notch insulation make sure of that

The spectacle was held in an ultra-modern private house in the middle of Pebble Beach. What immediately caught my eye was the huge “car runway” in the garden of the house. At the start of the runway was a car, covered with a giant cloth.

Read more: Mercedes-Benz On The Art Of Creating Desire

After a few glasses of champagne and canapés, all the guests were called to the runway, where Daniel Lesco (Head of Mercedes-Maybach) and Michael Schiebe (Mercedes‑AMG ) heightened our anticipation for the car’s unveiling. They shared their vision for the new design and explained “what makes a Maybach a Maybach.”

Inside the car, drivers can expect a luxurious interior – It is covered in crystal white nappa leather. Other unique touches include a Maybach-branded steering wheel, stainless-steel pedals, and custom door sill trims

Finally, the new Mercedes-Maybach SL was revealed, driving down the runway. Its two design concepts, “Red Ambience” and “White Ambience,” set the tone for Mercedes Maybachs new level of luxury. While many Maybach owners favor classic designs, others prefer a more flamboyant display of their wealth, as Daniel Lescow says, “Customers who buy this car know that it is a statement car and they want that. We wanted to combine top technology, comfort and luxury”.

The car’s designs took inspiration from high-end, logo-covered handbags. The goal was to achieve a similar aesthetic by offering an optional hand-painted logo pattern on the hood and rear of the Monogram Series.

The hood, featuring the Mercedes star, also comes with an optional hand painted Maybach pattern in graphite grey and the headlights are covered with rose gold accents

The car comes with a special illuminated Maybach grille, headlights with rose gold details and 21-inch wheels. Even though the Maybach is a sports car, it is quite comfortable and drives quietly. With the push of a button you can drive more dynamically up to 260 km/h.

The interior of the car is trimmed in Crystal White Nappa leather. It has a Maybach-specific 3-spoke steering wheel, stainless steel door sills and pedal set. The dashboard is dominated by a massive OLED touchscreen, blending luxury with futuristic digital control, which can seem complicated in the beginning but once you have figured it out, it can do nearly anything you want. The MBUX system allows for voice commands and some of the advanced driver-assistance tools make long roadtrip drives more relaxing.

The Maybach SL680 Monogram Series will arrive in Europe first ahead of other markets. That’ll be in spring 2025, in time for next year’s car week

All quite something, and all the car you’ll need for wafting between Pampelonne Beach and Portofino, or indeed Pebble Beach and Newport Beach, next summer. Just don’t forget the Hermès headscarf and Beach Boys cassette. Wait, there’s no cassette deck? Oh well, no car can be perfect.

www.mercedes-benz.co.uk

Each issue, LUX invites an artist to take up residence and create a work exclusively for us. London-based sculptor and multimedia artist, Annie Morris takes up the challenge

“Drawing helps me explain the things in my life that I find hard to talk about” – Annie Morris

www.anniemorris.com

Daniel Arsham sitting with a bottle of Moët & Chandon before his 280th anniversary monumental relief sculpture

American artist Daniel Arsham sculpts a monumental relief in celebration of the 280^th anniversary of Moët & Chandon, aligning the present-day champagne house with a classical history of prestige and grandeur.

French champagne house Moët & Chandon unveils Collection Impériale Création No. 1 through a monumental sculptural relief created by the New York based contemporary artist Daniel Arsham. Inspired by his personal tour of the Moët & Chandon estate in Épernay, France, Arsham drew from the neoclassical architecture, busts, and faux columns to reimagine the Moët & Chandon bottle.

One of the eighty exclusive bottles that Arsham designed for Moët & Chandon, inspired by their estate

Arsham’s final creation is quite a striking, wall-mounted plaster-cast sculpture, monumental in scale. It feels as if it were recovered from the ruins of an ancient civilization, evoking a sense of mystery and history akin to ancient spolia. Yet, ‘Moët & Chandon’ appears in the place of etched Latin. Interspersed throughout the piece are clusters of grapes, a nod to the vineyards surrounding the estate; a wooden wine barrel, referencing the craft of winemaking; and images of the estate, woven into the relief.

In a rather grandiose gesture, the goddess Pheme, the personification of fame and renown, blasts her trumpet. Arsham cleverly intertwines the brand’s present-day prestige amongst fashion-house-drinkers with the grandeur of antiquity, creating an emblem of the enduring reputation of Moët & Chandon.

Cleo Scott

Douglas Abdell has emerged from obscurity in a striking exhibition at Ab-Anbar Gallery, London. In conversation with LUX, Abdell, a prominent artist of the 1970s and 80s, meditates on medium and language as he makes his comeback.

An intriguing new exhibition in London brings together two decades of work by Douglas Abdell, an American sculptor and painter with Lebanese and Italian roots. Abdell was a prominent artist in the 1970s and 80s before moving to Spain, where he continued to work in relative obscurity for the next thirty years. The Ab-Anbar Gallery in Fitzrovia weaves together his calligraphic signs, symbols, and alphabets through space and time. This interplay of sculpture and painting from the Málaga-based artist creates a mesmerising field of deconstruction and reconstruction of languages, cultures, and imagination. He speaks to LUX about his past, present and future.

View of Douglas Abdell: Intervalism and Other Mathematics
Left to right: 8 to 9 Key Interval Of Oscillation, 1986; 5 Window, 1984; Intervalists Pitch Fork, 1985

LUX: This exhibition features your work from the 1970s until today. How has your work developed thematically, visually, and intentionally over the last few decades?

Douglas Abdell: The main floor of the exhibition shows work from 1968 until 1989. This includes work from my Yad, Kryad, Phoenaes, and Intervalist painting and sculpture. You can also see a bronze sculpture from my Fourth Punic War period, and a bronze sculpture from 1968, which can be broke down to a surrealistic biomorphic with motoristic construct.

On the basement floor there is a room with an Aekyadic Wall Work, several Aekyadic Drawing works, and a fantastic collage wall made by Salman, dealing with my life from childhood to the present. The exhibition features films from different periods of my work, and in another room, there is a documentary of my work being played continually.

LUX: How does your sculptural work relate to your painting, both in this exhibition and your broader practice?

DA: The basis of my sculpture comes from drawing, and sometimes the drawing leads to a painting. The Intervalist paintings in the exhibition came before the Intervalist Sculpture. In making the paintings I realized that some of the forms and structures that I was painting would be more dynamic as sculpture.

From left to right: Bitia vs. Pergamon, Hannibal, 1987; Beirut Phoenaes, 1985

LUX: Why was it important for you to exhibit within Ab-Anbar Gallery?

DA: Ab-Anbar presented me with a concept of an exhibit which showed a profound study of different periods of my work and that impressed me.

LUX: Does your work relate to your American, Lebanese, and Italian identity?

DA: Growing up in a family with ancestors from Lebanon and Italy has had a substantial influence on my person. Both families were proud of their heritage and would teach me about their histories. Italian, Arabic and English were being continually spoken in our household.

Douglas Abdell, Phoenaes Drawings PHRAENN-FHRAEN-FRAE, 1981

LUX: What is the relationship of language to the social and political issues that you explore in your work?

DA: I would say that growing up in a family with different languages spoken has automatically put me in a linguistic position which has transformed into what I best know, and what I feel compelled to do: my natural calling as a Sculptor. This is sometimes manifested in a conscious activity to analyse and reconstruct a political reality.

LUX: Why do you choose visual media to explore language? Why do you prefer it over, say, spoken word?

DA: I would say that I have a profound need to visually realise my thinking. It’s like I have a tremendous need to fill a profound void – a type of black space which haunts me. I must activate structures, phonetic activities manifested, for example, in my Phoenaes Paintings and Intervalist sculptures. I am now consumed and totally dominated with my Aekyadic work, which can be seen a bit in the basement room. Aekyadism is a Language, read it…

Cleo Scott 

View of recreated Douglas Abdell studio, with collage by Salman Matinfar

The Director of London’s Design Museum, Tim Marlow is a celebrated figure in both design and art and an often outspoken authority on both. Samantha Welsh brings Marlow together with South Asian art flag bearer and philanthropist Durjoy Rahman, whose commercial business focusses on textile design and production, for an insightful and sometimes feisty exchange

LUX: What is the relationship between design and art?

Tim Marlow: Designers can make art, and artists can design, but art should be produced without responsibility for anything other than the motivation of the person creating it. Design is a response to something, about problem solving, involving critical design and speculative design, and seeks to find a solution functionally.

Durjoy Rahman: Yes, design and art are interrelated but art is self-responsive and inspirational and can happen consciously or subconsciously, whereas design is purpose-oriented. Of course much design involves art and a lot of artworks include design elements.

TM: Design has existed since humans had consciousness and needed to provide structures to survive, evolve and thrive. We also have this compulsion to express ourselves, to make sense of things, to express our consciousness. The notion of a designer as we understand it now in the West originates in the Industrial Revolution and before that there was no categorisation.

Tim Marlow explored the relationship between art and design in the 2024 exhibition Barbie at the Design Museum, London

LUX: So there are blurred boundaries?

TM: Leonardo Da Vinci was a scientist, an artist, a designer, a composite creative human being. Hussein Chalayan is talented fashion designer who makes sculpture, his fashion designs are informed by sculpture, and his sculpture is informed by the language of fashion that he has evolved. Art often reaches the language of boundary blurring, but I have encountered quite a lot of resistance to people from design or architecture moving in on that world. With architects, if you have gone through seven years of professional training and then somebody comes along from a completely different background to design the building you might baulk at them being called an architect but one has to stop being too insecure about these things. Some of the greatest twentieth century starchitects like Carlo Scarpa, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright were not fully-qualified architects.

LUX: How can good design attract new art audiences?

TM: Creative input from different disciplines into other disciplines is something to celebrate. Rachel Whiteread once designed a daybed. Charles and Ray Eames explored the functionality of plywood to design furniture, a prosthetic leg support, and to make sculpture. How we categorize art or design is a national cultural obsession and we should kick it about a bit!

DR: I have seen a resentment among the artist community where a product designer can claim they are both designer and an artist but an artist cannot call himself a designer. The designer can call their product an installation, a sculpture, a movable artwork but a watercolorist cannot make something and call themselves a designer. When I saw the Eames’ first plywood chair I thought it was a sculpture! And Philiippe Starck is designer, an architect, and an artist.

Latest images from Durjoy Rahman’s 3/22 display space, featuring his collection of art and design

LUX: What can be an approach to collecting functional designed works?

TM: As Director of the Design Museum I salute the collecting of design but also love the fact that design is a growing area for collectors.

LUX: What about design involving an iterative technological function?

TM: There is no question that design is often iterative and it does evolve. It is not always a progression to greater efficacy but tech tends to move us in that direction. A chair produced two hundred years ago can be as comfortable as one that is produced now. However, devices to communicate between human has absolutely evolved over hundreds, if not thousands, even millions of miles. Our collections are displayed around three themes: designer, maker, user; and at the very end is the final piece, the wall. As a series of objects it resembles a diagram interlinking TVs, typewriters, calendars, phones, pens, calculators. Right in the middle is an iPhone, showing all of those functions of those designed objects have been distilled into this one object. But it’s not actually saying that this object is better! […] So design is evolutionary and iterative, whereas art is not like that.

DR: I was recently introduced by LUX to the largest collector of video art in the world right now, whose collection is based in Berlin and Frankfurt. Is technology influencing art or is art influencing technology? There, technology was inspired by art. […] At Venice Biennale, Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation sponsored an artist who created a work that involved photographing, scanning and reassembling tile by tile a heritage basilica reconfigured as an aluminium object.

LUX: How do you decide what design talent to mentor?

TM: For both, you look at the final degree shows, of course, and there are prizes and bursaries for emerging talent. When you see someone early on in their career who is doing interesting things the key is to try and just watch that talent and give it quiet support, not overburden it with exhibitions too early. It is nebulous, intuitive and sometimes self-evident but always about people who understand or give a sense of authenticity, that it is something that they have actually wrestled with and the work is the result of dealing with complexity rather than ease or facility.

DR: I am not a leader of an institution, or involved in programming, so I am not under pressure to identify the talent in the same way. I am a provider, an art collector. While we started our foundation, we had less pressure but our question is always to ask what has contemporary relevance.

Conservatory by Jamie Gatty Irving: a feature of the the Design Researchers in Residence Program, which supports young designers

TM: With western art, there are certain artists whose talent is self-evidently there and their reputations as major artists will not diminish. For example, Rembrandt and Caravaggio are just two we can name but the idea there is an innate talent that is always recognized is wrong. There are people who had no opportunity to exhibit, women, for example, and we now realize there is an extraordinary talent that was never showcased and we did not know about. Taste and talent change, they are not universal.

LUX: What is needed from the spaces in which projects happen? How can this work physically and metaphorically?

DR: Physically, it should be welcoming and inspiring environment that fosters creativity and collaboration metaphorically, a space where artists can express themselves freely. We had a photography exhibition by Magnum photographer Raghu Rai and converted a finance institute into an art space, with a video installation and a 3D context for photos taken during the Bangladeshi war of liberation in 1971 to offer a new generation a different perspective of the struggle and sacrifice. I especially enjoyed your Ai Wei Wei exhibition at the Design Museum last year, Tim, with the old Chinese columns installed to show the artist’s background.

An exploration of space in relationship to art design projects, from the 2023 Design Museum exhibition Ai Wei Wei: Making Sense

TM: Thank you, that show was interesting because we took out all the walls of the space to open it up completely. The best characteristic of space in which art design projects can happen is flexibility. Having historically loaded spaces where their history is evident can be a real joy for artists too. In the Royal Academy there are these beaux arts spaces with beautiful light and you could build on, play with, transform and subvert the history of those spaces but you take them as a given; whereas I think the idea of having flexible spaces where things can happen in different ways are really important. You need also to layer on interesting lighting, finishes, materials. Carpeting is an absolute killer if you are trying to show art or design. Think of a trade fair or art fair where the floors are carpeted as you walk around and how that gives a completely different feel for a kind of project.

LUX: What about curatorial autonomy, what is your message for Millennials and Gen Z philanthropists who want to see institutions that look like them and model their values?

TM: It is very difficult if you chase audiences too specifically. As an institution you have to program and you have to do it from a position of expertise. That is not being arrogant. At the RA and the Design Museum I have always worked with external experts in a subject.

We do not know everything about everything but we do know who the interesting people are to wrestle with and present it. I think if you start presenting things in interesting, incredible ways with authority and authenticity, you then have a chance to show audiences things that they did not know they would like. You also look at what is culturally resonant for people and think about attracting certain kinds of audience that wouldn’t necessarily come to the museum.

So, doing a Barbie show, will attract a very different audience to doing design and football which will attract a very different audience to Enzo Mari, who will attract a very different audience to Tim Burton just to give you the four shows that we have on. I always collaborated with living creative people and the best curators I work with are collaborators.

They can harness, empower, steer, let go and enable people make the kinds of exhibitions that can only be made in their lifetime. One of the roles of a contemporary Museum is to try and work creatively with people rather than curate living people as if they’re dead entities. But there are also ways of collaborating creatively with the dead! We did a Charlotte Perian exhibition, where Assemble, the Turner Prize-winning art, design and architecture collective, installed the exhibition made with extraordinary plants.

The importance of the marriage between art and design in Rahman’s curation

DR: That is interesting. One of DBF’s missions is to give recognition to artists who had none during their lifetime. A female artist, Novera Ahmed who died in 2014, is an example and we curated her work because she is the designer of our language movement Bhasha Andolan, leading our nation’s struggle to preserve Bangla and not have Urdu imposed upon us by Pakistan back in 1952.

Some of our new generation is forgetting about her contribution. Again, about the purpose behind curation, we collaborated on the Raghu Rai photography exhibition mentioned earlier with the Faculty of Fine Art, Dhaka University and, controversially, appointed a very young curator because he is next gen and had not witnessed the War of Liberation of 1971.

Our main objective was for a next gen curatorial lens, to bring into sharp focus the post-war geography of this subcontinent, to appeal directly to the next generation. My advisory team and I wanted to fuse this historical event with the current context and we knew a young curator could do a better job than a historian or an experienced curator of my generation. Next gen asks questions, has the potential to shape art philanthropy, and wants to create a more inclusive and equitable world.

Freya Spencer-Wood, Jamie Gatty Irving, April Barrett and Eliza Collin, as part of the 2023–2024 Design Researchers in Residence cohort

Find out more:

timmarlowdesignmuseum.com

durjoybangladesh.org

Under the theme of “Conversations With Nature,” this year, six artists from five continents have traveled to Reims and created works of art based on their personal impressions of the landscape they encountered there

Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira is creating a scuptural installation for Ruinart, preferred champagne house of every self-respecting next gen oligarch, at Frieze London this year. Cleo Scott investigates

Henrique Oliveira’s forms spring out of the ground like inverted roots. A Brazilian-born painter and sculptor who works between his São Paolo and London studios, his large-scale sculptural installations are known as ‘tapumes’, or ‘fencing’ in Portuguese, which reference the wooden construction fences seen throughout São Paolo.

Oliveira is known for his works exploring the tension between nature and urban life

Oliveira uses lengths of stapled wooden tubing to create organic forms, which are then covered in layers of thinly applied wood, which he selects for their weathered and knotted surfaces. This results in bark-like forms that are at once natural and supernatural.

Oliveira’s project for ‘Conversations with Nature’, part of the Carte Blanche 2024 artists’ initiative from chi-chi Champagne house Ruinart, draws inspiration from the underground world of the Champagne region.

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From a network of chalk pits that provide the ideal environment for vines to grow, to the wine cellars of Ruinart, there seems to be as much life beneath the soil as above. Oliveira unearths this subterranean realm. His forms are roots of vines climbing above ground, seemingly alive in their writhing and twisted compositions.

While Oliveiras paintings evoke an organic proliferation of colors, his sculptures create the illusion of vegetal roots emerging in the urban environment

Forms are taken directly from nature and created using its very materials. However, the impossible distortion and scale of the work introduces an element of the supernatural – something beyond nature – only possible with the hand of man.

Ruinart’s Carte Blanche – not to be confused with Ruinart Blanc de Blancs, the maison’s all-Chardonnay champagne which is the daily pick-me-up of the ultra high net worth party set – this year brings together an international group of artists who centre their work around their connection and commitment to the natural world

Read more: Joel Mesler’s Californian Art at Château La Coste

Six artists travelled to the Champagne region, invited by Ruinart to use their diversity of mediums and practices to ‘converse’ with the landscape of the Maison Ruinart vineyards. Of this collective, the work of Henrique Oliveira and Marcus Coates will be exhibited within the Ruinart Art Bar at Frieze London, amid a backdrop of much Blanc de Blancs imbibing, from October 9th to 13th.

His art is sensitive to sustainable development issues and draws inspiration from the parasitic dimension of these structures, while also highlighting the importance of a mindful use of natural resources

Oliveira’s work embodies the relationship between man and nature at the heart of Ruinart and its Carte Blanche. In observation, understanding, and conversation with his subject, Oliveira breaks down the vine and reconstructs it, rather like the journey of the grape from a vineyard to the bottling of champagne – and onwards to the upper pool deck of that yacht moored off Pampelonne beach.

Find out more: runairt.com

Gerard and Kelly: “E for Eileen”

The Engadine, the high valley in Switzerland that is home to St. Moritz, also houses the literary village of Sils, some of the world’s most interesting small museums and art initiatives, and some of its biggest art collectors. In this ecosystem, a relative newcomer, the St. Moritz Art Film Festival, is taking root, supported by some high-level collectors. The festival opens after Venice’s spectacular film festival, with a different brief, and in what has traditionally been a quiet month in St Moritz where wealthy residents have taken flight and when many of the luxury hotels are closed: a time when it is difficult to achieve traction. LUX Editor-in-Chief, Darius Sanai asks the Festival’s director, Stefano Rabolli Pansera, formerly the director of Hauser & Wirth in St Moritz, about what he hopes to achieve with this bijou concept.

LUX: Why is this different to any other film festival, and how?

Stafano Rabolli Pansera: The St. Moritz Art Film Festival is defined by the following four distinctive elements:

1. The festival takes place in the newly reopened Cinema Scala in the centre of St. Moritz, surrounded by the nature of the Engadine Valley. The Engadine marks the hinge between North and South of Europe: it is located at the centre of the continent, yet it feels detached from it, thus providing a critical distance to our timely issues.

2. As the name of the Art Film Festival highlights, the programme connects tradition and innovation as it lies at the intersection of arthouse cinema, video art and commercial cinematographic productions. Therefore, the scale of the festival remains intimate and exclusive, but also invites a broader audience to attend and participate in the different offerings.

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3. A cultural event with a significant territorial impact. The festival is a spatial happening: it is an event that attracts new audiences to the Engadine, it extends the tourist season by operating as some sort of territorial catalyst. St. Moritz Art Film Festival wants to be a one-of-a-kind festival, leading the path to sustainable cultural tourism in one of the most beautiful valleys, the Engadine. The festival’s unique landscape and surroundings invite to a responsible and sustainable use of the Valley’s resources and facilities.

4. The festival is curated as an exhibition of video art. A yearly curatorial theme is carefully chosen as the common thread of the programme of screenings, conversations, and collateral events during the year. The outcome is a coherent development of a strong annual theme, that triggers factual, philosophical and cultural debates, leaving a strong impression on the audience. The life of festival unravels throughout the years with a coherent development of different themes that are related to each other and create some sort of narrative.

Amshu Chukki: “Different Danny”

LUX: How has the art scene in St Moritz developed recently?

SRP: The Engadine has always been a source of inspiration for artists and thinkers: from Nietzsche to Gerhard Richter, from Alfred Hitchcock to Claudio Abbado. In recent years, thanks to extraordinary gallerists such as Bruno Bischofberger, Carsten Greeve and Hauser & Wirth, amongst many others, and thanks to enlightened collectors, the Engadine has become a unique context for exhibiting and divulging art.

Initiatives such as Muzeum Susch, Proyectoamil, and Engadine Art Talk, the Engadin has been transformed into an active centre of artistic production and a laboratory of ideas. The main differences with the past are the expansion of the cultural scene beyond St. Moritz into the entire Engadine valley and the emergence of an organised network of institutions that provide a constant cultural programme beyond the seasonal affluence of tourists.

Robert Cahen: “Juste le temps”

LUX: What is your main aim for the festival?

SRP: The aim of the St. Moritz Art Film festival is to reinforce its position as a leading cultural force in the international landscape of cinema and video art by offering a platform for sophisticated films and unique videos and for developing a consistent curatorial and philosophical discourse.

The St. Moritz Art Film Festival will always be an exclusive Festival: it is going to find a position in the circles of Video art and films d’essai. Yet, we aim to enlarge the audience and to attract famous and inspiring personalities from the world of Cinema and Video Art.

Read more: Art collector Andrea Morante talks on artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar

Furthermore, we are building a year-long programme of events, in order to maintain the interest for experimental films alive. We are aware of the impact of the Festival in the local scene and we hope to be able to generate a robust economy by attracting international audiences and by employing a larger number of people for different programmes and for a longer period.

Ila Beka Lemoine: “The Sense of Tuning Stills”

LUX: What are the most interesting elements in this year’s festival?

SRP: The annual theme of the third year is “Meanwhile Histories” and it questions the notion of time which is commonly associated with history, a linear succession of one event after another. But time is an overlapping of multiple experiences that occur simultaneously. There are always multiple sides to events and occurrences.

Young jun Tak: “Love your clean feet on thursday”

However, the dominant historical perspective often cancels the multiplicity in favour of a linear understanding of events. What remains is always set by the main narrative, which can shape and control how history is remembered, what is neglected and silenced, and crucially, what history is passed to future generations.

Read more: The Richard Mille Art Prize at the Louvre Abu Dhabi

To approach minor or forgotten histories, perhaps it would be helpful to think of alternative temporalities in terms of “meanwhile”. When we read the dominant history, we must think about what else was happening “meanwhile”.

“Meanwhile Histories” challenges the dominant narratives that have shaped our understanding of history.

The collectors say:

Gerd Schepers  is a Swiss art collector and one of the supporters of the festival. “It’s brilliant that Stefano is bringing this kind of content to the Engadin and the program definitely opens up a fresh perspective in a traditional commercial space with lots of untold stories.”

Aleksandra Pusnik, collector and supporter of thefestival: “The village of St. Moritz per se has always been a special place. On the surface, it carries a connotation of a place of ultimate luxury, only reached by the rich and famous. The Art Film Festival, with its choice of films, taps into the layers below this surface, only to discover the depth of the messages which get sent to the viewers, which in return addresses the masses, all of us, the planet. As the festival closes each year, I feel enriched by these messages as well as pensive about their content.”

The festival will take place from the 12th to the 15th of September 2024.

Find out more: smaff.org

Joel Mesler: Me, you and the sunset. Photograph by Francois Deladerriere

A striking new show by Joel Mesler brings nature, light and life to Château La Coste in the south of France, a place not short of any of these qualities. “Me, you and the sunset” is quite mesmerising

You can’t walk around the grounds of Paddy McKillen‘s Château La Coste without bumping into a museum-spec artwork. A Louise Bourgeois spider here, a Damien Hirst there, site-specific works by the likes of  Tunga, Bob Dylan, Tatsuo Miyajima, or Sophie Calle there. In total, there are about 40 artworks in the grounds.

Crounching spider by Louise Bourgeois. Photograph by Andrew Pattman

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Psicopompos by Tunga. Photograph by Andrew Pattman

As if that’s not enough, the estate complex in the heart of Provence also has three exhibition pavilions or galleries that host temporary and rotating exhibitions.

This summer, Californian artist Joel Mesler is showcasing his exhibition “Me, you and the Sunset” in the gallery designed by architect Richard Rogers.

The Richard Rogers Gallery at Château La Coste

Mesler’s show is inspiring. His twelve new paintings represent a series of connections between an individual (the self) and the landscape, as well as the people within it.

Joel Mesler: Me, you and the sunset. Photograph by Francois Deladerriere

The body of work reflects Mesler’s own views during his visit to the Château the previous summer. The paintings and sculptures, reflect the luminous sunsets of Provence.

Read more: MedBodrum: A New Type of Luxury Festival

There’s hints of Van Gogh there, but also the Californian in Mesler, who seems to pick up on the refractions and shades created by the Saharan desert dust that the high atmospheric Sirocco winds carry northwards here, a link to the desert skies in the east of his home state. Mesler’s paintings tell woven, personal tales.

Joel Mesler: Me, you and the sunset. Photography by Francois Deladerriere

The colorful, almost neon-like glowing paintings feature simple words like “ME,” “YOU,” “LOVE,” and “SUNRISE,” reflecting the recurring themes in Mesler’s art.

The original apartment building has turned into a hotel with 79 suites, each with either a small bar, kitchenette, and separate living areas, most of them having a working fireplace

Candice Tucker checks in to the Petit Ermitage, for a bohemian European escape in the heart of West Hollywood

The Wow Factor

If you didn’t know about the Petit Ermitage, you would likely walk past this discreet hotel, in the heart of West Hollywood, without taking a second look. Once you walk in, it’s a completely different experience. The hotel exudes an enchanting blend of bohemian chic and European elegance.

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

The rooftop, a dreamy oasis, is the crown jewel with its lush garden, cosy fireplaces and red and white striped double lounge chairs surrounding the pool area. Art lovers will be delighted by the curated collection that adorns the hotel, including works by Miro and de Kooning. The ambiance is intimate and full of character—a perfect escape from the ordinary.

The rooftop offers a heated saltwater pool, a cozy lounge area and fireplace

People Watching

The rooftop pool at Petit Ermitage is one of the best spots for people-watching in LA, especially because it’s the city’s only European-style pool. The crowd is stylish and eclectic, a mix of creatives and influencers.

Read more: The Savoy, London review

It’s a serene haven where you might find yourself lounging next to Hollywood’s elite, as the hotel is a known favourite among celebrities seeking privacy. The no-photos-or-videos policy by the pool ensures that everyone can relax without the intrusion of social media, making it a rare, paparazzi-free zone in Los Angeles.

Show Me to My Room

The rooms at Petit Ermitage are a delightful mix of vintage charm and modern comfort. The Belle Suite, where I was staying, had a floral pink wallpaper, complimented by plush green rugs. The light up vanity and fireplace create a sense of warmth that makes you feel right at home. The bathrooms are equally quirky, with vintage tiles and well-chosen amenities that add to the overall boutique experience.

The walls if the hotel are filled with art from the owner’s personal collection, including works by Miro, de Kooning, Rauschenberg, and Dalí

Come Dine with Me

The rooftop restaurant offers dishes that blend Mediterranean influences with fresh, local ingredients. The ambiance is enhanced by the garden surroundings, twinkling lights, and the soft hum of conversation.

One standout on the breakfast menu is the breakfast burrito—an absolute must-try. Packed with fluffy scrambled eggs, and fresh avocado, all wrapped in a perfectly grilled tortilla, it was the best way to start the day in LA.

Find out more: https://www.petitermitage.com/

Since 1948 Land Rover has been manufacturing 4x4s across different models: Defender, Discovery, Discovery Sport, Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, Range Rover Velar and Range Rover Evoque

Range Rover was the original manufacturer of SUVs, Is it still among the best? We drive the slick new Velar, to find out

In the world where every car seems to be a large sport utility vehicle with four-wheel-drive, and enormous amounts of horizontal lateral and vertical space, it’s hard to believe that not that long ago there was really just one SUV you could buy.

The Range Rover was the preferred car for English countryside aristocrats, who used it to navigate the private lanes on their muddy estates. It had the height to avoid rural obstacles and the powerful V8 engine to get it out of mud holes. And quite a lot of comfort and style besides.

Velar, a Latin name that means “to veil”, “Velar” also could’ve been an acronym for “Vee-Eight Land Rover,” as the original prototypes all had eight-cylinder engines

That was then. But what about now? Presumably the tsunami of SUVs from every type of car manufacturer, from Lamborghini to Hyundai, means the original has been sidelined? What would a Range Rover’s USP be now?

Quite a lot, as it turns out, we discovered when driving the Velar.

Great cars always have a distinctive characteristic that is retained down the generations, regardless of evolution. The Mercedes-Benz S class has its own luxurious style distinctive and superior to all of its rivals. The Porsche 911 has a character and precision that it retains even though its current models are unrelated to the originals in the 1960s.

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Similarly, a driver of an original Range Rover from the 1970s would instantly recognise the current model – in a good way. Driving down a road – even a normal urban road – if you feel a sense of security, authority and comfort, as if driving your favourite armchair. The security also arises from the knowledge that this is a famously capable car off-road, even if you never venture down your own muddy farm track.

The Velar relies heavily on electronics and brake intervention for off-road control

Other powerful SUVs hurtle, the Range Rover Appears to waft, Jeeves like, even when it is going very fast.

The interior is British luxurious, that is to say not focused on design-function like some competitors, but all about comfort. While it is an extremely accommodating car for passengers, as a driver you felt like you had melded with it and simply never wanted to get out.

Read more: Rolls-Royce Presents Cullinan Series II In Ibiza

We doubt any Range Rover drivers will be taking their cars for a sports car style blast: they will have other cars for that. Still if you’re pressing on, it retains its composure and comfort, although if you are a super enthusiastic driver, you may well find more sharpness in some of its competitors.

Costumers can tailor their own Range Rover Velar: From different colours on the outside, wheel and roof options. The outside colours vary from Zadar Grey, Santorini Black to Fuji White and more

Some current SUVs work in certain markets, where flashy cars are applauded: however if you live somewhere where discretion is more the word, the Velar will probably suit you more. Although big, and imposing, it has an understated confidence to it that does not invite aggression from other drivers. A worthy successor to the original.

www.landrover.com/range-rover/range-rover-velar

The Clement Palo Alto is ranked #14 on the All-Inclusive Resorts list in the USA

The Clement Palo Alto offers a distinctive experience that stands out in a region known more for its tech giants than its hospitality. Candice Tucker reviews this luxury all-inclusive hotel and shares why it is the place to stay in Silicon Valley.

The moment you walk into The Clement, there is an instant sense of homeliness. Just a small minimalist reception area which leads through to a lounge, restaurant and 24-hour open kitchen area, the hotel has a residential charm that completely puts you at ease. With light brown wooden finishes and cream leather sofas, the hotel strikes the perfect balance of luxury without pretentiousness—ideal for those using it as a sophisticated retreat while attending meetings or visiting Stanford University, just across the road.

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

Stepping into the bedroom feels like entering your own private sanctuary. The expansive space is thoughtfully divided, offering a cozy lounge area and a dedicated workspace with a separate guest loo. The bedroom area provides a tranquil retreat, while the enormous white marbled bathroom—complete with a double-sized shower and bath added a touch of spa-like luxury.

The generous space makes it feel more like a well-appointed apartment than a hotel room, creating a restful environment that feels like a home away from home. To no surprise, being in Silicon Valley, the technology was completely up to date with one simple machine controlling every function possible in the room.

The hotel is located downtown Palo Alto near the Stanford University campus with 23 residential-inspired suites

Later in the afternoon, feeling a bit peckish, I called reception to inquire about room service. While they were happy to send something up, they suggested I explore the 24-hour open kitchen instead. Right by the main restaurant, this brown wooden kitchen with dark marble tabletops resembles one you’d find in a luxury Beverly Hills mansion.

Read more: Shogun, Zermatt’s finest Japanese restaurant, reviewed

Complete with a double fridge, cabinets filled with perfectly arranged jars of biscuits, yogurt and fruit bowls, fresh juices, and an array of light snacks, I was browsing through as if it were my very own dream kitchen at home. It was a refreshingly personal touch, allowing guests to help themselves at any time, fostering an atmosphere of comfort and familiarity.

All meals and beverages are inclusive in the price of your room, thus no exchange of money is necessary

The next day I dined at the hotel’s restaurant for lunch which offers a curated seasonal menu that showcases local ingredients. I was also given the option to dine whenever and wherever I chose, which was not only convenient but added to the level of personalisation that the hotel seems to so easily provide. The tomato soup was flavoursome and light and left the perfect amount of room for the Dijon roasted salmon which was soft in the middle with a crispy tangy outer layer.

Read more: Chez Vrony, Zermatt, Switzerland review

The Clement Palo Alto excels at offering a luxury experience that never feels overwhelming. The hotel’s small size, combined with its attention to detail and personalised service, creates an intimate atmosphere that’s perfect for both business travellers and those visiting Stanford University. Every aspect of the stay is designed to cater to your needs, making it a place you’ll want to return to time and time again.

www.theclementpaloalto.com

Boutique hotel La Fiermontina Luxury Home is an homage to Antonia Fiermonte and the two artists who loved her. The garden shares its ancient city walls with Lecce

Lecce, the most celebrated city in Puglia, comes at you unexpectedly, like many of Italy’s gems. You drive past vineyards and olive groves, go through some unremarkable suburbs and then suddenly you are faced with a wall and gate of Roman origin. Once inside, the streets shrink and are cobbled; but what looks like a cluster of ancient buildings also houses more treasures within.

One of these is La Fiermontina Luxury Home, the city’s most celebrated hotel, set around a garden and olive grove within the ancient walls. The owners have just opened a new property, the Fiermonte Museum, 50 metres away down a quiet cobbled street.

All rooms and suites of La Fiermontina Luxury Home are inspired by traditional local buildings and are full of character, decorated with vintage and high-end antique pieces

Turn  right at the old lady who spends her days sewing, sitting on a chair on the cobbles, through a latticed iron gate, and you enter into a bijou courtyard, surrounded by lush trees – you could pick your own loquats certain times of the year.

Under a newly built staircase – the whole construction is new out of old sit two sculptures, and the art theme continues when you walk through the first floor terrace and slide the glass doors open, to be greeted by an array of sculptures and paintings.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

Our room had high, vaulted ceilings, showcase artworks and furnishings – the Fiermontina team are masters at creating contemporary art and design elegance out of historic landmarks.

The artworks around La Fiermontina Luxury Home are part of the carefully selected collection, and the architecture tells a story of the family’s ancestors and the country’s history

The Suite Nocturne of the Fiermonte Museum is covered in blue tones and music-themed

Ceilings and curtains were a deep blue, the window looking out onto a lush tropical treescape (all this within the old town). It was utterly peaceful, silent both at night and during the way, yet a couple of minutes stroll along the cobbles takes you into the heart of the old town.

Read more: Artists In Conversation: Michelangelo Pistoletto and Pascale Marthine Tayou with Maryam Eisler

The Fiermonte Museum consists of works from the Fiermonte family’s private collection, taking visitors on a kaleidoscopic journey through 20th-century art

This really is a Museum with rooms: you are given tickets, key card access and a lantern so you can access the museum in the same building at night. And then have breakfast in the courtyard, with an utterly bijou buffet served by your own staff – it feels like staying in a private home, more than a hotel.

We had dinner on our last night at the Zephyr restaurant.

www.lafiermontinacollection.com

In our latest print issue we covered the preview week of the world’s most celebrated art biennale, which brought artists, collectors, institutional leaders, philanthropists, curators and the merely curious for a whirlwind of parties across the ancient city. All photographed by Darius Sanai using a vintage Nikon Coolpix ultra-compact

Esben Weile Kjaer and Lucca Hue-Williams

Maria Sukkar and Emin Mammadov

Maryam Eisler

Yana Peel

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Eun-Me Ahn and Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

Darius Sanai and Ralph Rugoff

Yamini Mehta and Nada Raza

Durjoy Rahman and Vinita Agarwal

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

Samantha Welsh, Jessica Hartley and Lee Sharrock

Carolina Conforti, François-Laurent Renet and Hamlet the dog

Shaan Shahani

Read more: Armando Testa at the Venice Biennale 2024

Nick Chu and Marton Nemes

Read more: Artists In Conversation: Michelangelo Pistoletto and Pascale Marthine Tayou with Maryam Eisler

Oli Epp and Javier Martinez

Stefanie Sauska and Julia Mechtler

Bernardo Pereira and Djoser Botelho Braz

Ana Helena Pires, Sandra Hegedus, Maguy Etlin and Vanessa Tubino

Marie-Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre and Laure Martin

Roman Schramm, Petroc Sesti, Emilie Pugh and Tracey Ryans

Glicéria Tupinambá

Nadja Romain

Masha Nosova, Fabienne Amez-Droz, Isabella Fergusson

The original Cullinan, launched in 2018, was the world’s first super-luxury SUV. The new Cullinan Series II adapts to changes in codes of luxury

More than half a decade after the launch of Rolls-Royce’s original Cullinan, the Cullinan Series II has unveiled in Ibiza. Codes of luxury have changed. And so has the model’s design, engine and character. Fabienne Amez-Droz takes a spin

Think a cross between a sky-scraper, a boat, and a (strangely civilised) wild boar. The Cullinan Series II is an animal with all the hallmarks of a Rolls-Royce classic. It flaunts a handsome large snout, crisp edges and clean geometry. Its muscles, though lean, seem somehow monolithic.

When Cullinan was first launched, less than 70% were self-driven: today, almost every Cullinan is driven by its owner

A versatile 6.75 litre V12 engine provides agility. While it could handle Ibiza’s coastal roads and narrow village streets with ease, it was unable to begin to flex its muscles, under the tame Ibiza sun. It’s wilder capabilities include off-road handling, equal to the most dangerous and hostile environments. I couldn’t say I was complaining.

The bumper lines form a shallow ‘V’ from the lowest point of the daytime running lights to the motor car’s centre point, recalling the sharp bow lines of modern sports yachts

Calmer drives between lunches and dinners, across the island and from the Six Senses Hotel, to a private dinner hosted by the Rolls-Royce team in the villa of the six senses owner, were more to my preference. As was the coastal path to Casa Jondal, the beachside restaurant serving laid-back luxury not dissimilar to the backseat of a Cullinan Series II. Naturally, a bottle of champagne, out of the champagne compartment, pairing perfectly with view of the horizon.

Reflecting clients’ desires for bolder forms of self-expression, new decoration and detail have been added throughout the interior of Cullinan Series II

But let’s hop from the backseat to the front. Codes of luxury have changed. People are starting to drive their own cars. Back in 2018, at the launch of the first Cullinan, less than 70% were self-driven; today less than 10% of clients retain the services of a chauffeur, and the average age of Rolls-Royce clients has dropped from 56 in 2010 to 43 today. And the Cullinan Series II reflects this. As Anders Warming, Director of Design for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the ‘statement and flourish’ built in this second series is undeniable.

Adapting to the desire of many clients to escape into nature, the interior is comprised of a palette inspired by botanicals. Cullinan Series II introduces Grey Stained Ash, a richly grained natural open-pore wood with a light shimmer

Flourish is the word. A pattern on them – reportedly evoking clouds – is suggestive, too, of something hovering between Japanese ink drawing, khaki, botanicals and cartography. Quite a range, but then so are Rolls-Royce’s design inspirations, from nautical to architectural matter. Oh, and with 107,000 individual perforations into the leather to create them, because why not?

This is a modern-vintage nexus that Rolls-Royce has harnessed for its newfound younger generation of customers. See its classically geometrical, Art-Deco style wheels, for instance: one feels one might just see Jay Gatsby through the rear-view mirror, but then spot Daniel Craig in the side-view one.

The new Spirit of Ecstasy Clock Cabinet is set inside a vitrine that displays both an analogue timepiece and an up-lit Spirit of Ecstasy figurine. The figurine is constructed from solid stainless steel and placed on her own stage with a matte black back panel

If craft is all the rage at the moment, Rolls-Royce are not new to the game. After four years of development, Rolls-Royce’s trademark Spirit of Ecstasy sits not only on its bonnet but inside the car, lit up and enhanced. And it even shapeshifts to become a technological item ­– ‘SPIRIT’ – a digital interface linking to a private members app, Whispers. The minds of analogue and digital craftspeople are meticulously stitched together, unsurprisingly well. And at the unsurprising price of not far off half a million pounds. Why compromise on craft?

Read more: Rolls-Royce launches new Boat Tail at Lake Como 

Fitting it is to have unveiled this car at the Six Senses hotel ­– aptly-named in relation to a car with the instinct and power of a wild boar, and the grace of a mercurial, siren-like Spirit of Ecstasy. To borrow the CEO’s phrase, let ‘magic carpet ride’ begin.

www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com

The Hato Restaurant is located in the heart of St. Moritz village, only a few minutes walk away from the well-known Badrutts Palace

In the heart of St Moritz, Hato is all about people watching, inside and out, DJ vibes, and some vibrant pan-Asian cuisine to match anything in Mayfair, as LUX discovers

Slip into a window table at Hato and you have a ringside seat of the high-rolling circus that is St Moritz in season. A slick, dark, club-bar of a restaurant, Hato is right in the heart of the village, slightly elevated from the street, so you can look out, chilling to the DJ tunes, and spot exactly who is in town with which of their lovers/dogs/families.

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The cuisine is Fine Asian and the menu references the Head Chef’s previous role at Sexy Fish in London, but that doesn’t really do justice to Hato: this is much more refined than Sexy Fish, both in concept and execution.

The restaurant with views on the lake of St. Moritz serves fine asian cuisine dishes that are displayed in a very extravagant style

Our Som Tam salad – not jam, coriander, green papaya, carrots, red onion and iceberg – was a dish surely never served before in St Moritz, and had a delicious vibrancy, matched well with our other sharing starter of steamed aubergine with chilli and coriander.

Read More: Roia’s fine-dining in Singapore’s Botanics

Hato started quiet that evening but quite late, as our mains arrived, troupes of young St Moritzians waltzed in, evidently familiar with the place, laughing, jogging over to their regular tables, chatting in the multilingual Esperanto of English, Italian, French and German that is the trademark of the Engadine.

Established in 2015, Hato is known for it’s range of asian foods, from rock shrimp tempura to Hamachi, a new style of yuzu truffle

Next up was handmade dim sum, which we had chosen over tempura, which seems to be everywhere these days. The siu mai and har gau were sufficiently al dente and definite, but it was the spinach and mushroom that caused delectations, likely due to the clarity of the local ingredients.

A main of black cod was originally, and highly successfully, served with saikio miso, truffle yuzu and fennel but the real standout of the whole meal was the whole butterfly seabass, with Thai spices. Zingy, buttery, thought provoking.

Grilled miso chicken, sashimi, nigiri, maki, handmade dim sum with ponzu sauce, shiitake mushrooms, tuna takaky: one doesn’t lack choice at HATO

We’re not sure if people go to Hato for the food or the vibe – both are high up the scale – or to spot their ex walking with someone new down below, to which the only answer is another bottle of Dom Perignon.

www.hato-restaurants.com

The Japanese restaurant Shogun in Zermatt offers sushi, and many other Japanese specialties such as ramen

Zermatt, the celebrated Swiss ski and mountain resort, has a little-known but powerful connection with Japan. Nowhere better to experience it than at Shogun, a properly authentic Japanese in the village centre

A perhaps little known fact about the high Alps is the Japanese connection. Zermatt, cradled by a ring of the most spectacular 4000m peaks in Europe, has a long-term connection with Japanese mountaineers who, like the English, were among the early-adopter climbers of peaks like the Matterhorn and (even more imposing, if less famous) Weisshorn. A significant number of Alpine books available in the village’s bookstores were authored or photographed by established Japanese climbers.

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In that context, it is not surprising that Zermatt has a Japanese restaurant which is quite different in feel from the current trend for Asian-fusion.

Walking into Shogun, you feel like you are entering an eatery in Hokkaido, the mountain and ski island of Japan: through a little garden and up some steps, everything is Zen, simple, wooden, careful, thoughtful.

Shogun prepares the Japanese food freshly and sells it at moderate prices

Menus are bilingual, also in Japanese. We chose a set menu, which featured a stunning, tastebud-reviving hamachi carpaccio with jalapeños, red onion, ponzu sauce and sesame oil, Swiss grilled beef which was tender, simple, almost liquid, and a yuzu cheesecake.

Read more: Mandarin Oriental, Zurich review

From the à la carte we had spicy tuna tartare, topped with quail’s egg, tori kaarage (chicken with soy, ginger and garlic), and grilled scallops and white fish with grilled vegetables.

Next to eating in the restaurant, you can also get the dishes delivered or you can get it at their take away station

A combination of quality of ingredients and care and craft of execution made the food utterly standout, even for someone used to eating at the world’s great Japanese restaurants.

The purity may come as a surprise to a generation reared on the easy-listening Japanese of Asian fusion restaurants, but Zermatt is, at heart, all about purity. Memorable for all the right reasons.

The two japanese chefs import the rice that they are using for the dishes directly from Japan

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shogun-japan-restaurant-zermatt.ch

The Magill Estate, South Australia, home of Penfolds since 1844

One of the world’s great red wines comes, unusually, not from a hallowed single piece of land, but from an ever-varying blend of vineyards in South Australia. Penfolds Bin 707 has risen meteorically into the consciousness of wine collectors in the last couple of decades, renowned for its silken balance and depth. Darius Sanai meets Penfolds Senior Winemaker Steph Dutton over a tasting of vintages ranging from 1990 to 2021 to discover insights into a wine every connoisseur should be considering for their cellar, dining table – and home cinema

Wine connoisseurs seeking the world’s great Cabernet Sauvignons typically have two broad styles to explore. There are the old-world wines of Bordeaux, including great names like Chateau Lafite and Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, Cabernet-dominated red wine blends that are complex, often austere, and reserved; and the more exuberant, rich, sweeter style of Napa Valley Cabernet from California. To these (very broad generalisations), we can add a third: Bin 707, a Cabernet Sauvignon made in South Australia by the celebrated wine brand, Penfolds.

Bin 707 is distinctive as, like many Penfolds wines from Australia and elsewhere, it is not sourced from a particular estate or plot of land: instead, each year, the winemakers choose what they think are the greatest Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from around the region, that will work best in harmony with each other, and blend them to make Bin 707. (And in years when the grapes are not deemed good enough, the wine is not made at all).

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The wine has a typical Penfolds high-end class and style: immensely smooth, refined, sophisticated and balanced, without being overwhelming with any single element: neither too rich, nor austere, nor over fruity, nor bitingly tannic. And like all the world’s great wines, Bin 707s develop with age, adding layers and subtlety while retaining their essential character and soul.

But how do you create such a distinctive wine? Darius Sanai organised a conversation and tasting, over Zoom, with Steph Dutton, Penfolds winemaker, to find out more. Dutton outlines in her own words some background behind what is becoming one of the world’s legendary Cabernets; and as they taste through vintages, both Dutton and Sanai give their thoughts on each.

Steph Dutton conducted our tasting from the tasting room at Penfolds celebrated Magill estate in Australia

Steph Dutton, Penfolds Senior Winemaker, on Bin 707:

“Bin 707 has always led the charge for Cabernet, which here in Australia was a variety that took longer to find its feet compared to Shiraz. Yet Cabernet is still king in the fine wine world in terms of its nobility, its ageability, and this ability for Cabernet to tell a very long-lived story.

Bin 707 is now attaining a real cult following that has previously always been attached to Grange (Penfolds’ famous Shiraz). Our job as winemakers with a wine like Bin 707, which has been around since its inaugural release in 1964, is to honour the style that our predecessors have already carved out, but we should also still be making the 1% and 2% changes every year in the right direction in the name of excellence.

Whether it’s Grange or Bin 707 , the rule about selecting the fruit to go in the wine is that it doesn’t matter where it comes from, as long as it’s the best. And so as you go through warm vintages, cool vintages, and everything in between, the different regions are going to be represented at different percentages. It’s the best of the best from each vintage.”

Bin 707 has a distinctive and balanced style of its own, appealing to collectors of Cabernet Sauvignon around the world

Penfolds Bin 707 1990

Steph Dutton: 1990 is probably one of the most famous vintages in South Australia, so it was sort of the logical place to begin today. I will always be fascinated to know what the 1990 was like at the time, as I can’t time travel and go back and know what it looked like during vintage. With this wine, I like to say you can be the most intense voice in the room, but it doesn’t mean you’re the loudest voice in the room. And I think as wines age, the best examples do keep their intensity, but they become a little bit more subtle and less obvious. It’s almost like the components are retreating into themselves a little bit more, but they’re resolved.

Read more: Bettina Bryant on California’s Bryant Estate

Darius Sanai: Amazing nose, palette of colours, I want to have a Bistecca alla Fiorentina done medium. It’s got that wonderful structure to it, and I want rosemary on the steak. It’s not powerful, but it’s still full, not faded at all. If I had a case of this, I would last it out for another 20 years.

Penfolds publishes a guide to how each vintage of all of its great wines is maturing

Penfolds Bin 707 1998

SD: This is a big vintage in proportions. It is full of tannin and muscle. It should be incredibly fruit sweet. This is going to be one of your more obvious wines in the line-up. Looking at my own tasting notes, I speak about muscle, the grunt, the sinew, grainier tannins. I’ve spoken about a warmth that comes with the wine, you know, that chocolatey blackberry sort of warmth and comfort, sort of a generosity.

DS: Plenty of everything here, still incredibly refined though. Not overwhelming like some Napa Cabernets are, for example. There is plenty of fruit and tannin, but also a balance and smoothness, nothing jumps out at you too much, and it is incredibly fresh and moreish also. Just delicious. It also feels ageless: this is a wine that is 26 years old, but it could be 16 years old or six years old, with that layered balance. I would say that extra power in this one along with that freshness would make it match nicely with a chicken tajine, not too spicy, but with a little turmeric and allspice.

Penfolds Bin 707 2004

SD: This is a more elegant wine, like the 1990, while the 1998 is moodier and broodier. 2004 is a cooler climate vintage and we source fruit from different areas, depending on the vintage. The art of multi-regional blending gives you, a different skill set, but also something different that you’re offering your collectors and your loyalists. It’s a little bit like thinking of a choir with many voices, all singing together at one point in time, versus a solo artist. And our job as winemakers is probably, we don’t want to lose the solo artist in a choir, but we want the power and magic of the choir when it’s the best fit.

And so our job as winemakers is not only knowing when and how to blend, but also knowing when not to blend.

DS: Same style, like a sibling, very refined. Its layering is subtle but still distinctive. And it doesn’t taste anything remotely like 20 years old. I have had 2004 Bordeaux first growths that look and taste distinctly older than this.

SD: In the wine world, it’s a little bit like the real world. If you’re mistaken for a younger version, it’s the biggest compliment, because it means you’ve got a longer life ahead of you with wine. So to hear it looks more youthful than what it is, it’s the best thing you can say to a winemaker!

LUX tasted through six vintages of Penfolds Bin 707 at a country house in England’s Cotswolds, while speaking to Steph Dutton in South Australia

Penfolds Bin 707 2006

SD: This wine is more like a 10-year-old rather than a 20-year-old. It was from a drought year, but drought doesn’t mean it was hot, it just means it was dry. The wine is very tightly wound in the best kind of way. There’s a lot of untapped potential here being revealed.

DS: It has that youthful mouthpuckering tang but still that distinctive Bin 707 deliciousness.

SD: It has what I call that upfront fruit vibrancy and density. I think dried and cured meats with a vintage like this are lovely but also not overpowering. You know, when you think about bresaola as an example, or jamon iberico. If you go to a restaurant, bresaola is one of the best matches for aged cabernet that you can come across.

Penfolds Bin 707 2010

SD: 2010 was an incredibly strong vintage. It wasn’t the biggest of anything, but it was kind of the best of everything. Proportioned, rather than big.

DS: There are many, many layers here, but typical of this wine, it’s all very subtle and silky. It doesn’t demand your attention, like some famous Cabernets. If you wanted to, you could whiz through a bottle while watching Netflix with a sourdough pizza with nduja – there’s plenty of structure to match that spice – or you could sit with a fellow connoisseur and analyse it over water biscuits. It’s fascinating to have that dual character; with other great wines you tend to only be able to do one of those.

Penfolds Bin 707 2021

SD: Like 2010, 2021 was a fantastic vintage. You can taste that it is primary, bright, glossy, full of juiciness, very firm tannins. It’s like a little glimpse of a wine that’s in its infancy.

DS: That is the expert winemaker perspective… for me, it is dangerously drinkable now in 2024, considering that it will probably age as well as the 1990. There’s nothing forbidding about it, although it is certainly full of bright, rich colours. It’s one you could drink with a filet mignon, or sauteed chanterelle mushrooms on toast, and that would bring it out even more. But like all the others. it’s perfectly balanced, there’s nothing showy or overblown about it. You could drink it every day, as well as at Christmas.

www.penfolds.com

The Savoy was London’s first hotel specifically designed for luxury, raising the bar for comfort and service in a way that was unprecedented at the time

The Savoy is a global hotel legend. But, after a recent revitalisation, can it live up to its lofty reputation? LUX finds out

Glamour is a hard concept to pin down. Why are some people glamorous and others merely sexy? And what makes a hotel glamorous, rather than just impressive?

History helps, but not all historic luxury hotels are glamorous; some are faded, others reworked so their character is stripped out: too perfect.

The exterior of the hotel was crafted to resemble a chic waterside Continental hotel, with long rows of balconies along the River Front

The Savoy is glamorous. We weren’t quite sure it would be, having not been inside for years. It’s in a slightly curious location, perfect for London’s theatreland and Covent Garden, and famously overlooking the Thames, but not in the Mayfair/Knightsbridge hub.

But this is a hotel with heritage and society history written into it, as you notice when your taxi trundles up the driveway past the Savoy’s own theatre, on the right, and its celebrated Grill, on the left.

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The lobby area is so redolent of the roaring Twenties that you expect a jazz band to burst in at any moment. Up we went, in a tiny, period-chic lift, to a suite with a view across the Thames and out towards the lights of Canary Wharf – which of course didn’t exist for most of this hotel’s history. Despite the super-central location, there was no sound at all, the only traffic a stream of middle distance lights on Waterloo Bridge.

The Savoy hotel, built by Richard D’Oyly Carte, the creator of the Savoy Theatre, had a distinctly theatrical flair when it opened in 1889 – The décor was classically Victorian, but experienced changes since then

The American Bar is a Savoy legend, and the design and decor just ooze interwar chic – which is just as well, as some of the clients were dressed for a Sunday morning at a fast food restaurant. Should hotel bars have dress codes? Probably not, but onesies should certainly be banned. Glamour does need a certain filter.

The American Bar is the longest surviving cocktail bar and since 1893 has had guest from Winston Churchill to Ernest Hemingway

Fortunately, the staff and spectacle more than made up. Our server was charming, knowledgeable, passionate about his job, and professional – in the sense that working in the bar was his profession, in which he took pride, increasingly rare. The pianist was the pro you would expect, toning down the volume and singing so it didn’t overwhelm, but keeping everyones’ conversations moving along with his timing. Sip that perfect Negroni, gaze at the brilliant pianist, just don’t expect to see your fellow guests dressed like Audrey Hepburn.

Read more: La Fiermontina Family Collection, Lecce, Puglia review

The Savoy Grill was, back in the day, a place where Englishmen (always men) with starched collars and three piece suits would repair to for long lunches with their peers, who had been to the same boarding schools and worked in the same firms. It is a masterpiece of historic design, and you get there by sweeping across the (glamorous) lobby from the American Bar.

The Savoy river restaurant by Gordon Ramsay has views of the River Thames. There’s also an option of renting a private dining room for 8-12 guests, suitable for special events

And it’s quite an entrance. The Grill is now run by Gordon Ramsay, who has long done away with the men in three piece suits (they faded out of their own accord, apart from bizarre UK politician Jacob Rees-Mogg), and we were swept to our corner table by the hyper-professional staff.

Here at the Grill you see how a great restaurant is at the heart of the community of a great city. Tables surrounding us included a three-generation family celebration; people having a post-theatre dinner; a finance dude engaging in a very intense and thoughtful wine tasting of red Burgundies over his dinner; a couple who looked like they had materialised from everyone’s For You page on Instagram; two young women sipping champagne and talking about men; a lone woman in Dior who knew the staff as well as she knew her huge solitaire diamond ring.

The Savoy Grill by Gordon Ramsay serves a classic British and French-inspired menu from Beef Wellington, dry-aged beef to a Dover sole

We had Kir Royal Louet-Feissser oysters with blackberry and champagne – quite the combination – and a bright and highly defined yellowtail crude with English cucumber, dill and shisho, followed by an absolutely perfect olive crusted monkfish and moist and tender Beef Wellington, a nod to Savoy Grill tradition. Brilliant food but more importantly true dining experience.

And then a wander back across the now quiet lobby, up in the bijou lift, and to the room with the lights of London across the water. But the highlights were not over yet: the next morning, the Savoy served up perhaps the best in-room dining breakfast LUX has ever encountered.

Presentation was silver service and beautiful – perhaps a key quality of glamour – but the sourcing of the ingredients and cooking were extraordinary. Pancakes, each as thick as a finger, but with rich taste in their puffy interiors, rather than the oily exterior and sweet nothingness of so many; top quality avocado on fresh sourdough with a gentle sprinkle of chilli. Just beautiful – and glamorous to the last.

thesavoylondon.com

Vogue‘s former Fashion Features Director Harriet Quick, and former head of personal shopping at Harrods Sukeena Rao have partnered to create Luminaire, for high-class, tailored personal shopping. They talk to LUX about sustainability, AI, and exclusive upcoming projects.

LUX: How did you come together to start Luminaire?

Harriet Quick: Sukeena and I first met in the mid-noughties when she was then heading up personal shopping at Harrods and I was working as fashion features director at Vogue. I was writing a profile on Nicholas Ghesquiere at Balenciaga and came to Harrods to attend a special trunk show. Luxury retail and luxury magazines can often seem like church and state but here was a moment to witness how Rao was introducing clients to the brand and all the magic that happens in the styling suites at the point of ‘try on’.

Luminaire, launched in mid 2022, draws on the combination of expertise from personal shopping and fashion journalism.

LUX: What’s the biggest misconception people have about buying clothes?

Harriet Quick & Sukeena Rao: We can all get swept away by brand, hype and the incredible mise en scène and storytelling of a catwalk show. However, when it comes down to our own sense of style, it really is proportions that matter most – finding the shapes and looks that suit your body shape, work with your lifestyle and chime with your aesthetic preferences. As Miuccia Prada has pointed out, it takes practice and patience. Luminaireco.com is a navigator and catalyst in that process.

LUX: Harriet, as a former fashion features director at Vogue, how do you think that the largest fashion magazines will change in 10 years, compared to now? Will they still hold a lot of influence on fashion trends, or are they fading?

HQ: We now receive fashion information at multiple ‘nodal’ points whether digital, on social, in print, a podcast, Substack or via an experience. I think there will always be room for a beautiful magazine like Vogue but it no longer has the absolute authority, the first word on fashion, that it exerted in the pre-digital era. Readers and viewers go to the voices and visions they find exciting and relevant not just one source: media is individualized.

At Luminaire, we distil the bigger meta themes into highly curated shopping edits, flag the integrity of the design and provide a 360 view that reaches out art, design, escape and to experts in beauty and wellbeing. We’ve always seeking to hyper connect clients and readers with exceptional finds.

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LUX: Would AI make a good personal shopper?

HQ: I think there are some fun styling tools but the advice for now is lowest common denominator. Maybe because of super intelligence and the revolution in AI, clients are seeking ever more personal advice – we desire the human touch – the intelligent viewpoint – a real conversation. To that end, Luminaire is hosting a series of summer events with Burberry bringing together clients over picnics, and guided store tours.

LUX: What was your earliest memory of being conscious about the clothes you were wearing?

HQ: Maybe age 5, I became fixated choosing a Liberty floral fabric for a sundress my mother was making for me. I used to go with her to Harvey Nichols, pour over copies of Vogue and that opened by eyes to this dizzying and wonderful world of fashion. After studying for a post grad in journalism at City University, I became dedicated to all areas of design journalism then became more specialist in fashion at The Guardian, The Frank Magazine than Vogue.

Luminaire’s summer series features Barbara Stürm, Lou Lou de Saison and Pierre Augustin Rose

LUX: How you adapted your business model alongside increased concern for sustainability and slow fashion?

HQ: Our general maxim is buy less, buy better and work with what you already have in your wardrobe. The shopping team often has to advise against repeat buys and steer clients towards accessories or pieces that really will make a difference and that might be a fine jewellery piece, an Hermès handbag or lovely staples from Toteme or Wardrobe NYC. The gifting suggestions are also excellent.

LUX: Name a trend that Luminaire are keen on at the moment.

HQ&SR: All eyes are on Chloé and so called ‘boho’ but how does that translate? A flowing chiffon blouse in a Chloé dune shade, is a great multi-tasking starter. The skirt suit is re-emerging after seasons of trouser suits and that looks so elegant in tweed and plaid wools from brands including Chanel, Petar Petrov and Loro Piana.

Read more: Giambattista Valli on the love for beauty

LUX: Rao, what made you want to break away from Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and consult houses to begin your own company?

Sukeena Rao: Although I continued to work with private clients, I took a break to have my two children. I had always wanted to join the dots between personal shopping and editorial offering up a 360-view combining shopping, sourcing and inspired advice.

LUX: Where do your views differ in terms of fashion and your business model?

SR: We approach fashion from complimentary and contrasting angles with Harriet EIC attending the bi-annual fashion shows looking to future trends and shifts, and myself as Chief Commercial Officer concentrating on the collections as they arrive on the shop floor.  There is a constant desire to edit and find the very best. Olivia Scanlon, the CEO, based in NYC comes from a legal and finance background and that bedrock is vital in growing a business in a measured strategic manner.

LUX: What next? Do you have any exciting new projects you could tell us about?

HQ&SR: In September we are launching a newly designed website. It’s super intuitive to navigate and there is a dedicated Private Client portal where each client can view their own personalised mood boards, wish lists and shopping history; book experts including sessions with the Luminaire team and be alerted to invitations to Luminaire events and happenings. But you don’t have to be a private client to dive in and shop the themed edits and benefit from styling suggestions. We want to take the endless scroll out of shopping and go beyond the overwhelm of hype and the selection/browsing process a reward and delight – that’s what luxury is about.

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luminaireco.com

The UK’s only black tie music festival, Henley Festival, returns for its 42nd year, this week. LUX has a look

Mud, sweat and beers. That’s what one associates with music festivals. Well one hopes that there’ll be sun, a friend or two and some good music to make your voice worth losing back at the work the next day. (‘Been off ill, have you?’, one hears the boss ask. ‘Yes, yes’ one surreptitiously croaks. ‘Not at Glastonbury?’ ‘No, no; just a cold…’) Not, however, at Henley Festival…

Henley Festival features not only music, but art, comedy and what it calls the ‘Roving Troupe’, groups of roaming entertainers of various sorts.

The town, renowned across Britain for the home of the Royal Regatta, has been pulsing to the UK’s only black tie music and arts festival. The dress code reads somberly that if you are spotted in casual attire, you’ll be ‘refused entry to the event.’ One pictures security guards in morning suits rather than fluorescent jackets. 

Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, England, is home to the Henley Royal Regatta, first held in 1839 as a local festival but now an internationally renowned competition.

Henley, in line with its dress code, ensures that both art and gastronomy are focuses of equal measure to the music, which itself proves to be strong and eclectic.

In the past, Henley Festival has featured Jess Glenn alongside the Heritage Orchestra, Melanie C alongside Goldie, and the Pet Shop Boys as well as Chaka Khan. This year, the lineup has procured artists from across the pop, classical, world music, and jazz settings, from Nicole Scherzinger to Dave Stewart’s Eurythmics Songbook, to Trevor Nelson, Gladys Knight and Sam Ryder. Oh, and a minor addition – the semi final of the Euros will be shown as part of the festival this year, on July 10th.

KATYA, winner of the Rising Star Initiative, rose to fame with her debut single, ‘I’ll Take Your Number’, featured on Spotify’s Fresh Finds UK & IE playlist.

2022 saw the 40 year anniversary for Henley Festival, and marked the founding of RISE – a platform lifting up emerging young musicians, comedians and visual artists. This, as Jo Bausor, CEO of Henley Festival, contents, is ‘rapidly becoming the beating heart of Henley Festival and is at the core of everything we do.” And this year, one will find the inaugural Westcoast RISING Star Award – awarded to multi-instrumentalist KATYA, who has impressed the UK’s largest festival, Glastonbury, as well as BBC Radio 1, for her electronic beats, jazz overtones and soundscapes.

The range of dining and drinking options spans from riverside fine-dining to grazing, to various bars across the site.

It’s no surprise that a music festival in Henley – the second most expensive market town in England for property – has opted for black tie. But what is surprising is how radical it seems that, despite the obvious discomfort of mud, sweat and beer, no other festival in the UK has gone for the comfort and sophistication of bow ties, velvet and Veuve Clicquot. For now.

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henley-festival.co.uk

The modern fine dining restaurant Roia offers a division between Asia and Europe. The Chef-Partner Priyam Chatterjee explores traditional French techniques with a focus on the flora found in the Botanic Gardens from where they source key herbs and flowers.

In our Spring/Summer 2024 Print Edition, the opening page of our LUX Report is dedicated to an intriguing new development from a fascinating Singapore entrepreneur. Kishin RK’s new fine dining destination, Roia, is located, unusually for Singapore, in a historic building surrounded by lush tropical foliage. It’s a new landmark destination, as Kishin explains to LUX Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai

Kishin RK, owner of the new landmark Roia restaurant set in a réapplication of a Unesco World Heritage site in Singapore and featured on this page, is something of a paradox. Softly spoken and understated, he eschews the glitz and high profile sought by some of his fellow young(ish) billionaire entrepreneurs from Singapore and its sibling, Hong Kong.

The restaurant’s ambiance is a reflection of its culinary philosophy

When LUX meets him in a café in an upscale Singapore mall, he is full of boyish enthusiasm for his new projects – enthusiasm backed by the forensic eye for detail that made him the country’s youngest billionaire. But Kishin’s paradox is that he doesn’t want to just be a dealmaker, acquiring wealth through real estate and his other investments: he also wants to be a game-changer, a place-maker.

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His family has already achieved this through the redevelopment of Robertson Quay in Singapore, home to the swanky 1880 private members’ club (a kind of Soho House for the finance sector); and, in a subtle way, through the reshaping of the heritage site at the Singapore Botanic Gardens that now houses Roia.

Chef Priyam Chatterjee’s dishes, are reflections of blending his experiences and artistic inspirations into each course.

Kishin has international ambitions for his place-making, with London at the top of the agenda. His philosophy? “The most exciting and fascinating thing to me as a developer is focusing on districts and creating a very strong energy, shaping the behavioural patterns of people who visit.”

Read more: Mandarin Oriental, Singapore, Review

From power lunches that talk business to intimate gatherings, Roia has a space for every kind of meeting

His philosophy – casual but distinct, energetic, with a tailored style and high standards in cuisine – will be arriving in London, his favourite European city, soon. Watch this space.

www.roia.sg

After originally existing as engine suppliers, Henry Royce built his first motor car in 1904, which later lead to the establishment of the Rolls Royce brand in March of 1906

Elegant. Iconic. Timeless. The three words that best describe Rolls Royce and the South of France. So, it was perfectly fitting that the Rolls Royce Phantom ‘Rendez-vous’ was set in the heart of the French Riviera, Roquebrune, in the hills overlooking Monaco. Candice Tucker reports.

The experience was set to make us feel like a Rolls Royce owner and it started from the moment we landed at Nice airport. Outside baggage reclaim, my driver awaited me and took me to the car, opened the door and explained the comforting features of the Phantom.

The details of luxury are only fit for this type of car: a button to open the door from the inside (so you don’t appear to be opening it yourself), the cushions behind your legs and neck, the champagne fridge between the two back seats and the whiskey and cigar hampers in the boot, which I can imagine many enjoy during a long drive down the Italian coast.

I could have sat in the car for hours comfortably, but we quickly arrived at the hotel.

Rolls Royce couldn’t have chosen a better location to host it’s rendez-vous than the Maybourne Riviera Hotel. In many ways, the elegance of the Maybourne Riviera and a Rolls Royce are similar.

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Both are renowned for their attention to detail, craftsmanship, and commitment to creating an unparalleled experience for their guests or customers. Just as a Rolls Royce is a symbol of luxury and prestige, so too is the Maybourne Riviera a symbol of exclusivity and refinement.

After settling in for a few hours, I was driven to a typically luxurious Monégasque spa, where no one was surprised to see a woman in her twenties being chauffeured in a Rolls Royce Phantom to her appointment.

Feeling incredibly relaxed, post massage, the Phantom was waiting right outside ready to take me back to the Maybourne for a beautiful dinner on the side of the hotel’s cliff face with views of the sea and the lights of Monte Carlo beneath us.

Read more: Range Rover Velar review

The next day we had the opportunity to drive the cars ourselves to the medieval town of Gourdon.

The standout feature when you first look at the Phantom is its size. As large as it may be, it doesn’t feel cumbersome to drive. In fact, it feels surprisingly nimble, thanks in part to its smooth and responsive handling. The steering is precise, and the brakes are strong, which was a blessing when driving down the winding roads of the Côte d’Azur.

Rolls Royce is the haut-couture of the car world. Everything is designed to an owner’s specification and taste to make it feel like something of their own, rather than a material item that anyone can have.

The infinite personalisation of these cars makes each Phantom completely unique, down to adding artworks to the front body of the interior of the car, so it becomes part of someone’s home rather than simply a mode of transport. The excitement of entering the Phantom each time, is completely different to that of a Lamborghini or Ferrari. It’s not thrill seeking, it’s simply the most luxurious form of comfort.

Find more: www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com

Recently reimagined Singaporean elegance at Marina Bay: LUX Checks In

Checking-in from the heat of a long day, MO’s calming presence of a vast ring of concentric rooms welcomes one in. Across its new colour scheme of pinks and greens, one feels that Wimbledon might just take some notes, to be lifted to a quiet Singaporean elegance.

The room had an immense view of Marina Bay’s iconic skyline (but safe from its heat): lay back, feet up, and helped myself to delicious Singaporean chocolates.

Up on the 5th floor, Mandarin Oriental’s 25-meter swimming pool looks over the Singapore skyline

Wandering around vast zen corridors, I checked out for myself what are supposedly world-renowned cocktails at the MO Bar. Dark blue suave, art deco chic – I had a reclaimed Singapore Sling to begin, naturally. It had a sweetness without overdoing it – and cutting beneath with jagged sourness  it was balanced by a bright lollipop – a humorous play on Singapore’s original historic drink.

Mandarin Oriental has various food stores and its cake shop has artisanal confectioneries, specialising in cakes, pastries, festive treats, and premium gifts for all occasions.

After their recent revamp, I’d like to see the room where the chemistry of cocktails takes place – it seems a Willy-Wonka-cum-James-Bond enterprise – and it delivers. Onto the ‘White Rabbit’ cocktail, made with an edible layer of an image of a White Rabbit, the type that slips onto the tongue and dissolves. But the real taste lies underneath, with a laksa tang.

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From fresh Singaporean breakfast to lunch the next day, I swanned up to the pool for a dip with another view of the skyline, before a welcome Italian twist. Ruinart blanc de blanc, antipasti, fish and exquisite cheese looking over the pool – what more could one want, apart from an Italian waiter himself serving with Mediterranean charm and gastronomic expertise? Well, it had that too.

Read More: Nira Alpina, St Moritz, Review

Mandarin Oriental has 510 rooms, and 8 restaurants, also including MO BAR, The Spa, and a lounge and club HAUS 65.

A much needed massage at The Spa after months of London brought a zen which – well, I only wish I could maintain it in London, but without the Singaporean skyline and fresh noodles it won’t be so easy.

See More:

mandarinoriental.com

LUX checks in to Borgo Santandrea, a sweet spot on the Amalfi coast which feels far from the madding tourist crowds

‘Everybody should have one talent, what’s yours?’ Or so says Dickie Greenleaf in the thriller – most recently a Netflix hit – TheTalented Mr Ripley. If it was Italy, rather than criminal Tom Ripley, responding, the answer would not be ‘forging signatures, telling lies, impersonating practically anybody’, but, perhaps, ‘Venezia, Roma, Toscana… Amalfi’. But how could one pick just one? Across its various shooting locations Ripley’s Amalfi shone out in staggering blue. I couldn’t resist.

A private beach, a pool, and ancient buildings look out onto the Amalfi Coast

It’s hard not to reach for clichés when, checking into the room, one is faced with a vast abstract painting of two blues – that is, sea and sky – contained like a Rothko in their window frame. The room seems to lead one towards this, across bespoke furniture and their signature tiles of blue and white.

Read More: Mandarin Oriental, Zurich, Review

Tucked away, 52 metres above sea level, one sleeps cocooned in something which is clean, refreshingly modern. And yet, at the beach bar, Marinella Beach Club, one still feels that one might just hear the fisherman, raising a glass of limoncello up with a clinking ‘salute!’ after a long day of hauling nets into its ancient building.

Alici, for fine dining at Borgo Santandrea, is a 1 Michelin star restaurant

Holding onto both old and new is the Marinella Restaurant. A Cardinale Twist to begin, for me. Its bitter freshness is what I want in the salt air, while I browse the menu. It seems wrong to bypass fish while sitting by the setting sun over the sea. Borgo Santandrea do it as they should – tender, fresh, not overdone or too spiced up; the ingredients are as fresh as they can be, so I begin with a platter of shellfish sprinkled with Amalfi lemon zest.

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Next comes a confession. I’m afraid I have a weakness for ‘Zucchini alla Scapece’. It’s that type that has its natural sweetness balanced by the acid of its vinegar marinade and freshened by mint. It brings me back to a Neapolitan chef in Tuscany, who – unable to comprehend how one of his customers didn’t like garlic – would stamp about the kitchen, thumb to fingers shaking his hand in the air, muttering histrionically, ‘è aglio, dio mio’. But fear not, here – garlic brings out the juices of a tender, grillet fillet of fish, paired with potato.

Each room at Borgo Santandrea is styled in a different way, looking at various shades Meditteranean styles

Not that a need a ‘pick-me-up’, or ‘Tiramisu’, following this, but it did the trick. And my swim provided a salty digestivo, and, under its soporific gauze, I fell into a deep slumber, back in the bedroom of signature artisan chic, just 50 metres above the sea.

Bespoke boat trips are offered for guests across the hotel

I have no doubt that The Talented Mr Ripley will be sending lots more people Amalfi’s sun-warmed way, and I’m lucky I had got there before. Lucky, too, that – contrary to ‘telling lies… impersonating practically anybody’, Borgo Santandrea provides a rare pocket of honesty along an increasingly tourist-ridden place. It seems to pare itself back to the essence of Italy’s talent – if there is just one, that is – that laidback elegance and spirit that can’t help but leak into one, and see the utter necessity of shaking one’s fist at garlic.

Find out More:

borgosantandrea.it

Shisen Hanten’s signature steamed sliced kurobuta pork with chilli

Michelin-Star Singaporean Restaurant – renowned for high levels of food, and a view of Singapore from 35 levels high. LUX checks it out

Muted chandeliers, an almost debonair charm welcome one in – and the lights across night sky waving from fellow tall buildings, silhouetting the Singapore skyline.

Shisen Hanten’s Executive Chef, Chen Kentaro

We were served what is called the ‘Opulent Menu’ – something that Chef Kentaro likes to nimbly stretch across Szechwan cuisine with an embition menu, celebrating signature flavours of Shisen Hanten – a fusion, if you like – and traditional Cantonese flavours.

A fine Devaux Cuvée to start, to accompany a selection of (particularly succulent) prawn, pork and specially delicious bang bang chicken.

Next a Foie Gras Chawanmushi with Crab Roe soup. And the crab was so fresh that some guests, who didn’t like tripe, enjoyed these just fine.

Shisen Hanten’s Foie Gras Chawanmushi with Crab Roe Soup

But the freshness of a Wagyu Beef rose above itself, complimented by a glass of Torbreck. Tender, and served across an array of dishes.

Shisen Hanten is located on the thirty-fifth floor in Orchard, Singapore

Steamed lobster was cooked confidently, amply seasoned with its Yuzu soya sauce – retaining its juicy tenderness, and matched confidently by an Australian Chardonnay of a calm dry and the stir-fried tofu had a signature Singaporean fire unmatched.

Chef Chen’s Original Spicy Noodle Soup

Night was closing in, lights were beginning to turn out in the disciplined buildings of Singapore, but time for just one Szechwan jelly with delicious fresh fruit. One last sip of Chardonnay, before descending the many flights to the heart of the city below.

Set between Belgravia and Knightsbridge, Pétrus by Gordon Ramsay is a Michelin starred restaurant serving exceptional modern French cuisine.

LUX heads to Gordon Ramsay’s classic London restaurant, which has just celebrated its 25th anniversary, and experiences effortless gastronomy at its best

Petrus is located in one of the quietest and most bijou parts of the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor Estate, in London’s Knightsbridge. We parked right outside, on a Friday night, which is an achievement in itself in London – although most of the residents here had likely left for their country manors immediately after school on Thursday.

The restaurant’s seasonal menus include A La Carte, Lunch, Kitchen Table and Prestige Menu

The ambience of the restaurant  is peaceful and refined, although not at all stuffy or pressurising. There is plenty of space between the tables, which are laid out cleverly so you are not sitting either in rows or with numerous other diners in your eyeliner: this is a discreet place, to go when you don’t really want to be seen, rather than the opposite. In fact there wasn’t really a “bad” table in the place: given a choice, I am not sure which table I would pick, the layout is so intelligently done.

As one would expect from a restaurant named after one of the world’s finest wines, the wine list features many different vintages of Château Pétrus and is the first restaurant in Europe to offer it by the glass.

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The menu is best described as clean modern British: Isle of Skye Scallop with coastal herbs, lemon and olive oil sabayon, smoked eel with oscietra caviar, celery and apple: these were as fresh tasting as the country landscapes they came from. Rack of Dover Sole with with white asparagus. Chervil and citrus Hollandairse was beautifully and gastronomically wrought, although it prompted a debate at our table about whether sole should only ever be served on the bone, rather than as a rack – none of us felt like arguing with Gordon about it in person, though.

Read more: La Fiermontina, Palazzo Bozzi Corso, Review

As much as the food was memorable, the service and theatre was even more so. This is a place that really knows how the theatre of gastronomy works, and it wasn’t so much that it was all seamless, as you would expect; it was fascinating to watch the staff in their silent dance as they whizzed about their duties, never conspicuous but never absent. We also engaged the very engaging sommelier in a discussion about small grower champagnes; people here seem to love their work, as well as their food and their wine.

Available for up to eight guests, you will be greeted by the restaurant team and served a seven-course bespoke menu.

Petrus is not for every Friday night, just as you wouldn’t take the Ferrari GTO out every weekend. It’s for when you really want an immersive and inspirational gastronomic experience, with someone you are close to or want to be discreet with.

The restaurant has held one Michelin star since 2011

www.gordonramsayrestaurants.com/petrus

The Mandarin Oriental is in the beating banking heart in the old town of Zurich

Zurich has seen the transformation of one of its oldest hotels into a gem in the historic heart of the city

For those unacquainted with Switzerland’s largest city, a visit to Zurich always comes as a positive surprise. You may expect banks and pharmaceutical company HQs in a clinical row; instead you get a bijou medieval old town on the banks of a river filled with swans and storks, a dramatic lakeside waterfront with a view of the Alps, and plenty of olde-Europe atmosphere.

The spiritual centre of the town is the Paradeplatz, the point, a few hundred metres from the lake, where the chic Bahnhofstrasse luxury shopping street meets the edge of the old town, amid some serious-looking private banks housed in historic buildings and trams coming and going (cars are banned from this part of town). And now, for the first time in decades, the Paradeplatz has a hotel to match its stature as the world’s centre of discreet wealth management.

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The Savoy has been on the Paradeplatz for generations; it was one of Switzerland’s original luxury hotels, but until recently had slipped off the pinnacle of hotelerie and was a rather uninspiring and old-fashioned five star hostelry. Now, following a magic wand by the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, it is the talk of the town.

The LUX lodgings certainly deserved to be making waves. After walking in and being recognised by the staff without saying our name (always impressive, even if pretty easy with a quick online search), we were whisked upstairs to a corner suite, beautifully and elaborately decorated, with a view over the little square and the streets around. Decor was fresh, light and airy, with thick light taupe carpets and some beautiful marquetry.

Guest can enjoy their morning coffee on their balcony overlooking the famous Paradeplatz

Read more: Visiting Ferrari Trento: The sparkling wine of Formula 1

One of the fascinating questions about the hotel was: how do you meld old Switzerland (the Savoy) with Mandarin Oriental, a luxury brand with its roots in East Asia? While there were hints and accents of contemporary Hong Kong in the design cues, this was, pleasingly, not an attempt to insert one culture inside the other.

Dinner the first night was at the Savoy Brasserie & Bar,  blending just a hint of Swiss formality (white coats for the wait staff) with an ease of spirit and sense of life. Oysters were a feature here – to go with an art deco theme – and we particularly enjoyed a main of monkfish escabeche, with bell pepper and crispy rice chips.

Guests can have drinks and light bites in the Mandarin lounge

The culinary highlight was the next evening; Orsini is technically in the adjacent Orsini building from the 14th century,, but to reach it you stroll around the side of the building, with a historic church reminding you of where you are, and into a narrow entrance opening out into a bijou dining room. Our fellow diners included two highly wealthy finance people of international origin, quietly celebrating a deal, a couple celebrating an anniversary, and another finance person quietly making his next billion on his iPad.

The cuisine was as rarefied as the atmosphere. Artichoke with “cacio e Pepe” milk, grapefruit and Mazara red prawn tartare; potato gnocchi with grilled eel, “Giulio Ferrari” Spumante sauce (that’s a top Italian sparkling wine), fava beans and caviar; both were outstanding in their subtlety. Bravo to Mandarin Oriental for running two such brilliant but contrasting restaurants under the same roof

There are two superb dining options in the hotel: The casual Savoy Brasserie & Bar and the intimatefine dining restaurant Orsini

Those would have been the hotel’s public space pieces de resistance, but while LUX was staying there, the MO opened its rooftop bar. And we learned something quite spectacular about Zurich rooftops. Even if the building is not very high – the MO is just one storey higher than its neighbours – they can make for astonishing views, because as soon as you rise above the buildings around you, you are greeted not just by a view of the city’s churches and other landmarks, but the sweep of the Alps and lake on one side, and dramatic forested hills on the other. A few floors and you are in another world. So the MO is not just the most chi-chi spot in town, but one of the vibeiest also.

This is a boutique MO, not a grand one, but the company has over the years shown it can do old-world boutique (Munich) just as well as it does new and palatial (New York), the sign of a hotel brand immensely comfortable in its own skin and flexible enough not just to move with the times and spaces it operates in, but lead with them.

www.mandarinoriental.com/de/zurich/savoy/

Dating back to 1775, this building is nearby the Basilica of Santa Croce in Lecce

Authentic. immaculate, aristocratic, contemporary family-curated luxury in a Baroque palace in a city that’s a living museum? Take us to the Palazzo Bozzi Corso in Lecce, Puglia

Authenticity is becoming an ever greater part of the luxury travel experience. People want experiences when they travel, and cookie-cutter luxury simply doesn’t cut it anymore.

That’s why you get French and Italian fashion and luxury creating spectacular hotels in territories as far apart as Australia and Las Vegas. But authenticity cannot be created through replication or over the Internet; by definition it is something that comes from inside.

The hotel was designed by the 18th-century architect Emanuele Manieri, this historic building attained its unique blend of traditional and contemporary features when it was developed in conjunction with the La Fiermontina Family Collection.

That, more than anything else, is what strikes you when you walk into the Palzzo Bozzi Corso. You are walking along a historic street in Lecce, in the heart of Puglia, buzzing with tourists, locals, craft shops, wine bars, local food markets.

Dedicated to the memory of the boxer and actor Enzo Fiermonte, La Fiermontina Palazzo Bozzi Corso offers its guests spaces with ornate furnishings and artworks

This is and was a wealthy town and the Baroque era buildings are grand and imposing. Then you walk into the Palazzo and you are whisked into the private home of a wealthy merchant of hundreds of years ago: the equivalent of walking into a Rockefeller house in a different era.

Except the Palazzo Bozzi Corso has been sylishly and impeccably updated so it feels almost like a perfectly curated exhibition, a museum of contemporary and 18^th century Italian design, immaculately reimagined as an intimate luxury hotel.

Art by the likes of John Lennon (a friend of the owning family) and Fernand Leger sits among the Renaissance artefacts; no interior designer in the world could create a passion project so warm and thoughtful. This is a place to live, or at least to stay for as long as possible.

The building is also home to original drawings by John Lennon, donated by Yoko Ono, a friend of the owner’s mother.

There are only 10 suites here and every one is different: ours had a stone arch above the bed, church-like high ceilings, modernist furniture, a combination of ancient and contemporary art, eggshell walls, vast mirrors. Bathrooms are out of a show suite at Milan Design Week, except the work, both physically and in the destination.

Walk out of the building and you are in the living museum of Baroque that is Lecce; there is a roof terrace, and you can use the pool in the garden at the nearby sister hotel (also gorgeous), La Fiermontina. Authentic luxury doesn’t even begin to describe Palazzo Bozzi Corso.

Guests also have access to the secret garden and rooftop terrace to see the sunset

www.lafiermontinacollection.com/en/palazzo-bozzi-corso

Darius Sanai is Editor in Chief of LUX and an Editor in Chief at Condé Nast International

The hotel is located at the highest point in the village of Surlej, just 5 kilometres from St. Moritz. As a result, the hotel offers ski-in ski-out to the slopes

With a spectacular view of the Engadine Valley, and located right by one of the region’s best ski and hiking mountains, Nira Alpina is a hip hotel to inspire the soul – and palate

Nira Alpina offers views of untouched natural scenery and is suitable for both summer and winter adventures

The spa of the hotel offers a relaxation room with coloured mood lighting, a steam room, a sauna, a vast whirlpool, and five large treatment rooms

In the summer the hotel offers multiple outdoor activities like hiking, mountain biking, skiing and watersports.

During the winter guests have a wide selection of winter activities, including ice skating, winter hiking, sledding, bobsledding, horse riding, hang gliding, sky diving and Nordic walking.

The sparkling wine of Ferrari Trento is being splashed around by the winners at the F1 podium

Formula 1 celebrates with sparkling wine from Italian winemaker Ferrari Trento – They have been the official partner of the competition since 2021. Fabienne Amez-Droz visits the alpine city of Trento, tastes their different wines and experiences the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix first hand.

Ferrari Trento is the “Official toast of Formula One,” celebrated globally by drivers spraying each other with sparkling wine at the end of the races. The Ferrari Trento vineyards are located in Trento, nearby the dolomites mountains in Italy, and the company is, as many would suspect, unrelated to the Ferrari racing team. Actually the Ferrari Trento family company came first – their business dates back to the early automobile era, predating Enzo Ferrari’s first race car. But the brand’s name recognition has been clearly beneficial.

The family-owned Villa Margon in Trento, situated above the vineyards, is a Renaissance-era estate with 16th-century frescoes.

Founded in 1902 by Giulio Ferrari, the business was sold to Bruno Lunelli, a local wine shop owner, in 1952. Since then, the brand seeks to communicate “The italian art of living” with its costumers worldwide.

Today it is managed by the third generation of the Lunelli family with Matteo Lunelli as CEO and President of the family business. Ferrari Trento’s other executive family member is its vice-president, Camilla Lunelli, niece of Bruno. A story that does the rounds in northern Italy is that Bruno was friends with Enzo Ferrari, and Enzo once expressed interest in investing in his namesake wine company, although the Lunelli family declined, as they wanted to keep it as a family business.

The family has an estate, called Villa Margon, located above the vineyards, where you can walk around the ancient building, gardens and learn about the family’s history. The Villa is covered in-and outside with frescoes dating back to the 16th-century. A little drive further down from the estate, you can find their big, modern winery, where they produces all of their so-called Trentodoc‘s, available in six different lines – each of which expresses its own distinctive characteristics.

Trento DOC (Denominazione di origine controllata), commonly known as Trentodoc, is an appellation for white and rosé sparkling wine made in Trento in Italy. They produce the sparkling wines with a traditional method, just like Champagne. In this method, the second fermentation occurs in the bottle, creating the bubbles. Along with Franciacorta, it is a region of Italy widely considered to make world-class sparkling wines, leagues above cheap Prosecco.

After visiting the large Ferrari Trento winery in the valley, Camilla Lunelli invited me to the Michelin-starred Restaurant Locanda Margon  and explained all of the different sparkling wines, which they offer and how to pair them with a gourmet meal.

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The modern Ferrari Trento winery in the valley can store 20 million bottles, with over six million sold last year.

Read more: 6 Questions: Matteo Lunelli, CEO & President of Ferrari Trento

For this year’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in Imola, I was hosted by the Lunelli- Ferrari Trento- family. This particular racing track is one of the most well-known racing venues in the history of the Italian Grand Prix’s and 2024 marks the 30 years anniversary since the deadly accident of Brazilian F1-driver Ayrton Senna (1960-1994).

For the Imola Race, the brand designed a special Ferrari Trento bottle in honour of Senna which has been signed by the winning drivers: Max Verstappen, Charles LeClerc and Lando Norris, and it will be up for auction for the Senna Foundation in Brazil.

The Ferrari Trento Team took me around the Paddock and gave me an intimate tour of the Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber– garage to show what it would be like, to be down there during a race. You could see the Netflix “Drive to survive” camera team taking shots for the show. An experience worth celebrating!

The bottle of Ferrari Trento designed in honour of Ayrton Senna for the Imola Grand Prix 2024

Mucciaccia Gallery is delighted to present the exhibition Tête-à-tête in its gallery in Rome, curated by Catherine Loewe

Tête-à-Tête is an exhibition that explores the private and creative lives of contemporary artist couples.  Here LUX speaks to curator Catherine Loewe about the inspiration behind the show and the fascinating connections between the work of these modern-day duos.

The exhibition Tête-à-tête sizzles through the summer months in the heart of Rome at Mucciaccia Gallery, providing a rare glimpse into the world of creative couples where love, life and art collide. The show features eight acclaimed international contemporary couples whose multi-disciplinary work is placed in dialogue with each other.

The title from the French expression “head to head’ refers to the conversations and dynamic interplay that has such a significant impact on their practices, whether working individually or in collaboration.  In an ever-evolving cultural landscape, this exhibition examines how artists navigate the complexities of relationships while pushing the boundaries of artistic expression in the 21^st century.

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LUX:  Where did the inspiration for the show come from?

Catherine Loewe: I’ve always been fascinated by the passionate stories of artist couples who played a key role in the development of avant-garde art.  These revolutionary couples reflected the shifting structure of both art and society, like Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin, Josef and Anni Albers, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, who rode the wave of radical thinking in the wake of Cubism, Bauhaus and Surrealism.

There was a fantastic exhibition at the Barbican that covered this topic and I wanted to bring the narrative up to date with contemporary artists.   I was also inspired by Vasari’s incredible work the Lives of the Artists which so memorably set forth the connections between artists lives and their works, in many ways providing a template for art historical documentation right up to the present day.

The exhibition brings together eight internationally acclaimed contemporary artist couples, featuring multi- disciplinary work, including photography, textiles, sculpture, painting and digital art.

LUX:  How did you select the artist couples?

CL: I was looking to include artists working across variety of disciplines from painting, sculpture, textiles and photography to convey an overview of artistic practices today.  I was greatly supported by Maryam Eisler, whose incredible photographic portraits feature as part of the show and the accompanying catalogue.

Thanks to Maryam we included pioneering artists who have witnessed seismic social, political and cultural changes like Emilia and Ilya Kabakov, the hugely influential conceptual artists whose story began in Soviet era Russia. Also, Iranian couple Shirin Neshat and Shoja Anzari, whose powerful and poetic film and photographic work centres around issues of exile, oppression and resilience.

These artists couples have truly created a lasting legacy for future generations.  British artist Rob and Nick Carter have worked in collaboration for over 25 years, pioneering cutting-edge digital techniques and more recently exploring notions of authorship through the use of robots.

The paintings in the show based on Venus, Botticelli’s rendition reprised by Andy Warhol were executed by a six-axis robot called Heidi, switching brushes and colours using hundreds of thousands of lines of bespoke software code – something I think would have amazed both Botticelli and Warhol.

As the title which refers to the French expression “head to head’ suggests, the exhibition offers a rare glimpse into the dynamics behind artist relationships, revealed through intimate conversations with them.

Read more: Dakis Joannou interview in Hydra

LUX:  Were there other artists you would have liked to include?

CL: It is a big theme and there are many artists we could have shown like Bharti Kher and Subodh Gupta, Elmgreen and Dragset, John Currin and Rachel Feinstein, Rashid Johnson and Sheri Hovsepian to name but a few – perhaps for an enlarged version of the show.

LUX:  Had all the artists shown together before?

CL: Charlotte and Philip Colbert had never shown together, although both fascinatingly share a subversive and surreal outlook, curiously mirroring each other with their chosen symbols, in Charlotte’s case the all-seeing eye, uterus, and breast and Philip’s the lobster, cactus and shark.

These motifs are seamlessly fused in their house which is a work of art in itself filled to the rafters with their art and designs – my favourite being a bathtub called Mother’s Milk made up of over a hundred silicone breasts.

LUX:  How has being together influenced the work of the artists?

CL: Creatively, these partnerships clearly act as a catalyst for artistic growth and exploration, the constant exchange of ideas is something one cannot achieve alone.  Whilst some couples maintain separate practices and others collaborate, the way they bounce ideas of each other creates this dynamic flow which translated into their work often produces major breakthroughs.

Of course, there are also rivalries, and I love the stormy life of Italian painters Pizzi Cannella and Rosella Fumasoni who so evocatively sums it up saying, “Talent always needs company. The beauty of having an artist close to you is the mindless mutual trust in the invisible.”

With works displayed in dialogue with each other, the exhibition explores how the creative interplay between these couples has impacted their practices

LUX: How did you tackle the issues of gender inequality?

CL: For centuries the prevailing concept of the male genius meant that women’s careers were eclipsed by their ‘famous’ partners, whilst they were locked in the roles of mistress, muse or mother.  Such was the case with Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner or the often toxic relationship between Pablo Picasso and Francoise Gilot – both women are only now receiving long overdue recognition.

Today these issues are certainly being vigorously addressed but still not fully resolved, for instance Sue Arrowsmith struggled to gain exposure in contrast to the meteoric career of Ian Davenport, who was one of the YBA’s in Damien Hirst’s circle.

What did however become apparent whilst doing this show is the huge amount of love, support and resilience these couples have in the face of many challenges both creative and personal.

The interviews reveal how much of a juggling act being an artist couple can be, particularly with the demands of a hectic international exhibition schedule and a young family – more like the collision of love, art and life!

The exhibition in Rom opens its doors from the 10th May until the 2nd August 2024

LUX: What did you most enjoy about this show?

CL: It is beautiful to see the synergies between the works of these artists – like the striking geometric sculptures of Conrad Shawcross juxtaposed with the tactile, abstract hand stitched pieces by Carolina Mazzolari – a visual yin and yang both in their respective ways profoundly philosophical.

The guest enjoyed the Tête-à-tête exhibition at the Mucciaccia Gallery

Or the singing colours of Annie Morris stacked spheres in conversation with the hovering hues of Idris Khan which are so full of emotional and spiritual yearning, charting their experiences of love, loss, and catharsis.  Sue Arrowsmith and Ian Davenport have created paintings especially for the show that explore the interplay of colour, form and space take inspiration from the work of Fra Angelico fusing Sue’s use of shimmering gold leaf and Ian’s interest in the palette of Old Masters.

I also really enjoyed spending time with the artists in their homes and studios, doing photo-shoots and interviews, which I tried to keep quite light-hearted, but which turned out to be surprisingly revealing.

Tête-à-tête runs until 2 August 2024, at the Mucciaccia Gallery, Rome

mucciaccia.com

Portrait of Scott Richler, founder and creative director of Gabriel Scott

The furniture and lighting studio Gabriel Scott was founded in Montreal, by Scott Richler. It was established in an effort to blend his jewellery design experience developed over many years to designing lighting and furniture. He speaks to LUX about the process behind it and how he focusses on craftmanship and exquisite materials

Q: Where do you draw inspiration from your furniture and lighting?  Which brands, or elements of brands, inspired you when you began your design line?

Scott Richtler: Mostly the language of our Gabriel Scott pieces is based on some prior experience in my life.  Mostly from the time I spent in jewellery design and fashion with a separate brand called Jennifer Scott between 2000 and 2005. I created statement jewellery from semi-precious stone.

This led to a career in design, mostly in women’s accessories like handbags seen in Bergdorf’s and Neiman Marcus. Working in high end fashion design meant I developed a high range of design skills learning from the best artisans in Italy.

Before this though I had an architecture background, so I have macro scale and smaller scale design experience; I like the immediacy of this, I speak many different design languages.  I’m into details and you can see the story of my background come through into our lighting fixtures.

The Welles Glass Chandelier, curated in essence of timeless jewellery

Q: In the 18th century, furniture was elevated from functional pieces to works of art, acting as a status symbol in the Victorian home. What would you say is furniture’s symbolic purpose today?

SR: The function of an architect is to look at a space and interact with it. Furniture and lighting are all objects you interact with in one way or another. Everything in your life surrounding you has a form of dialogue around it.

Furniture can be seen as sculpture or more precisely functional sculpture. It’s also about how the user of that space interacts with the environment. Decorative lighting can be viewed as a pretentious status symbol and pretentious pursuit.

Decorative lighting is functional but not totally necessary in a home. Decorative lighting is a focal talking point, creating interest and texture in a home, it is an elevated art form in this sense.

Greg Natale’s East Brisbane house in Australia: This riverfront residence combines interior architecture with the layering of sumptuous finishes to create a “modern palazzo” that celebrates its owners’ deep connection to Italy.

Q: The lighting industry now faces issues with regard to electricity usage and sustainability. How do you combat or navigate these issues, and how do they challenge your principle that designs should be ‘Timeless’?

SR: Gabriel Scott designs use low LED’s and these drop very little electricity, you could keep them on forever and they’re very environmentally friendly. I’ve always approached design through timelessness because it should be like this.

Gabriel Scott furnishings and lighting are classic with longevity just like Chanel. You can wear a Chanel piece from 60-years ago and it’s still as contemporary in present day today. I’m in the camp sitting with vintage Porsche’s being more sustainable than Tesla’s.

The amount of investment required to build a Tesla that will be used for no-more than 10-years is less sustainable than driving a Porsche that’s been on the planet for 50 years. Investing in a Gabriel Scott light is much the same, it’s an investment which will stand the test of time and last.

Q: How else does Gabriel Scott engage with sustainability?

SR: Like a fine designer quality brand, Gabriel Scott’s pieces are investments, well made, amazing materials with longevity.  The materials come from the earth, they’re minerals and glass is recyclable. We use materials that are long-lasting, if you invest in our furnishings they will last forever and you can move with them from home to home.

I do feel strongly that the word sustainability needs to be used carefully by companies. There are so many brands out there greenwashing their companies in a way that is detrimental to the wider sustainability agenda.

Q: Is it important for contemporary art to be functional as well as aesthetic?

SR: It’s not important for any art to be functional.  The dialogue of art is to not be functional whatsoever. As a matter of fact, if it’s not functional, sometimes it creates more questions in the user, which therefore creates a dialogue that may be intentional or not.

The Welles Long Chandelier 17, Smoked Purple and Gray Glass. The Welles collection was coined by notable architect and designer, called David Rockwell.

Q: Would you say furniture and lighting are of increasing importance in the art world now?

SR: Lighting and art in juxtaposition are increasingly important and the majority if not all high-end clients have both in their homes.  We’re recognizing this and from May our London showroom will be welcoming in the Virginia Damsta gallery.

We’re creating a art and lighting gallery with an inaugural exhibition, titled “The New Artists: When Machines Dream” departing from the conventional white cube concept, we’re going to be presenting a synthesis, a symbiosis of art and design. This fusion illuminate’s artwork and creates a harmonious interplay between art and design.

Q: What key changes have you noticed in lighting/furniture design since you founded Gabriel Scott in 2012?

SR: I’ve seen a shift culturally, pre-2012 most high-quality furniture and lighting was manufactured mostly Italian.  Italy is known for being refined and creating the best.  But most of its industrialized and this was the key to the Italian success, being able to industrialize production of beautiful lamps and furniture.

For the last 10-years, there’s been a pivot towards a more artisanal approach. A much more hands-on, handmade approach to furniture and lighting which is more appreciated. The shift has been from the benchmark of quality Italian pieces which have been industrialised. Not the benchmark is more artisan like a carpenter trained in skills from hundreds of years ago which is just exquisite so there has been an elevation.

Q: Do you feel like people are getting more adventurous with their lighting?

SR: Yes I 100% agree with this, but if you look back into time you’ll find plenty of people who were adventurous with design. For example, if you look into interior designer’s in North Carolina, it would not have been surprising to find a sculptural element to a wall sconce in a Gio Ponti house like 50-60 years ago.

You would find sculptural lighting, it just was something that was very European it never really traded into the sort of mass market.  The general public are more conscious about lighting due to big interiors companies being more adventurous with media campaigns.  Decorative lighting has kind of become the norm – with more people on board!

The Myriad Chandelier, 12 Long. The chandelier projects a warm light through its double-blown glass and is hand-made to order.

Q: With your background in architecture and fashion, you interpret decorative lighting as larger scale jewellery. How else has your experience in the fields impacted your perspective on interior design?

SR: I’ve taken inspiration from many great interior designers such as Joseph Dirand. My perspective on interior design is that you can easily interpret a space through the objects that populate that space. My perspective is being an interior designer doesn’t necessarily have to be a maximalist pursuit.

You don’t have to put a great deal into a space to make it special. You can put in an amazing table, piece of art and light fixture – the look can be pretty minimalist. But there’s something unique and special about it is because of the objects in space.

Q: Are there any elements of different brands that have inspired your line?

SR: I love to look at jewelry lines like Pomellato, Cartier and De Beers for inspiration for our lighting. A discontinued Cartier ring inspired the Harlow light.  The ring was like a series of balls that are cold and explode.

In terms of furnishing’s I find Gio Ponti inspirational. Buckminster Fuller is an incredible inspirational architect. I’m enthused by Olafur Eliasson the artist. So its varied, it doesn’t come from furniture traditions. It’s just like images that are blended.

www.gabriel-scott.com

The MedBodrum festivities took place at the Maçakızı Hotel and Villa Maçakızı in Bodrum

Experiences are the future of luxury. Darius Sanai visits MedBodrum, a visionary new type of festival, combining fabulous cuisine, vibey music, art and culture, in one of the hottest Mediterranean destinations

An assemblage of famed and Michelin-starred chefs cooking in the open air by the Mediterreanean; a mellowness of Bossa Nova from Bebel Gilberto, singing just with an acoustic guitarist as an accompanist, just centimetres from the water’s edge;

guests moving seamlessly from Chandon wine to Caipirinhas; a semi-outdoor display of art dotted around two properties, a boat ride from each other, featuring works by Marina Abramovic, Antony Gormley and LUX’s own chief contributing editor, the collector and artist Maryam Eisler, among others.

The festival features top international cuisine

Welcome to MedBodrum, a new type of festival, whose inaugural edition took place last week over four days in the spring sunshine and moonlight in a bay surrounded by deep forest just outside the chi-chi Turkish Riviera resort of Bodrum.

Follow LUX on instagram @luxthemagazine

Carlo Bernardini’s recipes are inspired by his late grandmother’s cooking

The aural and sensory entertainment, in what promises to be an annual festival, was stunning. The music came from Skip Marley on the first night through Mestiza and to Gilberto as the grand finale.

There were different presentations of cuisine – from formal dinners to the memorable beachside BBQ cookout – from chefs including Aret Sahakyan, Carlo Bernardini, Alejandro Serrano and Deepanker Khosla.

Michelin-starred cuisine for all palates

Never have art collectors been quite so spoiled for choice for sampling everything from exquisite langoustines to a dairy-free vat of pasta with fresh tomato, in a Med-side luxury location – except possibly in their own homes.

And that’s what made MedBodrum special: given the organic villa-style architecture and intimacy of Macakizi, a resort that is a go-to stop off from many superyacht summers, it felt like a big house party, your house party, but organised by someone else who knows all the right chefs and musicians and artists.

Festival guests enjoyed DJs and a variety of top international acts

(Fru Tholstrup and Jane Cowan‘s curation of artworks was seen both at Macakizi, the eco-hotel at the heart of the festival, and the Villa Macakizi private palace a boat ride across the bay.)

But the most compelling memory is that of a wholly new concept created by Sahir Erozan, Macakizi’s owner and the creative mind behind this celebration.

Erozan is a restaurateur and hotelier, and he is wrapping together three areas – gastronomy, art and music, with a good dash of fine wine thrown in – in a way that nobody else does.

Sahir Erozan, the owner of the Maçakızı Hotel in Bodrum, with friends art the MedBodrum evening events

Skip Marley, grandson of Bob Marley and Rita Marley, performing at the event in Bodrum.

Luxury consumers love eating well, collect art, and enjoy bringing performers in for private concerts. And yet these activities are too often separated: there is no art at the Miami Food & Wine, no music at the Venice Biennale, and anybody who has been to an Art Basel or Frieze knows the issue with the cuisine and hospitality (there is none).

Erozan is bringing them together all under the banner of the Mediterranean.

Read more: Leading MACAN, Indonesia’s first contemporary art museum

It’s a new kind of luxury experience, one that can travel. Everyone knows that experiences are the new obsession for luxury consumers. There remain challenges: how to integrate the art (and what kind of art?); who to invite and who not to invite – the hotel remained open to regular paying guests; which brands to involve, or not; how to create a “tribe” like the most successful clubs, from Studio 54 in 1980 to Soho House in 1999 and Oswalds in 2024.

Artworks by Matous Hasa. Art is one of the pillars of the festival, along with cuisine, music and sustainability

And there is a sustainability element which was a little uncertain: we would say be bold and have conversations with regenerative ocean innovators in the mornings and afternoons, before the music and cuisine (and caipirinhas) really kick in.

For MedBodrum felt like a visiting a club (LUX is too young to have been to Studio 54 but we understand it was an invigorating experience), albeit a virtual one.

People were in their own tribe, curated, like all the best clubs, by one all-seeing owner, in the shape of the permanently cigarred Sahir.

Medbodrum guests on the beachside deck at the Macakizi

With the tones of Bebel Gilberto purring “happy birthday to me” still in our ears (she performed on her birthday, and Erozan presented her with a gift, a cake and some Dom Perignon at the end of her set) we look forward to seeing how MedBodrum develops onwards and upwards for a new and even more international generation.

www.medbodrum.com

Raghu Rai’s exhibition, “Rise of a Nation”. Rai’s photo essays are featured in TIME, LIFE, Geo, The New York Times, The Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The New Yorker.

Celebrated Magnum Photographer Raghu Rai shed photographic light on one of the biggest refugee exodus in history following the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. Now, the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation (DBF), in collaboration with the Raghu Rai Foundation, shed necessary light on him, launching “Rise of a Nation”, a book and accompanying exhibition which features this photography. LUX takes a look

It was by chance that Raghu Rai, then a qualified Civil Engineer, started photography in 1965. Since then he has photographed across the world, been nominated by Henri Carter-Bresson to the esteemed Magnum Photos and used photography to document, expose and express extremely delicate, painful matters. He went to a war zone in 1971, walking endless along freedom fighters (Mukti Bahraini) and Indian forces on the battlefield. 

Cemented in the book “Rise of a Nation” are photographs that were, until now, unpublished. They come from his 1971 series on the War of Liberation, archiving the memory of these events of destruction, violence, pain and hope with both technical skill and vast sensitivity. Indeed, are the two entirely separate?

Raghu Rai at the opening of his exhibition. In the last 18 years, Rai has specialized in extensive coverage of India, producing books, including ‘Raghu Rai’s Delhi’, ‘The Sikhs’, ‘Calcutta’, ‘Khajuraho’, ‘Taj Mahal’, ‘Tibet in Exile’, ‘India’, and ‘Mother Teresa’.

In our narrative-based nature, physically crafted lines can become storylines. Such can be seen in the exhibition marking the 75th anniversary of the Faculty of Fine Art, University of Dhaka, taking place at the Zainul Gallery. As the curator of the exhibition Zihan Karim notes, one can read ‘profound human stories etched on the faces of refugees’ in his photography. Etching is the word for Rai. See women, for instance, scarred by pain and weather, etched with the sharp lens, and a keen eye for light, head cocked slightly to the left in weary pain, teary, eyes glancing up and leaking tears across his lines. 

Read more: Maria Sukkar and Durjoy Rahman on supporting artists from your hometown

Among much of his documentary and investigatory photography essay, Rai does seem etches stories with his photographs. But he also reveals how good photography is vast and nimble, hopping across styles akin to watercolour images of smoother composition or dynamic charcoal. And these lines, this technical skill, seems fundamental to his sensitivity and expression of this turning point in South Asian history.

Durjoy Rahman, right, founded the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation in 2018 to promote and elevate South Asian Art

‘Over ten million Bangladeshis fled to neighbouring India,’ as Karim notes, ‘to escape the brutal violence perpetrated by the Pakistani military.’ Rai follows these, across camps, waiting, starving, trudging on foot and across the sea, glancing glazed over in crisis.

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Rai’s etching and lines and storylines are at once tied to such a specific moment – the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War – and universal, timeless. They provide templates of stories that could not be more relevant today. 

The Bangladesh Liberation War, also known as the Bangladesh War of Independence, or simply the Liberation War in Bangladesh, was the revolution and war sparked by the rise of the Bengali nationalist and self-determination movement in Pakistan, which led to the independence of Bangladesh.

As Karim notes, the world faces ‘an unprecedented displacement crisis, with over 82 million people forcible displaced’. Political upheaval, climate change, forced migration. Durjoy Rahman, philanthropist, art collector and Founder of the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation which co-published this book, aptly adds to this. ‘The theme of this photography exhibition is not only about the freedom and struggle of our own but also a response to the ongoing genocide in Myanmar and Palestine.’ 

Among Rai’s photography reporting worked on a documentary project for Greenpeace on the chemical disaster at Bhopal in 1984, and on its ongoing effects on the lives of gas victims

Rai carves light and lines, revealing stories of the horrific effects war in 1971, and these, in turn, springboard one to the present. As Rahman aptly notes, ‘Future generations of our country must remember the price of freedom. Wherever and whenever war breaks out, death, destruction, displacement, despair, and dishonour are universal. Peace is the only battle worth waging.’ 

Rai’s photography attest to this, offering a painful, exquisite glimpse of stories past and current. 

The late Armando Testa founded Studio Armando Testa, one Italy’s largest agencies, in 1956.

Armando Testa is the greatest 20th-century design figure you’ve never heard of. Armando’s creations, straddling design and art, were groundbreaking and epoch-defining, but suffering from snobbery on the part of the high-art world towards what was and still is considered the lowlier and more commercial discipline of design. A new show at the Venice Biennale, conceived by Gemma Testa, Founder of Acacia Foundation, and curated by London’s Design Museum Director Tim Marlow, seeks to redress the balance. Here, Testa and Marlow discuss Armando’s legacy in a conversation moderated by LUX and edited by Isabella Fergusson

LUX: Gemma, why did you collaborate with Tim Marlow in curating the Armando Testa retrospective at the Venice Biennale this year?

Gemma Testa: I wanted to enable the work of Armando to become internationally known. Tim seemed an excellent choice, with his deep knowledge of both contemporary art and design.

Meat Chair, by Armando Testa, 1978.

LUX: Tim, what made you interested in the project?

Tim Marlow: This is one of the most important Italian artists in post-war and visual culture whom I didn’t know enough about, and many others like me don’t. The chance to explore and shed light on someone who beautifully straddles the worlds of graphic design and art, advertising and popular culture and supposed fine art was a wonderful opportunity.

Advertisement for Pirelli tyres, Armando Testa, 1954

LUX: Could you tell us about Testa’s significance?

TM: Armando was utterly radical from the beginning. He trained, learned painting, visual arts, art history, graphic design and advertising. He was a pop artist before Pop Art had even been invented. He understood the distilled language of Minimalism – look at his work in the 1940s and 50s before Minimalism existed. But he also understood that visual culture was a means of communication. There is this extraordinary creative trajectory that straddles very different worlds. His favourite word is ‘synthesis’.

GT: The main difficulty for Armando, for many years, was the lack of a proper gallery to represent him. Advertising is seen simply as commerce. Galleria Continua asked me to present Armando. This is a great opportunity to let his work gain recognition – he always believed in the great connection between art and advertising. While working on campaigns, he asked me many times, “What do you think about this?” I’d answer, “What is the aim? What are you working for? Who is the client?” and he’d answer, “You have to look at the sign; you have to look at the mark, at the drawing itself.” He has always understood and believed that there is a link between these two disciplines – advertising and art.

Tango Caliente, by Armando Testa

LUX: What are your purposes for the Venice exhibition?

TM: It’s the need and opportunity to present Armando’s works to a new audience, art scene and culture. The natural place for Testa – as a designer and as an artist – might be the Architecture Biennale, which is porous, looking at all sorts of disciplines. But it is decisive and important that it opens during the Art Biennale. Though the art world talks of porosity, it can be very territorial, and it can be a little defensive about people who come from disciplines other than the art world itself. Armando genuinely had a symbiotic relationship between the two. Even artists like Michelangelo Pistoletto – who studied at Armando’s design school – felt the importance of Armando as an artist and, as he put it, a “genius ad man”.

“Punt e Mes”, by Armando Testa, 1974

LUX: Gemma, how do you respond to that?

GT: Yes, some friends of mind suggested that I present Armando to the Architecture Biennale, but I felt that this could have limited his position. And there is a generation who know none of his works as an artist: this is who the exhibition is for.

TM: The great ‘Punt e Mes’ campaign is a very condensed example of why Testa is so brilliant – his sphere, half-sphere piece. It is a pun on the name ‘Punt e Mes’ [‘Point and a Half’]. It is a visual pun on a sphere and a half-sphere. He paints it. He makes a sculpture of it as well as a poster of it. He interrogates it in every way and makes it universal. An advertising campaign for Vermouth, using an Italian dialect, ought only to resonate with a specifically Italian audience, but it doesn’t. That is what we want to show.

LUX: How would Armando wish to be remembered following the Biennale? As an artist, a designer, or something else?

GT: Perhaps he would want to be remembered more as a creative, a multidisciplinary artist than an advertiser or a designer; the exhibition represents all the shades of his creative universe.

Exhibition Armando Testa is at the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna Ca’ Pesaro, Venice, 20 April-15 September 2024

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The greatest wine discoveries on the planet might just be from an Australian brand that has been hiding in plain sight. In a conversation and tasting with Penfolds Chief Winemaker Peter Gago, LUX has a revelation

The world of fine wine is a paradox that make things interesting – sits Penfolds, a one. Some of the greatest wines are household names: who hasn’t heard of Dom Pérignon or Château Lafite? Yet others of the same or even higher stature are almost secret; few outside a tiny circle of collectors know of the wines of Henri Jayer or Château Rayas.

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And even seasoned wine collectors and aficionados could be forgiven for being confused by the “origin paradox”. This is not a story of religion (although, given the fervency of arguments it generates, it could be), but of location. As ever wealthier collectors delve ever deeper into their passions, the specific vineyard sites of specific producers can see their produce sell for a multiple of the price of the vines next door, ostensibly making the same kind of wine from the same type of grapes on the same soil.

Chief Winemaker Peter Gago

Within this fascinating collectors’ maelstrom – and with wine, as with people, it’s the paradoxes that make things interesting – sits Penfolds, a producer at once revered for its super-premium collectable wines, and known for its good value everyday bottlings. Penfolds is a latticework of delicious paradoxes – a fine-wine world in itself. For example, it’s quite possible you will find a delicious, easy-drinking Penfolds red wine at a good metropolitan supermarket for the price of four oat chai lattes at Starbucks. Meanwhile, if you wanted to get your hands on a bottle of Penfolds g3, one of the producer’s most revered red wines, wine-searcher.com lists its average global price as around £18,500 (US$23,000) at the time of writing. Only 1,200 bottles were ever made. Even more extreme is Penfolds Ampoule, a glass and precious-metal decanter of one of its most rare wines, the Penfolds (monopole) 2004 Kalimna Block 42 Cabernet Sauvignon, of which only 12 were made, and which currently retails at around £127,000 (US$160,000) – if you can find one.

A line-up of Penfolds classics

Penfolds’ slightly more abundant high-end wines, The Penfolds Collection, are celebrated by connoisseurs around the world: bottles such as Grange and Bin 707 sell for the same prices as the most prized châteaux from Bordeaux. The 2021 Yattarna, a Chardonnay, recently received a 100/100-points score from leading authority on Australian wine Andrew Caillard MW; like a super-luxe white Burgundy – Le Montrachet, say. For us, the most intriguing, and delicious (see tasting notes, opposite) Penfolds paradox is a development of the company’s different way of doing things. Grange, traditionally its most celebrated wine, made mainly of the Shiraz (Syrah) grape, has always been made from multiple vineyard sites across a vast area, in stark contrast to its counterparts in France, which are from tiny, specified vineyard plots.

Now, Penfolds has stretched that logic from Australia across countries and even continents: Penfolds II is a top-end Cabernet-Shiraz from Bordeaux and South Australia (in the same bottle). The company also now makes Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon wines in Napa, as well as making wines (in the Medoc/Bordeaux) with grapes sourced from across the Bordeaux region. Peter Gago, Chief Winemaker at Penfolds, says stretching the brand from the high end to the middle market is a deliberate, democratising strategy. “Luxury has many meanings to many different people – it’s a continuum,” he explains. “We mustn’t forget that this is Penfolds’ 180th year, and what we do at the top end has to permeate all the way down to entry-level wines. This is what sets us apart from other ‘luxury’ wines. I’m not saying I’m a socialist when it comes to luxury, but it’s not just for the chosen few, it’s for everyone to have a taste of. “What makes us unique is affordable luxury at one level, transcending to the 2012 Ampoule launched at the Baccarat Club in Moscow: courage coupled with quality.” Gago makes the point that Penfolds wines have rewarded investors in top-end wines as well as any of the world’s best: the Ampoule was launched at around £87,600 (US$110,000) 12 years ago, and one reportedly recently sold on the secondary market for around £130,400 (US$162,000).

Read more: Lewis Chester on Giacomo Conterno

The Grange Tunnel at the Magill Estate, which is just east of Adelaide

UK-born Gago has been Chief Winemaker at Penfolds for 22 years and moves and shakes with rock stars and Hollywood actors who revere the wines; but he is never happier than when talking about the wines. He enthuses about Penfolds’ continuing collaboration with Champagne Thiénot, which has seen the release of some highly acclaimed vintage Champagnes in its first five years, including the 2013 Penfolds X Champagne Thiénot Blanc de Noirs, which last year was awarded Best Blanc de Noirs Champagne in the world by a panel of experts compiled by tastingbook.com founder Pekka Nuikki. (Champagne, of course, can only be made in the Champagne region of France.) He also enjoys the challenges of making a great Pinot Noir to match the best of Burgundy like a great Chambertin or Vosne-Romanée. “Some say that Australian Pinot Noirs lack the complexity of Burgundy. With Cabernet and Shiraz, we’re competing at any level. For Pinot Noir, the journey continues,” says Gago. It’s a journey Penfolds has been taking for nearly two centuries, and one that Gago and his successors will no doubt savour. Meanwhile, the greatest wine discovery you may make this year could just be a wine from a brand that’s been hiding in plain sight.

King Charles and Queen Camilla (the then Prince Charles and Duchess of Cornwall) taste the 1962 Penfolds Bin 60A with Peter Gago in 2015, Milton Wordley Photography

Photo London is one of the leading photographic fairs

Photo London’s ninth edition aims to integrate photography into the contemporary art world. But can it? Isabella Fergusson finds out

The cobbles of Somerset House aren’t quite bearing the catwalks of heels, neon suits and russet trousers one sees at Frieze or Art Basel. More cameras than Gucci bags slung across shoulders, more prams pushed, more WatchHouse coffee than Ruinart champagne. It seems more democratic – but to its strength or its downfall?

100 exhibitors, 44 cities worldwide: the numbers are good for London’s top photography fair, and returning galleries are strong. But, ever since photography entered the commercial world in the ‘70s, it has been seen as something of a niche by many. Its Director, Kamiar Maleki insists, however, that 2024 has seen yet more progress in cranking the door open to a contemporary art-collector-base.

This year’s Photo London is curated by Dani Matthews and entitled Shifting Horizons; photograph by Isabella Sanai

What’s happening this year that’s made it successful? ‘We’re branching out,’ he says, ‘we’re including more film, more mediums, and the car’ – he points to a navy electric car, a Lunaz, parked in the Somerset House courtyard – ‘which has been invested in by big names such as David Beckham – these have helped gain traction’. Is this because photography is not attractive enough by itself? ‘We have to entice the High Net Worths through other mediums’, he responds diplomatically. Perhaps a hint that photography alone still lacks respect; but perhaps, too, a testament to Maleki’s success in luring people into giving it the attention it deserves.

Rebecca Hicks, Director of Purdy Hicks, in the reflection of a daguerrotype by Japanese photographer Takashi Arai; photographed by Joe Oswald

Photography’s technical gymnastics are exhibited with undeniable flair: see Takashi Arai’s impressive daguerrotypes, Susan Derge’s cameraless photography, laid directly over Dartmoor puddles of frogspawn, and Roope Rainisto’s AI-based works, thrumming with viewers, to a remarkable manipulation of printing mediums across the fair. The number of mediocre works was to be expected, but the number which stood out as sensational from the many Michael Jackson-type portraits was higher than one might imagine.

Photo London brings together the world’s leading galleries in a major international photography Fair at Somerset House; photograph by Isabella Sanai

Sales? Well, as Rebecca Hicks, Director of Purdy Hicks, comments, the general consensus is that sales ‘remain quiet so far’. Maleki slides past the question with an ‘ask me on Tuesday!’ Fru Tholstrup, London-based art advisor and curator, though, beams with anomalous success of her showcase of Mariano Vivanco’s work from his latest book, ‘Peru’, hopping through folklore and mythology expressing striking figures between humans and animals, which one tends to associate with drawings rather than photography. Mariano remains confident in photography’s ability to leak into fine art, with a winking ‘Respect Photography, or Die!’. And he’s sold with fine art figures, too.

Kamiar Maleki, Director of Photo London; photograph by Joe Oswald

Some dealers insist they are at Photo London for the artistic exposure as much as sales. Gerber & Stauffer Fine Arts has an exhibition featuring Iranian-born Rahi Rezvani, introduced to the commercial world for the first time. Successful in luxury, performing arts and entertainment industries, he has never before sold a single print of his works.

French photographer Valérie Belin has been named as the Master of Photography 2024; photograph by Isabella Sanai

But why start now? ‘People think success in photography is selling lots of photographs. I disagree. It’s about choosing carefully and selling well.’ He refuses to sell hundreds of his prints he has laid out, from a portrait of Quentin Tarantino to fiery images of dance, to a triptych covered in a natural substance he associates with sperm. Technologically, these seem extremely impressive, perhaps as or even more than those on the wall. When asked how he took them, he smiles knowingly, holding back. Brimming with confidence, he isn’t particularly interested in selling lots, but few, well-chosen ones.

That’s the way to elevate photography to the fine art world, he and Thomas Stauffer, Director of Gerber & Stauffer Fine Arts agree. Reduce the print number – even to one (in the case of his photograph ‘Willem Dafoe’) – signed with guarantee of no reproduction, and photography can have the value and respect of art. Although, in general, the knowledge that further prints can be made will always linger with all types of photography except polaroid. Even when reducing the number of editions, photography still remains on the precarious edge for established contemporary collectors.

Willem Dafoe, photographed by Rahi Rezvani, 2012

It’s entirely the other way around for Ana Matos, Director of Salgadeiras Arte Contemporânea. The very fact that, unlike painting, photography editions expands to an average of 5 to 7 means that it gains a democratic value, attracting a new wave of emerging millennial collectors. Such can be seen in the floor for the Nikon Emerging Photographers Award, part of Photo London. The average age decreases, buzz increases and – while sales are still reportedly quiet – the recognition and discussions are engaging a new crowd in collecting. Perhaps it’s not so much about gaining older contemporary art collectors, but shifting the next generation of collectors to photography.

Photo London has two major exhibitions as part of the Public Programme, over 120 new and returning international exhibitors; photograph by Joe Oswald

And perhaps, by virtue of its less revered status, Photo London does focus more for new art and expression than collector-base. As photographer Maryam Eisler comments, ‘Photo London is a place of discovery and new talent.’ One can meet the photographs at eye-level, rather than kneel before them, and the fair is focused on the artform itself, and forming a snapshot of its growing identity and credibility. One feels closer to it all, somehow. And – as Eisler also points out – this is aided by its ‘excellent satellite programme of talks and critical thinking.’

Photo London 2024 features over 400 photographers from around the globe; photograph by Joe Oswald

Photography remains on the sideline of established contemporary art; sales seem quiet. But, stripped of the catwalk-tendency of many art fairs, which can distract from the art itself, the model of a fair where art is accessible and thought about, rather than prized solely for sales, may be commercially more challenging, but is extremely refreshing. And, though established collectors may not dive into buying, photography might just present a more democratic art world – with a long way to go.

Photo London runs at Somerset House from 16-19 May 2024

See More: photolondon.org

Is it a club, an Italian restaurant or a sushi house? Actually, Sumosan Twiga on London’s Sloane Street is all three, and all the better for it

Top quality food with a fun vibe has taken off in the world’s cultural capitals over the past few years. For a showoff dining experience, you are no longer restricted Ito temples of gastronomy. Top-quality ingredients and cheffing can now combine to make the ultimate comfort food.

But there’s still a challenge. What if you want a vibe, but can’t work out whether to go for a perfect pasta with beef and herbs, or some top-quality sushi? Or what if your party has split opinions and nobody wants to compromise?

Launched in November 2016, Sumosan Twiga is the combination of the Japanese restaurant, Sumosan, and the brand Twiga

What you do is secure a booking at Sumosan Twiga, on London’s Sloane Street. Past a couple of intimidating doormen – to ensure the maki rolls are not consumed by the wrong type of customer, presumably, to be greeted by a glamorous receptionist, you are then whisked up in an elevator and enter a world of DJs and a partying crowd all dressed in Cavalli and Etro.

Ponder the menu over a couple of Bellinis and you soon note, if you didn’t know already, that Sumosan Twiga is effectively a sushi restaurant and a high-end Italian wrapped into one place. Back in the day, that might have meant some compromise – a chef practiced in one cuisine trying to master the other, with limited success. But not here: whether you stick to Italian or focus on sushi or (as we would recommend) you sample both, this is top-quality cuisine which, a little like the clientele, is here in in generous and beautifully presented portions.

The menu offers an array of classic Italian dishes and flavours paired with contemporary Japanese cuisine.

We started with burrata with datterino tomatoes, Kobe mini sliders (OK, more Meatpacking than Milan), and lobster with lollo blondo salad as a pre-starter; ingredients with beautiful and it was put together with care. From the Japanese menu we went on to seared salmon, lime soy and mustard miso, as delicate and umami as it sounds, and some rolls: buba, seabass with jalapeno and cucumber, wasabi tobiko and albemarle and salmon with orange tobiko: meatily fulsome and also featherlight.

Sumusan Twiga is the brain child of Flavio Briatore, of Formula One fame & Janina Wolkow, pioneer of the luxury Sumosan brand.

Mains were veal milanese with rocket and cherry tomatoes, hugely satisfying, what might be London’s best tagliatelle bolognese with chunks of feelsome beef, and Alaskan black marinated miso cod.

The only discord in our party was over whether it’s better to keep things pure by having Japanese starters and Italian mains (or vice versa) or just order a huge selection; the general agreement was one cuisine per course (whether that’s two or five courses) was better, so your palate does not train itself for the slicing umami of the tuna sashimi and freshly grated wasabi only to have a piece of breaded Milanese and pasta pomodoro, from a different gastronomic planet, with the next mouthful. The general consensus was to split the cuisines by course. But then we ordered another caipirinha, got up and danced, and forgot all about it.

In 1974, Giovanni Conterno purchased the entire 14-hectare Cascina Francia vineyard in Serralunga d’Alba. It is now known as the Francia vineyard.

What are the 12 greatest wine estates in the world? A subjective question, surely. Lewis Chester doesn’t think so. The British financier and founder of the Golden Vines awards presents his series for LUX of his golden dozen, the most collectible wine estates from the world’s major regions. For the second instalment, he looks towards Piedmont in search of the best Barolo 

Roberto Conterno is not like many Italian winemakers I have met. Firstly, he’s serious and fastidious. A clean freak, the cellar is always spotless. While tasting wine from one of his barrels, he almost had a coronary when a few drops of red wine spilled from his pipette onto the cellar floor. We met again a few years later, and nothing had changed, except he was keen to show me his new range of glassware, Sensory, that he had designed to taste with wines from any region. In the process, he opened some very pricey wines from Burgundy and Bordeaux to prove his point. Convinced by the taste test, I purchased the first 36 glasses sold in the UK market.

Roberto is deeply respectful of the terroir that he inherited from his late father, Giovanni. This includes the fourteen-hectare monopole (solely-owned designated vineyard) of Cascina Francia, in what is considered the best village in Barolo, Serralunga d’Alba. 400 metres in altitude, it includes 9.4 hectares of Nebbiolo, the varietal he uses in his Barolo designated wines. In 2008, Roberto increased the estate’s landholdings by acquiring 3 hectares of Cerretta, another well regarded vineyard in the village. Finally, in 2015, he purchased Arione, a highly-sought after nearly 6 hectare vineyard situated next to Cascina Francia.

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Monfortino is not a vineyard. It is a name invented for their top bottling at some point early in the 20th Century.

Although the estate makes more than seven cuvées, undoubtedly the best is Monfortino Riserva. An iconic wine designed for long-ageing, it has more than a hundred years of history since the inaugural 1924 vintage. Monfortino Riserva is aged for a minimum of five years in either 50+ year-old Slavonian oak or newer Austrian Franz Stockinger large casks (plus one year in the bottle).

Returning from the First World War, Roberto’s grandfather, Giacomo, had the vision to create a unique bottling of Nebbiolo, sourcing the best grapes from different growers, at a time when wine was typically sold in cask or purchased by local merchants for blending. Only from 1978 was the first Monfortino produced from grapes sourced from the family’s own Cascina Francia vineyard.

I first realised that Monfortino Riserva was one of the world’s greatest wines when I purchased some very old bottles from a little wine shop in Alba fifteen years ago: 1955, 1961 and 1978, all legendary vintages. Opening them at various dinners, they all performed remarkably well. The 1955 vintage had a bizarre trajectory. On opening, it buzzed with aromas of violets, rose petals and a hint of tar, collapsing to oblivion within twenty minutes of pouring. The wine in my glass had become a deadly shade of pale. However, after a further thirty minutes, it had miraculously revived and was as good as when it had first been poured. The greatest comeback since Lazarus!

Read more: Tasting Bollinger’s new luxury cuvées in Paris

The selection of grapes for Monfortino typically takes place in the vineyard. It must be done early in the winemaking process because one of the key differences between Monfortino and their other bottlings is that there is no temperature control during fermentation of the Monfortino grapes.

Monfortino Riserva is still Italy’s reference fine wine. It is also one of (if not the) most expensive, with many vintages selling in the secondary market for more than £1,000 per 75cl bottle. But it’s worth every penny. Fear not, however. Roberto’s other bottlings, in particular Cerretta and Arione, are incredible wines that cost a fraction of the price of Monfortino Riserva.

Lewis’s Best 3 Wines from Giacomo Conterno

Giacomo Conterno, Monfortino Riserva, 2010: An iron fist in a velvet glove is the most apt description of a wine full of power and grace, that will no doubt be showing well for the next fifty-plus years. Monfortino is known for aromas of leather, licorice, incense and dried rose petals, and this wine has it in abundance. However, the coup de grâce was the extremely long finish that captivates you to drink the rest of the bottle before your wife reaches for the bottle.

Giacomo Conterno, Monfortino Riserva, 2002: I was lucky enough to try the 2001 and 2002 (in magnums) together at a dinner in Turin. It was a close toss up as to which gave greater pleasure. However, the 2002 got the nod as I was wowed by the balsamic and black tea aromas, savoury sweet mid-palate, and the silky but firm tannins. Just divine.

Roberto Conterno is the third generation winemaker at the helm of arguably Piedmont’s most famed estate

Giacomo Conterno, Monfortino Riserva, 1955: you just can’t beat having a wine that’s older than oneself and marvelling at how it can make you smile. The flowery petal notes, the intensity of the palate despite the wine having lost almost all its colour, and a long delicate finish. The fact that the wine died and then revived miraculously only added to the long-lived memory of its happy consumption.

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Two cameras, one journey, two childhood friends — and eighteen days to shoot their surroundings across the American West. Maryam Eisler and Alexei Riboud had followed separate paths for 38 years. Would the two photographers’ love of the still image converge their paths? LUX finds out

After graduating from high school together in Paris, in 1985, Maryam (then Homayoun) Eisler and Alexei Riboud parted ways; Eisler to the world of business, first at L’Oréal and then at Estée Lauder in London and in New York; Riboud to the world of graphic design and photography, in Paris, New York and Johannesburg, following in the footsteps of his celebrated parents, photographer Marc Riboud and sculptor, author and poet Barbara Chase-Riboud.

Lights glowing faintly, flickering occasionally on an old, lonesome sign for a motel on the border of Marfa, Texas, that is long gone; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

Nearly four decades later, in early 2024, the art world brought them back together, for a three-week American road trip through parts of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, photographing space, place and people along the way in a form of visual dialogue. In, and in-between locals travelling by car, well over 2000 miles, from Houston to El Paso… Marfa, Presidio and White Sands to Santa Fe and Canyon Point… they’d hop out of the vehicle at any given moment, and say ‘See you in an hour!’, and go their respective ways, out in the wilderness, reacting to circumstances as they came across them, vowing not to give any advice to each other on what or how to shoot. Not even sharing their images until they returned home.

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Laughing, the two recall the fifteen U-turns they took on one straight 22 mile road from Espagnola to Ghost Ranch, because they kept seeing elements they wanted to capture, not to mention the 24 hours they spent obsessing over a missed opportunity, a derelict 1950s motel, now far behind them.

White sands National Park, New Mexico, photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

The images that Eisler and Riboud produced provide an intriguing study of contrasting perspectives and techniques. They both certainly shared a road trip, but in artistic terms (and fortunately for the viewer of the works), they were on parallel journeys, each producing compelling results. As Carrie Scott, the art historian and curator, notes: ‘I am buoyed by the conversation here between these two artists. Maryam and Alexei are shaping our perceptions of the American West through their dual lenses, which in turns gives us a moment to reflect on our fixed perspectives.’ It’s a far cry, as Scott adds, from the ‘longstanding tradition in American photography, dating back to the 19th century, of a singular male voice and viewpoint.’

A friendly security guard at the Concordia cemetery  in El Paso, TX giving Eisler and Riboud directions to the tomb of John Wesley Hardin, the man who earned himself a reputation as one of the Wild West’s most pernicious gunslinging outlaws; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

Riboud is attracted to the outskirts and grey areas, the transitional spaces and borders where he finds the elements to compose his photographs. His approach has been refined over many years of shooting in diverse locations, including Havana, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Shanghai, Chicago and of course Paris — usually with a focus on the peripheral spaces within or next to large cities.

A railway track cutting through the town of Marfa, Texas, photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

‘I like wandering into places I have never been to, especially on the margins of well-known locations, exploring the counter-space of an established geography. My photography is about experimentation. I gather fragments from urban landscapes, in an effort to capture innate structures’, says Riboud. ‘On this trip, I was drawn to the outskirts of towns, and to the frontiers between human settlements and the unpopulated natural environments.’

A Navajo Nation dancer performing an indigenous ritual dance impersonating animal spirits, Page, Arizona; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

‘This trip was a huge challenge for me’, says Eisler: ‘My focus has always been on the figurative and more specifically on what I like to call the ‘Sublime Feminine’ in its physicality and in its essence. I had to push myself to work in a new way, this time around, moving away from body landscape to natural landscape.’ But would she find parallels between nature and figure?

Read more: Maryam Eisler: Intimate Landscapes

‘In my work, I always talk about female ‘body architecture’ in dialogue with spatial architecture… its curvilinear slopes, its nooks and its crannies, its valleys. I have often explored this theme in big, barren, hostile nature, from Iceland to Mexico and beyond, except this time the female figure was not there to be photographed. I also surprised myself in adopting a new way to work… primarily using a wide angle lens (which I never do) in order to capture as much of the big sky and vast land as my lens could take in. I wanted to visually overdose on the nature that surrounded me!’

In between walls of a teared down house in the border town of Presidio, Texas, photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

It’s no wonder that these two photographers operated quite differently during the road trip. They are two very different characters. Eisler’s made a quicksilver shift from business and writing to art, and has the smiling, knowing grace of a meditative guru while retaining the poise of a terrifying boss.

Alexei Riboud, photographed by Maryam Eisler on US Highway 90 near Van Horn, Texas, 2024

Riboud, on the other hand, projects a laid-back-almost-to-horizontal suave creativity. Nonetheless, both have clearly forged a deep connection that transcends their decades apart and their contrasting artistic and technical sensibilities.

Homeless young man in downtown Houston with a t-shirt depicting Martin Luther King and Malcolm X’s encounter; Houston, Texas; photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

To the extent that the origins of their photography have links, they are serendipitous, through a mutual interest in graphics. Riboud, who did graphic design for an advertising agency in South Africa in the 1990s, began to photograph on weekends, and enjoyed it enough to make it his main focus.

Derelict remains of the former Art Deco movie theatre in Marfa, Texas; The Palace, closed since the 1970s, is now an illustrator’s studio; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

At L’Oréal, Eisler’s involvement in the development of ad campaigns — what she calls ‘surface beauty’ — revved up her dormant love of visual story-telling. Today, one can experience both the outer and inner dimension in her exploration of the ‘Sublime Feminine’. Laughing, she recalls her father’s niggling voice in her head, asking her what she was doing with that ‘love of photography’ she had so enthusiastically written about in her college applications? But life after the (Iranian) Revolution would dictate otherwise, until years later.

Looking through the US-Mexico border wall in El Paso near Amara House at La Hacienda, an organisation working to inspire connection beyond borders through mutual understanding and meaningful action in pursuit of narrative systems, and personal change; El Paso, Texas; photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

Both Alexei and Maryam have indelible memories from their trip. Alexei reflects back on the town of El Paso, near the US-Mexico border: ‘‘There was the feeling of being at a crossroad of narratives with stratified areas, unsettled spaces in transition.’ Maryam recalls a moment on the border of Utah and Arizona: ‘A hypnotising Native American ritual dance made me think deep about indigenous cultural history and the suffering that the native people have and continue to endure… I was completely mesmerised by the strength of the dancers storytelling through moves anchored deep in tradition.’ Riboud points to the gentrification of Marfa, Texas: ‘Beyoncé and Jay-Z just bought a house there! You get a sense that it’s rapidly changing from the isolated artistic outpost that Donald Judd built all those years ago; the city is now attracting newcomers, as real estate prices are booming!’

Alexei Riboud, photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

The two photographers’ contrasting visual perspectives provide fertile ground for dialogue, and – as Scott says, ‘a new, layered perspective on the complex reality of the 21st-century American West. Where Maryam’s portraits provide narrative depth – each portrait becomes a story, a window into the lives, cultures, and experiences of individuals within that vast expanse – Alexei’s focus on the landscape reflects on America’s historical relationship with western expansion.’

Maryam Eisler, photographed by Alexei Riboud, in Upper Antelope Canyon, Arizona 2024

Riboud praises Eisler’s link between the female body and the architecture of space and place, as well as her graphic eye mingled with sensuality. For Eisler, it’s Riboud’s conceptual visual rendering—‘almost like a painting’ — that stands out above all. ‘The lens Alexei uses enables him to capture space and light in a very unique manner. The end result is subtle, painterly and beautiful, with incredible hues of light pinks and accents of deep purples in some instances. I think Alexei uses light to paint.’

Along the banks of Rio Grande river near Los Alamos, New Mexico. This is the view from the House at Otomi Bridge that frequently hosted Manhattan Project scientists. A team room and restaurant at the time – once post office and train station – where Oppenheimer kept a standing reservation for whenever he wanted to dine; New Mexico; photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

Kamiar Maleki, Director of Photo London, expresses their effect on one another – their oscillations, recalling Maryam’s ‘evolution from exploring the female figure to this more recent body of work’ and its ‘profound shift towards celebrating the Sublime in a new and different way – as displayed in Mother Nature‘, as well as ‘in the vast potent (waste) lands of the American West landscape.’

Maryam Eisler, as photographed by herself at Prada, Marfa, by Elmgreen & Dragset in Valentine, Texas, 2024

For Alexei, it’s his ‘minimalist elegance, presenting viewers with unexpected compositions that speak volumes through their simplicity.’

Portrait of an outsider Texan artist, James Magee, a dear friend of the painter Annabel Livermore, whose painting he sits in front of, and who various writers have described as his alter ago, a relationship referred to by The New York Times as ‘a tough act to follow’, photographed in El Paso, Texas, by Maryam Eisler, 2024

Reflecting on the journey, Eisler says, ‘I still recall the vastness of land and the ever-changing skies and clouds. We could’ve produced an entire body of work on the clouds of New Mexico; the evolving light and its plethora of shades… It was sky theatrics every day! As we drove on Interstate highways, I could not help but feel a deep sense of inner peace.

Alexei Riboud in White Sands National Park, New Mexico, photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

In fact, I had a memorable moment in White Sands National Park, as the sun was setting down amidst scarlet and purple skies. I recall seeing Alexei, camera in hand, standing on the opposite hill, akin to a dot in the greater universe… And for just a second or two, which felt like eternity, I took off mentally into a parallel state of mind, engulfed by Mother Nature. It was so powerful’.

Weary billboard with missing parts north of El Paso in the vast plains of Texas; photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

‘I think the camera changes what you see, particularly when it’s your first experience of a place, of a unique location’, says Riboud. ‘Something happens that you can’t control; it’s your subconscious working, through the frame of the camera, on the construction of the image.’

Roughly halfway between Van horn and Valentine on U.S 90 reside crumbling buildings seen through a chain link fence: a one time significant railway dewatering station, now turned ghost town of Lobo, Texas; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

And when it’s not the camera, there are parallel – or, rather, oscillatory – expressions, from a writer they met along the way. Glimpse below the poem ‘Eileen’, written by poet Amanda Bloom in West Texas. Her series of linguistic short takes provide a further mode of expression, imbricating the tapestry of their journey:

Poet Amanda Bloom lying by the pool of the iconic ‘Hotel Paisano’ in Marfa Texas where the cast of the 1956 Hollywood movie ‘The Giant’, starring James Dean & Elizabeth Taylor, stayed during the filming of the movie; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

Windmill sentinels
over the oil field.
The air is quick here.
You can’t keep your
thoughts with you.
The star dome
holds you down
while you move.

The yucca heads higher
than a street sign,
flowers brown and dry,
still hanging on, stalk bent
from day after day of the
troposphere in motion.
Learn surrender from
the yucca. It rattles
before its release.

The land is home
to ore, ice volcanos,
ocean floor turned
high desert, Eileen
the horse that did
not die on the way
to El Paso, you.

Pumpjacks pull.
Windmills spin.
The yucca shudders and
two brown blossoms
light on the wind.
Eileen stretches
her bum leg.

The journey – from photography to poetry – provides, in Carrie Scott’s words ‘a dialogue about the deep humanity embedded in the landscape’s history’. And, indeed, it is ‘a tapestry’ as well as a dialogue, as the Director of Photo London concludes – ‘of beauty, emotion, and storytelling, inviting viewers to contemplate the profound depths of the American big nature experience alongside the quiet poetry of simple existence.’

Here, in Riboud’s street scene in El Paso is what Eisler calls his ‘geometric approach to depicting space in its subtle linearity, very unique to his eye’; photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

From dialogue, to tapestry, the works will soon be woven into a book, as well as an exhibition to be launched around Photo London 2025 – and in a way, as Scott aptly notes, ‘that we haven’t seen before’.

See More:

maryameisler.com

alexeiriboud.com

The Ferrari 275 is a series of front-engined V12-powered grand touring automobiles with two-seater coupé and spider bodies produced between 1964 and 1968

Sweden is not the first country that comes to mind when thinking of automotive nirvana, but Paris-based auction house Artcurial has found a treasure trove there that it is putting to auction in Monaco this week. The main feature is a selection of beautiful Porsche 911s from the pre-1997 switch to water-cooled engines: there’s something for every Porsche aficionado, at almost every budget. There are some deliciously specified examples being sold on behalf of a Swedish collector with impeccable taste. It is also cleverly marketed as a no-reserve auction, with some eye-catchingly low estimates: a surefire way to attract interest. Go, enjoy, but beware of overpaying in the heat of the no-reserve moment.

Matthieu Lamoure from Artcurial says:

This W Collection, owned by Staffan Wittmark, is exceptional because it represents the culmination of a man’s lifelong passion for creation. As European importer of the ready-to-wear brand Gant and the brand’s artistic director, he studied design and put together the models in his collection with a rare aesthetic sensibility. His 26 Porsches, presented in the sale, work by color pair, for example, and by model. He defined the codes of his collection by growing up on the streets of Stockholm with a taste for line and design excellence. For this reason, three major brands have marked his passion: Porsche, Ferrari and Mercedes. For him, the lines created by Pininfarina for Ferrari represent the pinnacle of aerodynamic elegance.

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The Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing is a two-seat sports car that was produced by Mercedes-Benz from 1954 to 1957 as a gullwinged coupé and from 1957 to 1963 as a roadster

The second important parameter of this collection is that Staffan Wittmark has decided to entrust his collection to the market, with no reserve price. He is turning the page like a collector who has reached the end of one project and is ready to start another. We will therefore start the auction at 50% of the low estimate, allowing all buyers to try their luck. What’s also exceptional is the condition of the cars. They are either fully restored, like the 9 Ferraris certified by the Ferrari factory, or the Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing and Roadster.

The Mercedes-Benz 300 SL was capable of reaching speeds of up to 263 km/h (163 mph), earning it a reputation as a sports car racing champion and making it the fastest production car of its time

Read more: BMW XM Review

To find 44 cars offered by a single owner gives the ensemble a wonderful provenance. and in such restored condition is a rare element in any collection.

Quality, provenance, exclusivity and passion are the watchwords of this fabulous sale!

The designation “SL” is an abbreviation of the German term “super-leicht,” meaning “super-light,” a reference to the car’s racing-bred lightweight construction

The current exhibition at Lucca Hue-Williams gallery “Albion Jeune” are paintings from saudi-arbian artist Alia Ahmad

Lucca Hue-Williams, London’s coolest young gallerist, reopens her Albion Jeune gallery with an exhibition by emerging Saudi artist Alia Ahmad which transposes a vibrant colour palette on her homeland’s desert landscapes

“Thought to Image” is intriguing as an ode to Saudi Arabia’s deserts and its rapidly growing metropolises. Ahmad’s work is a tribute not just to modern, rapidly developing Saudi but to an ancient land that is both rediscovered and lost in today’s rapid development.

Alia Ahmad aims to investigate the balance between natural elements, such as light and plants, by painting them even more explicitly.

It is also a sellout show for one of the world’s most exciting young gallerists, who is developing a reputation for discovering and nurturing talent from around the world. Ahmad herself, gently and wittily subversive, was at the opening herself.

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The Albion jeune art gallery is located at 16 -17 Little Portland Street in London

Her use of colour and texture is just as fascinating, particularly where the trees (or long objects) are rooted. These maximalist shapes and colours certainly give a sense of busyness; just that of a major, populated city. However, these colours are not particularly telling of the buildings’ rather monotonous, gray and urbanised design. In using this style, Ahmad simultaneously captures the modern denseness and the cultural history of Sadu; these colours take from the embroidery from Saudi, an ancient tribal weaving craft by the Bedouin people.

Read more: Leading MACAN, Indonesia’s first contemporary art museum

Lucca Hue-Williams, the owner of the Albion Jeune art gallery in London, at the exhibition opening evening

Magnus Renfrew has twenty years’ experience in the international art world, the last decade of which have been spent in Asia

Magnus Renfrew knows about art fairs in Asia. He co-founded Art Hong Kong (now Art Basel Hong Kong) and has launched numerous other fairs in the region. He speaks with LUX about Art SG, the fair he and his partners launched in Singapore as a hub for Southeast Asia, the Asian art market, and the future of art fairs

LUX: Do you think Singapore will become an art and/or cultural hub for Southeast Asia? Why did you choose Singapore rather than (for example) Bangkok, Jakarta, or KL?

Magnus Renfrew: Each city is unique with individual strengths and spheres of influence. Singapore is the gateway to Southeast Asia and as the de facto hub for the region, which has a population of 650 million people nearing the size of Europe, so logic dictates that it too should host an international art fair to serve a region that has some of the fastest growing economies in the world. What’s more, Southeast Asia has a diverse and exciting range of cultural ecosystems, and we want to bring together these communities alongside the international art world. Singapore has exceptional infrastructure and transport links, great hotels and restaurants, English is commonly spoken, Mandarin is commonly spoken. All these factors make it an exceptional place to host a major international art fair.

Furthermore, Singapore has a strong local art scene, with local galleries and considerable government investment in art and culture, which sees an active interest in growing the ecosystem in the city. The city’s cultural landscape is developing rapidly with world class museums such as the National Gallery of Singapore, Singapore Art Museum, alongside a growing cluster of commercial galleries, and an increasingly engaged community of collectors. We saw the successful launch of our inaugural edition last year, and I am excited to see the fair continue to develop against this exciting backdrop.

The case for Singapore is continuing to build as it gains greater importance geo-economically, geo-politically and as the Asia centre of wealth management. Singapore is in the ascent in every aspect and culture will inevitably be a part of that story.

LUX: You have significant fairs in Japan and Taiwan. What is the secret of a successful art fair in East Asia?

MR: It is important to have a solid premise for the fair, to identify the natural catchment area, to focus on who the fair serves, and to build domestic and regional support from all stakeholders – the government, galleries, collectors, and institutions. There are no shortcuts and it takes time to build.

What are the differences between Art SG and Art HK at a similar stage?

MR: The overall context of the art market in Asia is of course very different and the collector base across Asia has developed out of all recognition. In a very short space of time ART SG has successfully been able to attract a geographically diverse audience from across Southeast Asia and beyond. The context for ART SG is very different. When we started ART HK there were few institutions and an art scene heavily focused on auctions – it is arguable that ART HK played a significant role in building the case for Hong Kong as a cultural hub and in encouraging collectors to understand the importance of the gallery system. Singapore’s art scene is much more established than Hong Kong was when we launched, with a vibrant gallery scene and exceptional institutions, as well as a pro-active private collectors and foundations. This was reflected in the extraordinary diversity and quality of offerings during Singapore Art Week.

ART SG has its own distinctive identity as an important meeting point for collectors and art lovers from Southeast Asia and around the world by bringing together the best of regional and international galleries and artists, alongside dynamic programming to deepen understanding of its cultural context.

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LUX: Second year of Art SG saw some galleries (Perrotin, Zwirner, Esther Schipper) not return – why? Will they be back?

MR: Galleries have a host of different reasons that play into their decision making including their own programming. Pace is going to be opening their space in Tokyo this year, so they will be participating in Tokyo Gendai for the first time. Perrotin has chosen to do Taipei Dangdai and Tokyo Gendai this year. A number of galleries who chose to sit out ART SG this year visited the Fair and expressed how impressed they were with the quality of attendance, the buzz and the energy. I would anticipate that we will be working again with those galleries in Singapore and elsewhere in the future.

Southeast Asia’s leading international art fair (ART SG), attracted 43’000 visitors in 2023.

LUX: How did this year’s edition do, commercially?

MR: We are delighted by the response to the second edition of ART SG. Throughout the fair’s four days, galleries reported speedy and sustained sales, with works placed in major private and institutional collections. Galleries highlighted an enthusiastic response from both established and emerging collectors from all corners of the world, with many noting that ART SG had provided a great platform for meeting new collectors.

A snapshot of reported sales include: Thaddeaus Ropac sold a work by Anselm Kiefer for EUR 1.1 million, alongside works by Lee Bul, Miquel Barceló, Jules de Balincourt, Alex Katz, Oliver Beer, Mandy El-Sayegh, and James Rosenquist; Sundaram Tagore sold a range of works by Hiroshi Senju, Jane Lee, Miya Ando, and Zheng Lu for a combined total of over USD 1 million; White Cube sold works by Tracey Emin, Jessica Rankin, and Darren Almond, among others for a combined total of GBP 1.5 million; Waddington Custot sold two sculptures by Barry Flanagan, including a work sold for USD 680,000 to a Chinese resident of Singapore, an installation featured as part of PLATFORM by Ian Davenport sold for USD 360,000 and two sculptures by Yves Dana, including a work for sold for USD 92,000 to a collector based in Singapore; Lehmann Maupin sold a number of works, including a painting by David Salle sold for USD 250,000 to a prominent family collection in Singapore, alongside multiple works by Lee Bul and Kim Yun Shin for prices within the range of USD 200,000 – 300,000 and USD 60,000 – 90,000 respectively; Johyun Gallery sold a number of works, including a painting by Park Seo-Bo for USD 250,000 and multiple works by Lee Bae for prices in the range of USD 50,000 – 180,000 each; The Back Room placed an installation by Marcos Kueh featured as part of PLATFORM to an institution in Singapore with a price range between SGD 50,000 – 100,000; First-time participant Sabrina Amrani sold three works by Carlos Aires within a price range of USD 27,000 – 60,000 to private collectors in Singapore; Asia Art Center sold a number of key works by Li Chen and three works from Ju Ming’s Tai Chi Series, all of which have been acquired by private collectors, with a total value of around USD 600,000; Waterhouse & Dodd sold four works by Duncan McCormick to private collectors in the UK, South Korea, Italy and Hong Kong for a combined total of USD 150,000; albertz benda reported a sold-out presentation of three new paintings and four mixed-media watercolours by Australian painter Del Kathryn Barton to a Chinese collector on the opening day; Carl Kostyál reported a sold-out booth of Indonesian artist Atreyu Moniaga, with works priced at USD 18,000 each; Harper’s sold a painting by Eliot Greenwald for USD 40,000 and a painting by Marcus Brutus for USD 32,000; and MAKASIINI CONTEMPORARY sold works by Nir Hod and Jacob Hashimoto for USD 68,000 and USD 40,000 to private collectors in Singapore and Belgium respectively.

Read more: Shangri-La, Singapore, Review

LUX: Some collectors said to us that official programming for significant collectors was limited compared with early years of Art HK. How would you respond to this?

MR: Within ART SG’s bespoke VIP program, collectors were able to tap into a vibrant and dynamic line up of art events, openings, and after-parties to enrich their experience of the overall fair and art week, including private collection visits in collectors’ residences, artist studio visits, gallery openings, and more. Collectors were able to RSVP to openings and curator-led tours of private collection and foundation exhibitions such as Translations: Afro-Asian Poetics by non-profit collector-led foundation The Institutum, curated by Dr Zoe Whitley, director of Chisenhale Gallery, London, Rough, presented by The Pierre Lorinet Collection, and Chronic Compulsions presented by The Private Museum, as well as tours of major museum exhibitions at the National Gallery of Singapore and Singapore Art Museum. There were after-hours events including specially curated art parties at the National Gallery Singapore, ArtScience Museum, and Soho Residency, and a young collectors’ party at a spectacular new venue with views over the Singapore skyline. Our collector programming also offered immersive art and food dining experiences created especially for ART SG, such as Indochina by Senang Supper Club which featured two Cambodian artists discussing their art and non-profit initiative in Siem Reap over a curated menu from the Indochina region; a walking tour of cultural precinct Kampong Glam led by award winning cookbook author Khir Johari and Michelin-starred chef Ivan Brehm; and a four-hands Afro-Asian dinner which reflected the narrative and curation of the Translations exhibition. In addition to the official programming by the fair, there were also a number of gallery dinners, collector-hosted evenings, and karaoke nights and many other parties to round off the week.

LUX: What will you change about the fair for 2025?

MR: We will be doubling down on VIP outreach across our core constituency of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and also Vietnam, as well as markets with a resonance with Singapore, such as Australia, New Zealand, Chia and South Asia, and expanding the programming of the fair both within on-site and for collectors throughout the city. We will be working on more collaborations with privately owned museums and foundations, as alignment with collector-led initiatives that seek to make a difference is key to ART SG’s ambition to grow the regional ecosystem.

The Art SG 2023 showcased an assembly of leading galleries from the region and around the world

LUX: What is the main collector base for Art SG?

MR: There is an established base of sophisticated collectors in Southeast Asia and a younger generation of new buyers who are hungry to engage with contemporary art.

Singapore is also increasingly home to the region’s wealth base as demonstrated by the growing number of family offices opening here, as well as its emerging position as Asia’s tech capital. This together with established international businesses and entrepreneurs recognising the benefits of Singapore as the base for their pan-Asian operations, provides the context for a rapidly developing, forward thinking and affluent collector base, who are increasingly engaging with Singapore’s rich cultural landscape.

Thousands of VIPs attended the preview day of ART SG’s highly anticipated second edition. Strong attendance from both local and international collectors and leading figures from institutions, museums, and foundations, hailing from Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Australia, Japan, Korea, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan as well as Europe and the US. Notable visitors include:

Collectors

• Alan Lau, Hong Kong
• Albert Lim & Linda Neo, Singapore
• Alexander Tedja, Indonesia
• Alina Xie, China
• Andrew Xue, Founder of Pond Society, China & Singapore
• Belinda Tanoto, Founder of Tanoto Art Foundation, Indonesia
• Dato Noor Azman Mohd Nurdin, Malaysia
• Disaphol Chansiri, Thailand
• Ellie Lai, Taiwan
• Eric Booth & Jean-Michel Beurdeley, MAIIAM, Thailand
• Evan Chow, Hong Kong
• Han Nefkens, Han Nefkens Foundation, Spain
• Harayanto Adikoesoemo, Founder of Museum MACAN, Indonesia Iwan Kurniawan Lukminto, Founder of Tumurun Museum, Indonesia Jack Feng, China/Singapore
• Ji Dahai, Founder of Yalv River Art Museum, China
• Jim Amberson, Singapore
• Justine Tek, Director and CEO, Yuz Museum, China
• Kim & Lito Camacho, Singapore
• Kit Bencharongkul, MOCA Bangkok, Thailand
• Kulapat Yantrasast, USA
• Leo Shih, Taiwan
• Li Fan, Founder of Whale Art Museum, China & Singapore
• Mike & Lou Samson, Philippines/Singapore
• Nathan Gunawan, Indonesia/Singapore
• Nishita Shah, Thailand
• Patrick Sun, Founder of Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong
• Pierre Lorinet, Singapore
• Pontiac Land Group, Singapore
• Rath Osathanugroh, Thailand
• Rudy Tseng, Taiwan
• Rvisra Chirathivat, Thailand
• Simon Cheong, Singapore
• Shunji Oketa, Founder of Oketa Collection, Japan
• Thomas Shao, Founder of the MetaMedia Group and the Shao Foundation, China TY Jiang, Les Yeux Art Foundation, USA
• Wu Meng, M Art Foundation, China
• Xiaoyang Peng, Founder of DRC No.12 space & The Bunker, China
• Yang Bin, China

Institutions

• Aaron Cezar, Founding Director, Delfina Foundation, UK
• Aaron Seeto, Director, Museum MACAN, Indonesia
• Derek Sulger, Co-Chairperson, UCCA, China
• Eugene Tan, Director of National Gallery Singapore and Director of Singapore Art Museum, Singapore
• Jessica S Hong, Senior Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Toledo Museum, USA Judith Greer, Director of International Programmes for Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE
• Lee Dong Kook, Director, GyeonGi Cultural Foundation and Gyeonggi Province Museum, Korea
• Mami Kataoka, Director, Mori Art Museum, Japan
• Pi Li, Head of Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong
• Sook-Kyung Lee, Director, The Whitworth, Manchester & 14th Gwangju Biennale Stefano Rabolli Pansera, Director, Bangkok Kunsthalle, Thailand
• Virginia Moon, Associate Curator, Korean Art, LACMA, USA
• Xie Siwei, Museum Director, Yuz Museum, China
• Xue Tan, Senior Curator, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong
• Zoe Whitley, Director, Chisenhale London, UK

LUX: Will art fairs remain strong commercially in the coming decades?

MR: Art fairs always have and will continue to play a crucial role in the art market.

The recent edition of ART SG saw 45,303 visitors across four show days, hailing from Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Australia, Japan, Korea, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan as well as Europe and the US – in increase from the 43,000 visitors who attended the inaugural edition. The strong international attendance from leading private collectors, as well as directors, curators, and patrons from international museums and institutions at ART SG is a testament to the importance and appeal of the fair as the region’s leading fair.

Meaningful dialogues and insightful conversations were held alongside the Fair at ART SG 2023

LUX: Will Art SG help awareness of SE Asian Art grow on the global scene, or is that not the point?

MR: Definitely. As Southeast Asia’s leading art fair, ART SG invites the world’s leading collectors and art leaders to experience Singapore and all that the region has to offer, but also encourage a new generation of emerging collectors to be inspired by the rich diversity of art the region.

ART SG 2024 saw a strong line-up of Southeast Asian galleries making a dynamic debut at the fair, as well as some of the most significant galleries from across the region, featuring both established and emerging Southeast Asian artists. Some of the highlights include FOST Gallery (Singapore) which presented a a significant showcase reflecting recent contemporary art practice in Singapore and Southeast Asia, including Donna Ong, Eng Tow, Ian Woo, Wyn- Lyn Tan, as well as Elaine Roberto-Navas and Luis Antonio Santos; Gajah Gallery (Singapore, Jakarta, Yogyakarta) which showed renowned artists from the region including Suzann Victor, Yunizar and Uji “Hahan” Handoko Eko Saputro; and BANGKOK CITYCITY (Bangkok), whose first-time participation featured a new installation by Tanatchai Bandasak, large-scale paintings by street artist Alex Face inspired by significant political movements in Thailand, and works by renowned Thai artist Korakrit Arunanondchai featuring his classic motifs of denim, fire and mythical imagery, among others.

artsg.com

Since 1829, Champagne Bollinger has been making gwines, expressing the aromas of the fruit in all its dimensions.

James Bond’s champagne house of choice released the latest iterations of its new top-end champagnes amid glitz and glamour in Paris. Masha Nosova secured an invitation

The evening took place at the Bucherie in the Latin Quarter, originally an amphitheatre for medical students in the 17^th century.

The cuvees served were La Grande Annee and La Grande Année Rose 2015. Bollinger uses oak barrels for fermentation, unusually for champagne, which creates richness, weight complexity and depth A tangible connection to this legacy was brought to life as Gaël Chaunut, the in-house head cooper, demonstrated the centuries-old art of barrel-making, a process as intricate as it is timeless.

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Charles-Armand de Belenet is the managing director of Maison Bollinger

The themes of ‘wood’ permeated throughout the evening, from the meticulously crafted canopy of 9,500 paper pieces, reminiscent of a forest, to the exquisite gastronomic journey curated by Two Michelin-starred Chef Olivier Nasti, masterfully incorporating elements of nature into his tantalising creations and transporting us on a journey of flavours. His venison tartare with Osciètre caviar and citrus ice with petals complimented effortlessly alongside La Grande Année, while the tender game of Alsatian hunts presented with a colourful quintuplet of sauces, found its perfect match with La Grande Année Rosé 2015. A mystery wine, which later revealed itself as the Grande Annee 1989 was paired with a 28 month aged Comte.

Read more: A tasting of Drouhin’s fine Burgundies

The Maison Bollinger event took place in a beautiful house in the heart of Paris

Champagne-bollinger.com

The new BMW XM is the first high-performance car from BMW M GmbH with an electrified drive system

BMW’s sporting flagship promises to be the best of its luxury SUV division, combined with the best of its racy M division. Does it deliver?

Many large SUVs are dramatically imposing, aggressive vehicles that look like they are as likely to declare war on Mars as get you to your destination. Which is fine if you are a certain type of person or in a certain mood. But not always.

The BMW XM is certainly a large SUV. It is also a kind of flagship of the company’s range, combining, in an adaptation of their own words, the best of its SUV division (X) with the best of its sports division (M).

It doesn’t need a racing driver to tell you that a huge, tall wide vehicle is not necessarily best suited to a racing purpose; and nor is a racing car mush suited to carrying several people wearing Etro and Patek Philippe and Off White around in comfort.

But in the manner of an athletic rugby forward, or a centre back, the XM carries off that blend of athleticism and muscle.

Unique exterior design twinned with luxurious interior that showcases the ‘M Lounge’ concept

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What is particularly interesting about the car is that while it looks dramatic and striking, it manages not to look aggressive. Perhaps because of its hybrid nature, it gives off an element of futuristic electric vibe.

It’s also great fun to drive, even in town. BMW have somehow managed to endow it with responsive steering, and very flat cornering, it feels astonishingly agile for a car the size of a small hotel. Like all hybrids, it is very relaxing to drive an electric mode, and when the engine kicks in, you get an overlay of sound.

The nature of the sound divided our passengers: Some thought it sounded cool and racy, others said that such a sophisticated looking car should be seen and felt rather than heard. It’s not as noisy as a Lamborghini SUV, but it’s much louder than a Bentley Bentayga or Rolls-Royce Cullinan. Happy medium or compromise? Probably in the eye of the beholder.

Read more: Porsche 911 Carrera GTS Review

What sure is that this is a magnificent long-distance vehicle. Back seat passengers get smart, detachable branded leather cushions. (even the plug-in charging cables in the boot/trunk are housed in a rather striking leather overnight bag), there is masses of legroom and a feeling of a huge amount of space and light in the car, and also that the rear seats are well designed, unlike in some of these vehicles where you end up sitting very upright. A journey between London and Oxford was devoured in one gulp without anybody noticing the in between.

Speaking of gulps, in the past an SUV of this size would have been planet-wearingly thirsty, but due to its engine efficiency and electrical assistance, the XM is remarkably frugal – more so than many cars half its size and power.

The high-performance Sports Activity Vehicle (SAV) is powered by a newly developed plug-in hybrid system delivering 653hp and 800Nm of torque

Criticisms? Apart from the size, which you have to be able to deal with f you are buying a car like this, the entertaining and sporty nature of the driving experience means that the ride is quite firm. Don’t expect a limousine here – for that you should look at this car’s I7 sibling. But if you can live with that, this is quite the car.

www.bmw.com

The stunning pool area of the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore

The Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore offers a tropical sanctuary  in the heart of the city. LUX checks in

Singapore’s hawker food is the street food of legend and even features in gastronomic guides. But while the food is astonishing, the stress of getting a table is less so. And much as it is fun to be crammed in with others buzzing with the same experience, sometimes you crave peace. And you do need an appetite for the equatorial heat. We took our Singapore laksa with vintage champagne, in pure tranquillity, in a temperature-controlled garden room, looking over lush plantations, a lawn and a swimming pool. How? The Shangri-La brings the street food to the hotel guests, that’s how.

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At the Line kitchen pop-ups, real street-food chefs from guest hawker stalls, including Habib’s Rojak, cook in the hotel kitchens. It doesn’t replace the authentic experience, but having just landed from Qatar it suited us. After lunch, we wandered down to the huge outdoor pool to swim a few lengths before drifting into the spa for a restorative treatment. The Shangri-La is not among the newest of Singapore’s luxury hotels, but, as seasoned travellers know, newness does not always mean improvement.

The Hotel Lobby Lounge is equipped with a lot of green plants in the Tower Wing

Read more: Waku Ghin, Singapore, Review

A new developer might have been tempted to build over the rich tropical gardens, or make a smaller pool. There’s also the danger of design to social media. A space made to look good on Instagram is not always good to be in, and this is very true of bars, where bold shapes detract from the dreamy ambiance that makes a good bar. And the Shangri-La has a good bar. The Origin is dark, full of corners and has a long wooden bar for sitting at. We asked for a gin southside margarita, a hybrid cocktail of my own invention, and were pleased, although not surprised, that the bartender knew the ingredients.

The rose veranda has a high tea set menu, designed to continue afternoon traditions of luxurious tête-à-têtes over dainty sandwiches, delectable pastries and freshly baked scones served with clotted cream.

This joint effort was so delightful we had another. And another. In Singapore, you want a room with a view, and our suite had just that: high over the gardens and high-rises of the Orchard area. The room was conventional luxury, and all the better for it. To end the day, a charming wander through the gardens, then sitting poolside by a tropical fruit tree at midnight, bracing for another day.

Nestled within 15 acres of tropical landscaped gardens, guests are warmly embraced by the hotel’s distinct service and smiles.

shangri-la.com

Designed by award-winning Japanese designer Yohei Akao, the dining space integrates natural materials and intricate details, an ode to nature and heritage

Hidden away on the second floor, overlooking hundreds of croupier hands shuffling and dealing in the casino below, is Waku Ghin. LUX inspects the two-Michelin starred Japanese fusion restaurant in Marina Bay shopping centre, Singapore.

Past the suave darkness of the main area, with walls adorned with dark wood and striking art, and a bar teeming with sakés, is a private room, reserved for the chef’s omakase. One sits, cocooned by lighter wood panneling, at a table opposite the chef’s knives and metal, a stove, spices. The chef, in arm’s reach, sharpens his knives. His sous-chef – stick of fresh wasabi in hand, resembling something between a turnip and a thick leek – mashes it to its bright green pulp. The ancient Japanese ritual begins.

The chefs bring out a vast white polystyrene tray, as you see in fishmongers, with fresh fish. Abalone, twitching at the touch, Carabinero prawns, sea urchins, snapper, uroko. But fusion can be flimsy, and non-committal. Would we lose the natural juice of the French Royale oyster to the overpowering salt and spices of ginger and rice vinegar?

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A chemist’s nose follows these flavours and textures, balanced rather then strewn. As with the marinated prawn in sea urchin – the balance of sweet, almost fruity tastes is careful, rather than overbearing. It’s a visual pleasure, too, its orange body sitting boldly in a black shell.

Experience the new sushi omakase at the private Sushi Room customised for four where diners can get a taste of the finest regional delicacies of Japan

Black truffle and caviar are not attention-seeking but sit subtly alongside, with Oscietra caviar preserved at the very lowest salt-level. The carabinero prawn, vast and dealt with by some sort of saber and a dome, flashed in from of us like an elegant medieval duel. And fear not the fiery wrath of wasabi paste; fresh wasabi is a far milder and more succulent cry. (This makes resoundingly clear the sad fact that most so-called ‘wasabi’ consists solely of turnip and flavouring.) And it prods rather than murders its accompanying red marbled, tender and peppery wagyu sushi, slung elegantly across rice with a dip of citrus soy sauce.

After this we are presented the Amadai Uroko with Maitake Mushroom and Mizuna. The uroko, a type of Japanese tilefish with very thin skin, easier to pincer, puffs up immensely under the heat of the metal stove in front of us, under the expert hand of Executive Chef, Masahiko Inoue. And here is the freshness of the mushrooms; quiet, modest, delicious.

Read more: Rosewood Hong Kong review

Goodbye to the chefs – we are whizzed off to the dessert room, and eased slowly back to reality. One remembers than one is not in a cave in Mount Fuji but, overlooking chandeliers and Gucci, in Singapore’s shopping centre. After many courses, I manage one last one, of Mandarin Granita and White Rum Jelly, luckily unlike the English trifle, where jelly can be a tyrannical dictator. Alongside, the balance of sesame ice-cream and hojicha Chantilly (a type of Japanese green tea, served in puffs) provides a conversation of nut and herb, of temperatures, of colours.

For a more casual night out, the extended bar dining area features Chef Tetsuya’s timeless cuisine

Lest we forget the wines… after a deliciously dry saké at the bar, wines with notes of green apple, honey and lemon lended a staccato crispness, structuring and pierces these flavours, after a deliciously dry saké at the bar. From the Rhone, a delicious Julius Pylon 2021, made specially for Chef Tetsuya, served in a burgundy glass to elevate its spicy aroma, finishing with a glass of Pantelleria, the Sicilian dessert wine which cuts through dessert perfectly with a sort of Scott-Joplin hops of sweetness.

Japanese-born, Sydney-based Chef Tetsuya hinges on untampered fresh produce, Japanese umami and meditteranean herbs. Entering back into Marina Bay Sands, beyond the casino deck, beyond its twinkling lights, to Singapore’s skyline: it has, like Tetsuya’s fusion, that balance of careful, winking acuity.

Pair your experience with an extensive list of handcrafted drinks including bespoke brews from Isojiman and Masuizumi.

https://www.marinabaysands.com/restaurants/waku-ghin.html

Chong Huai Seng is one of Singapore’s most respected collectors. He and his daughter Ning Chong, a first mover in art investment advisory, speak with LUX Leaders and Philanthropists Editor Samantha Welsh about the future of art as an investment of passion

When international banker Chong Huai Seng started buying art in the 1980s, he could not have imagined growing a collection that would catalyse a forum for South East Asia’s prominent collectors, artists and experts; nor that in co-founding a gallery The Culture Story with his daughter, Ning Chong, she herself would see a gap for a specialist art investment advisory and would go on to found the Family Office for Art (FOfA). Father and daughter share their approach and insights into dealing with passion assets such as art

When did your collecting journey start?

Mr Huai Seng Chong: My collecting journey started in the mid 80’s when I was a stock broker and I used to travel to London frequently for business trips. I loved traipsing around Mayfair, dipping in and out of galleries. I started buying British sculpture and Russian paintings, very unusual because most people start buying art from their own country. I was merely responding to what I like, my daughter likes to call it “retail therapy” at a time before the internet, and all you had, was to trust your instinct and sensibilities.

Nina Chong: About seven years ago, I introduced some governance to my father’s art collection, cataloguing and art collection management and to assess the strengths of the collection and where we should focus our future acquisitions. With that, we are able to identify themes within the collection, and Dad always enjoys selecting and curating the pieces which we put up in our private gallery The Culture Story. Personally I started my own collection a mere two – three years ago. I realised I had a point of view, which was different from my father’s and there were certain artists and themes which resonated more strongly with me, as a new mother, as an entrepreneur.

Mr Huai Seng Chong and his daughter Ms Ning Chong are two of Singapore’s most respected collectors.

How did you decide a career as an art professional was for you?

CHS: Art collecting started as a hobby for me, almost forty years ago! I never thought this is something I would continue to do, and now this hobby has turned into a business venture between me and my daughter. This is something we did not plan to do, but I’m happy that we are on this adventure together.

NC: When I was young, I was surrounded by works of art and as a family we used to follow my Dad to visit galleries on the weekend. It was only after graduation, when I didn’t want to pursue banking or finance that my father nudged me to consider the art world. I did my own research, including a few internships in London before I decided that I would commit and pursue a career in the arts. It took me a long time to get to where I am, looking back it has been very rewarding to work in different areas such as art fairs, auction house, galleries to government policy work, it has given me a very comprehensive overview of the art ecosystem.

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What was the vision behind The Culture Story?

CHS: We started The Culture Story in June 2017 as a private gallery, like Gertrude Stein salon’s setting in her Paris apartment in the 1920s where artists, poets, writers, thinkers would get together and make merry. For us, we wanted to create a cosy environment where we can share works from our family collection, and encourage other collectors to collaborate with us. By organising exhibitions and hosting talks with artists, collectors and art world professionals, The Culture Story aims to promote greater understanding and discourse around art and foster connoisseurship.

How has the mission and collection evolved?

CHS: We are still very much following the mission we set out for The Culture Story at the beginning. The Singapore art scene has matured significantly and we are at a stage where other art collectors are open to collaborate with us. They are happy to share work(s) from their private collection, especially when they encounter feedback from members of the public, students or other art collectors and professionals.

“Collecting Bodies: a short story about art and nudity in Asia” with works on loan from 10 art collectors

NC: We try to focus on a few themes amongst our family collection. Recently, we have loaned some of our works to museums for various exhibitions. One in particular is an early Kim Lim sculpture which is currently on view at the Hepworth Wakefield Museum in Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Later this year, the entire exhibition will travel to the National Gallery Singapore for her long-await retrospective exhibition.

We also loaned paintings by Futura and Timothy Curtis to Art Science Museum in Singapore for an exhibition called Sneakertopia, which celebrated everything related to the rise of street culture and pop art, and the phenomena of sneaker culture.

Kim Lim at Hepworth: the first major museum exhibition of Lim’s work since 1999, offering unparalleled insight into the artist’s life and work.

Futura and Timothy Curtis at the Art Science Museum

Where has your acquisition strategy been particularly effective in nurturing innovative artists?

CHS: I like to support Singapore’s young and emerging artists. There is one artist in particular Hilmi Johandi whom I spotted almost fifteen years ago at the Affordable Art Fair in Singapore in 2011, today he is represented by OTA Fine Art, one of Japan’s leading contemporary art galleries who also represents Yayoi Kusama. I commissioned Hilmi to create a family portrait for us. Since then I support his practice by buying a work from every new series.

Hilmi Johandi works primarily with painting and explores interventions with new media that are associated within the domain of framing, fragmentation and compression

What is it about the Asian art market and intergenerational wealth transfer that created demand for the Family Office for Art (FOFA)?

NC: The South East Asian art market is still a young one, over the two decades we have seen significant progress with the emergence of galleries, art fairs, biennales, dealers and private museums etc.

Two years ago, I identified a gap in the industry, and I felt there were many things I could offer and help other collectors, the same way I used my skills and experience to maintain my father’s art collection. Most wealthy families have their financial assets and businesses handled by their private banker or family office, more often than not, the soft assets such as art and collectibles are overlooked or neglected. However these “passion assets” are very much part of the principle’s estate and his/her legacy. I’ve been studying this space for some time and I’ve learnt that with a proper system in place, it is a significant step towards protecting and enhancing the art collection’s commercial and cultural value.

At FOFA, we understand that dealing with passion assets such as art can be emotional and sentimental, and more often than not, it would require some degree of family involvement. These types of discussions and conversations are not unfamiliar to us and may take a long time to materialise, so our approach is to take a long term view and invest in these relationships.

Read more: Yulia Iosilzon’s groundbreaking new show in London

Based in Singapore, we are well-positioned to meet and serve Asian collectors in the region. Over the next decade and even in present times, it has been said that there will be unprecedented levels of wealth transfer in Asia. Given our first mover advantage and as we continue to grow and widen our international network, FOFA is ready to help families look after and manage their passions or alternative assets such as fine art and collectibles.

Since 1843, six generations of the Krug family have perpetuated this dream, enriching the Joseph Krug’s vision and savoir faire. Today, the Family House welcomes Krug Lovers from around the world to take a sensorial journey around Krug Champagne.

What are the 12 greatest wine estates in the world? A subjective question, surely. Lewis Chester doesn’t think so. The British financier and founder of the Golden Vines awards kicks off a series where he outlines for LUX his golden dozen, the most collectible wine estates from the world’s major regions. For the first instalment, he pays homage to Krug, the revered champagne house owned by LVMH

Why begin my personalised list of the World’s Best 12 Fine Wine Estates with Maison Krug? As a fine wine collector for almost twenty-five years, I have collected more bottles of Krug than any other wine: more than 1,500. More importantly, I drink more bottles of Krug than any other wine – every Friday night with my family at a minimum. My middle daughter, Anoushka, was just twelve years old when she developed a craving for Krug. Maggie Henriquez, at the time the Maison’s President & CEO, found out about Anoushka’s love of Krug and invited her and her friends to celebrate her future eighteenth birthday party at the estate!

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Krug evokes class and sophistication. In 2012, the late, great Paul Pontallier invited me to an 8-hour marathon lunch in the great salon of Château Margaux, one of the five left-bank First Growths. On arrival, Paul – the Château’s estate manager – served me a glass of Krug Grande Cuvée, the multi-wine non-vintage blend that Krug lovers around the world imbibe on a regular basis. At around 7pm, after having consumed six bottles of Margaux and a bottle of cognac, I asked Paul why he had chosen to serve me Krug: “We, at Château Margaux, want our guests to consider our wines as being at the same level as those from Maison Krug”. Wow! What an endorsement. Many years later, I would be told something quite similar by Don Weaver, the estate manager at Harlan Estate in Napa Valley, when he met me at the winery door holding two glasses and a cold bottle of Krug Grande Cuvée.

Joseph Krug did not believe in hierarchies between his Champagnes, clearly written in his personal notebook in 1848. Today the House offers seven Champagnes, all of the same undisputed quality, each illustrating a different expression of Nature.

Krug ages forever. Along with Grande Cuvée, the ‘cheapest’ wine in the Maison’s range at around £200 per bottle, the Maison produces a vintage bottling in good years, as well as a formidable non-vintage Rosé, and a rare ‘Collection’ version of its vintage champagnes (only available to private clients). For those willing and able to pay thousands of pounds per bottle, they also produce – in miniscule quantities – a single-vineyard Blanc de Blancs (Chardonnay) wine, Clos du Mesnil, and a single-vineyard Blanc de Noirs (Pinot Noir), Clos d’Ambonnay.

Known for having wines that are generous on the palate, with huge complexity helped by ageing in wooden barrels, Krug is somewhat opposite in design to its LVMH stablemate, Dom Pérignon, which is known for its reductive style of champagnes. Unlike Dom Pérignon, Krug makes less than a tenth of the volume of wine, although getting the exact production figures from either Maison is as difficult as getting your hands on Russia’s nuclear launch codes.

Olivier Krug, the sixth generation of the Krug family and Director of the House welcomes Krug Lovers from around the world to the Family House in Reims.

The Maison was established in Reims in 1843, by Joseph Krug, a true visionary non-conformist with an uncompromising philosophy for quality. Joseph’s novel idea was to craft the very best Champagne he could offer, every single year, regardless of annual variations in climate – rather than bottling a wine only in good vintages. He also introduced the idea of building an extensive library of reserve wines from many different years to craft the perfect blend. Six generations of the Krug family have continued Joseph’s work, with Olivier Krug being the latest in a long line of family members to be working at the estate which has been owned by LVMH since 1999.
The most recent innovation at the estate was numbering each bottling of Krug Grande Cuvée with an ‘Edition’ number. In 2016, Edition 163eme was launched, representing the 163rd annual bottling of Grande Cuvée from the time of Joseph Krug’s first vintage in 1844. Krug Rosé edition numbers shortly followed suit. Collectors can use the Krug app to quickly find out what and how many wines comprise any given Edition number, and even what music ensemble to pair with the wine. For instance, the most recent release, 171eme Edition, is blended with 131 wines from 12 different years (2015 all the way back to 2000), made up of 45% Pinot Noir, 37% Chardonnay and 18% Meunier grapes. Julie Cavil, the Chef de Cave, recommends enjoying this Krug with Joseph’s Theme: Dream Variation (composed by Kazu Makino et al).

Read more: A tasting of Drouhin’s fine Burgundies

Lewis’s Best 3 Wines from Maison Krug

Krug, Clos du Mesnil, 1979: the first vintage from this iconic single vineyard, it ranks as one of the best three wines I have ever tasted from any estate. Aromas of roses and petals, and a finish that ran for several minutes in the mouth. Worldclass.

Krug, Clos du Mesnil, 2002: although still a relative puppy, I am convinced that the 2002 vintage will last for another twenty-plus years and be considered alongside the 1979 vintage as a legendary wine.

Krug, Vintage 1988: if you can find a bottle that has been stored well, the wine will be remarkably fresh, vibrant and complex, and I guarantee that it will blow your socks off.

Each year, Krug’s Cellar Master auditions 250 wines of the year and 150 reserve wines when creating a new Édition of Krug Grande Cuvée

The 2024 edition of the Golden Vines awards will take place in Madrid between October 25-27 2024. liquidicons.com

The family Drouhin grew up in the vineyards and acquired a deep understanding of wine alongside their father, Robert Drouhin. They all have their own role and they share the same passion for wine

Veronique Drouhin was not supposed to run one of the world’s most celebrated wine producers. The scion of a family with holdings throughout Burgundy and beyond, she was born with the odds stacked against her in two ways: she was the second child, where traditionally the elder child took on the family business; and she was a woman in the very mannish world of wine.

“I did not think, when I was at school, that things would end up the way they did,” the urbane, lively head of Maison Drouhin says ahead of our tasting of some of her finest wines. But her elder brother, Philippe, decided that he wanted to devote his energies to being in the vineyards, making the wines great rather than running the company. And Veronique, although she is too modest to say so directly, showed the commercial nous required to take the company forward in the 21st century.

Drouhin is famed for making wines of finesse, vibrancy and balance. That was not necessarily always a plus point: there was a time earlier this century when many consumers of fine wines thought that the more powerful a wine was, the better. And being the head of a negotiant-producer, which both owns its own vineyards and buys grapes from small producers with their own vineyards, was also a double-edged sword as high-end consumers sought out tiny production boutiquewineries as a status symbol.

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But the pendulum has swung the other way, both on style, with finesse and balance most definitely back in vogue, and in terms of consumer demand, as the cost of wines from tiny producers shot upwards beyond sustainable levels. Drouhin, which makes wines from some of Burgundy’s most hallowed vineyards, suddenly looked like excellent value as well as high quality.

If there is a grace to the wines – more on which in our tasting notes below – there is also a grace to the head of the Maison. When I ask what she would have likely done if she had not been born into a major French wine dynasty, Veronique replies that she might have become a music. I can imagine her playing a Chopin sonata as much as I can imagine her tasting her wines or hosting a collector’s dinner.

Read more: A tasting of Dana Estate wines

After carefully harvesting the precious fruits of a year’s labour, Maison Drouhin let their vines enter a period of rest, an enchanted interlude called dormancy.

Drouhin makes wines at a variety of price points: just days before this tasting of some of their highest-end wines, which costs hundreds of pounds/euros/dollars a bottle, I partook of a bottle of a more lowly Drouhin Savigny-les-Beaune red Burgundy, from the fulsome 2020 vintage, at a London restaurant. It was delicious, balanced, moreish; and very much in the style of all the others. But if you are seeking a high end Burgundy at a relatively reasonable price, look to the below.

The Drouhin tasting. Tasting notes by Darius Sanai

Whites:

Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos, 2018

The Chablis brand might suggest a certain austerity and steeliness; this grand cru, from one of the most celebrated vineyards, had that but also breadth, depth and white nectarines. Very classy and surprisingly powerful; a Jaguar E-type of a wine.

The harvest date is determined through regular samplings. Maison Drouhin closely monitors the health and maturation of the grapes.

Beaune Clos des Mouches, 2019

A white wine from Beaune? Sacré bleu – or sacré blanc!  But what a wine this rare and prized bottling is. Rounded, rich fruit with freshness and sex appeal and a lot of layers. An open-topped classic two-seater Mercedes SL from the 1980s.

Chassagne Montrachet Premier Cru Morgeot, Marquis de Laguiche, 2019

From Chablis we headed south through the forest of the Plateau de Langres (Chablis is not connected to the rest of the Burgundy vineyards), over the continental divide and down to Beaune. Now we travel a few kilometres further south, with the Cote d’Or hills rising to our right, in our 1973 Porsche 911S, in a solid period dark green. That’s what this wine is: super-elegant, precise, crafted, stunning.

The harvest date is determined through regular samplings. Maison Drouhin closely monitors the health and maturation of the grapes.

Corton Charlemagne Grand Cru, 2019

Back up the road we go, past Beaune, to the rounded Hill of Corton. Corton Charlemagne is one of the most celebrated white Burgundies, and this is a beautiful interpretation, with stony fruits and the complexity to match a three Michelin-starred chef’s signature Escoffier-style white fish main course. A 1960s Citroen DS Decapotable (in black, with cream leather) of a wine.

Reds:

Volnay Premier Cru Clos des Chênes 2018

Such finesse, a wine that only hints at its true depth of first sip, then keeps speaking with you, reciting poetry in your ear.

Beaune Premier Cru Clos des Mouches 2018

Beaune is only a few kilometres away from Volnay, and this wine is made with the same, pinot noir, grape variety by the same producer: yet while retaining Drouhin’s finesse, this has power and muscularity. Like a Duke from the court of Louis XIV expounding on the virtues of his house musicians.

Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru Les Amoureuses 2009

On first sip, this is a balanced, structured and slightly delicate red Burgundy. By the end of the second glass, it’s an artist, a pianist, a poet and a dancer – and not a particularly chaste dancer. A Chippendale from the 2000s, or a brilliant burlesque; all at the same time. Astonishing.

Chambertin Clos de Beze 2003

This is a wine you would have at your last supper, with capon, truffle, caviar and tripe sweetbreads (and maybe some pommes dauphinoise). Like a Falstaffian royal performing a perfect ballet while reciting Rumi.

domainedrouhin.com

Sunrise in Persepolis, capital of the ancient Achaemenid kingdom. From this particular Persian empire, Greece would have been the Near West, China the Near East, and current-day Cambodia the Middle East

History and its related language are written by the victors; but as history changes sometimes redundant terminology remains in use. One such term is the phrase Middle East, which is outdated, colonialist, increasingly pejorative, and should be consigned to the same dustbin as “Near East” and “Darkest Africa”, writes Darius Sanai

Are you a Far Easterner? Or maybe a Near Easterner? Do you know anyone who still describes themselves in this way? I don’t. Conversely, I know people from East Asia and people from South Asia.

Bas relief at Persepolis. Nobody referred to its residents as Middle Easterners: each empire believes itself to be at the centre of civilisation, an often hubristic view which becomes more exposed as empires recede

And yet, I am, apparently, a Middle Easterner. The phrase is house style to describe the region in all the world’s leading media, whatever its political viewpoint, from the BBC and the Economist to the New York Times, CNN and Fox News. The term is used to describe the swathe of countries from Iran (where I am from) in the north to Yemen in the south. The Middle East sometimes also refers to places further west, like Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and even Egypt, which is in Africa.

Middle East is a redundant term, as steeped in colonialist “orientalist” perception as the term Far East. “East” refers to a comparative longitude from: London and Paris, one-time colonial hubs; and it’s the Middle because it’s between the Near and the Far East from their perspective.

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Yet nobody would describe China or Japan as the Far East now, or Palestine as the Near East, and rightly so. (Although the French, always slower to bend to what they see as political correctness, still use the term “Proche-Orient”, referring to its “Proche”-ness to the Quai d’Orsay, where geopolitical machinations ferment.)

The “Far” East was far to the east from the centres of global power of a couple of a couple of hundred years ago, although not far at all from the centre of the Hang dynasty. Shanghai, technically part of the Far East, is near west when viewed from Japan or Korea.

Persepolis, in modern-day Iran. Each empire creates a world view and terminology on its own terms. The Persians ruled the ancient world from Persepolis until their defeat by the Greeks. Our own reference to the Middle East is a construct of western European empires which finally disappeared after World War II

Equally the “Near” East (comprising Beirut, Istanbul/Constantinople and so on) is quite far west when observed from Khmer empire in northern Cambodia and north, not east, of the Ethiopian empire, and the term was phased out of polite usage at the end of the 20th century.

“Middle East” has also become a perjorative: we all know what kind of image the words “Middle Eastern man” conjure up.

So why are we still using the term? Just like a Senegalese is from West Africa, a Finn is from North Europe, and a Sri Lankan is from South Asia, an Iranian, Jordanian or Syrian is from West Asia, as much as a Manchurian is from East Asia and a Bangladeshi is from South Asia. This vast continent stretches from the Bosphorous at Istanbul In the west to Japan in the east, from the Siberian Arctic in the north to Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the south and Indonesia in the south east.. We are all Asians, and nearness, middle-ness and distance are purely relative terms.

Asia can be and should be sub-divided into it’s geographical sub-regions without any need for the terms middle east, near east and far east

Read more: Hansjörg Wyss and the Wyss Foundation

Or perhaps as an Iranian living in London, I am actually living in the Middle West, also known as the UK and Western Europe, and occasionally travelling to the Far West (New York) and the Near East (China). Which would be almost as confusing as all of us Middle Eastern men foregoing our sunglasses, open-topped Lamborghinis and shisha pipes and being journalists or academics. It’s time to ditch the cliche, and the terminology that perpetuates it.

Darius Sanai is Editor-in-Chief and Proprietor of LUX: Responsible Culture, owner of the Oxford Review of Books and an Editor-in-Chief at Condé Nast

The Biltmore offers glamour and relaxed fine dining in the green heart of Mayfair. LUX checks in

Mayfair, the historic luxury heart of London, is the only place many people will stay when visiting the UK capital. While there is no shortage of hotels, there is a dearth of hotels with anything resembling a view or a sense of space around them. In most cases, even the best rooms have an outlook across the street to another building.

The Grosvenor square suite

This, we realised, would rather presently not be the case with the Biltmore. The hotel occupies most of the south side of Grosvenor Square, the most spacious historic square in the area, an expanse of grass and trees and light. We were whisked up to our accommodation, one of the presidential suites, which itself took up a large portion of the hotels front facade. The view from the two bedrooms, living room and dining room was suffused with green.

The Grosvenor Square view suite

The Biltmore can be best described as contemporary glamorous. Our favourite element was the leather padded person-sized bar cabinet, whose door opened to reveal the line after line of cut crystal glasses standing ready for a monster Negroni session. But it would have been a shame to have too many Negronis (the hotel will happily send a bartender up to make them for you in the suite), before visiting the vibey Pine Bar on the ground floor, whose cool atmospherics lend themselves to lingering over a few signature De La Louisiane cocktails (rye, absinthe, vermouth and Benedictine). Dress contemporary glamorous, or you will look like you are in the wrong place: Etro or Cavalli will do just fine.

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The bar, though, was just a prequel to the highlight. And along the hotels marble floor, Grill 88 is the hotel’s showcase restaurant. At first, you might be deceived as the casual chic decor is not much of a stand out from the other high-end restaurants in the area. But you would be well advised to sit down with a glass of champagne, relax and listen to the explanations of the concept provided by the super knowledgeable staff. This is a restaurant that takes its food and is sourcing very seriously indeed.

Grill 88 at the Biltmore

While there is a variety of dishes on the menu, the specialty here is steak, and our thoughtful, server pointed us in the direction of a tasting menu of steak from different regions: Australia, the US, Japan, the UK and Brazil. After a couple of (excellent) oysters and a superb heritage tomato salad with fruit that was firm and plump, but usually and interestingly flavoursome, a tasting board arrived with ready sliced and seasoned cuts.

Head Chef Luis Campos

The chef appeared to explain how each was sealed and cooked. The quality was superb: sourcing attention to detail clearly runs all the way through the operational process of Grill 88. And there is a broad wine list, as you might expect, but, as you may not expect, there is plenty of unusual and reasonably priced wine that matches the food very well – Puglia was well represented.

The Pine Bar at the Biltmore

In the morning, breakfast was served in our suite at exactly the requested hour, and laid out beautifully at the dining table off the living room. The ingredients in the Arabic breakfast were not quite as meticulously sorest as those in the Grill for dinner, however: the tomatoes adid not quite match that level of quality.

Altogether, an experience that combines relaxation and glamour with a perfect location, and one of the most interesting menus in Mayfair.

Find out more: thebiltmorehotels.com

London-based Israeli artist Yulia Iosilzon creates a thespian world, somewhere between fairy tale and natural landscape across ceramics and painting. Her signature snails trail around the frames of vibrant, allegorical paintings of calligraphic movement. LUX explores her new solo show at Berntson Bhattarcharjee in London.

Several layers of symbolism offer snails as an important motif for the artist from motherhood to tranquillity to restlessness

Snails perch on canvas corners, across five-tiered cakes, some small, some larger. One – nearly human size – sits elegantly in the middle of the gallery floor. Others melt into the paintings themselves, in communion with circus-like figures, swirling around one another in rich colours. These stand at the intersection of her work – between reality and fantasy, between almost unnerving, uncanny and playful.

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Applying paint onto sheer silk, the artist’s technique recalls Helen Frankenthaler’s style from the 1950s and 60s

Born in Moscow, and with frequent relocations, Yulia connects to the snail’s pursuit of comfort and security, in slow calm and restlessness, in spiralling refuge. And to see the gallery adorned with both thespian silk of bright pink and these snails of earthy colours across the gallery gives an intense feeling of familiar-unfamiliarity that good art does. So, too, does the paintings’ figures of meek, innocent faces – and the combination of their sharp triangular figures with the calligraphic swirls.

Yulia quite literally creates a theatrical stage within this exhibition. It’s a scene resembling the interior of a snail’s shell – like something of a film set, cocooned in the Berntson Bhattarcharjee’s basement (a gallery which transforms itself quite remarkably for each exhibition).

Yulia Iosilzon cites children’s illustration and theatre as sources of inspiration

Snails were already seen a lot in images of Matisse, Dali and Dutch Renaissance painters. During this historical period, snails symbolised the Virgin Birth, and embodied notions of resurrection, purity and mortality.

Read more: Interview with British-Iranian Artist Kour Pour

Modus Operandi at the Berntson Bhattarcharjee Gallery, Mayfair, London, will run until 11 May 2024.

See More: bbgallery.art

England-born, LA based British-Iranian artist Kour Pour – famous for his series of carpet paintings – delves into the rich history of Persian rugs, unshackling and readdressing cultural categorisations. And he makes something both historic and entirely new. From a youth spent climbing up piles of Persian rugs in his father’s shop, to Iran’s historical and current politics, to the voices of hip-hop music, Kour Pour chats to Isabella Fergusson about the many inspirations woven into his intercultural, intertemporal artworks

LUX: You were born in Exeter, England, but moved to LA. What effect does place – and did the move – have on your art?

Kour Pour: I very naturally respond to my surroundings in my work – images and materials I come across around the world make their way into the studio. I think it’s safe to say that Los Angeles and everything that I encounter here finds a way into my practice. My community here is incredibly diverse, and all the people that find their way into my life influence my practice. Exeter was beautiful, but it was quite homogenous. Moving from Devon to LA helped to open my world up.

LUX: You’ve exhibited all around the world; where do you feel that audiences most resonate with your works? Is it very different across these places?

KP: The nature of my practice is that it’s quite varied: I make paintings and sculptures and large-scale prints, and these can range from hyper-figurative to hyper-abstract. My experience has been that this allows everyone to have a different access point to my work, and that it promotes resonances across different cultures and geographies. I think of my different bodies of work as different languages, and therefore that allows me to have a conversation with as many people as possible.

Gathering In The Courtyard, 2022, Acrylic on canvas over panel

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LUX: Tell me about your father’s carpet shop – your earliest memories there, its inspirations for your work now.

KP: My father moved to Exeter by himself when he was 14 – a result of the Iranian Revolution in ’79. Eventually his older brother joined him, but the two of them were teenagers in a new country without a support system. So, they had a typical immigrant experience of arriving in a new place and just having to figure it out. My father eventually rented a storefront that had many different lives when I was growing up: a sunglass store, and ice cream shop. That one was my favorite. But when I was about 4 or 5, it was a carpet store. I remember being a child and climbing around all the rugs and feeling that they made a place seem like home. I also remember my father touching up old and faded carpets by hand using natural dyes. That was probably one of the first times I was exposed to painting, in any form.

Jade Tiger, 2021

LUX: You’ve said before that you wished museum collections wouldn’t be separated by geographic location or time period, which throws up the challenge of overly constrictive categorisation, particularly in the case of your work. But where would you place your art if it had to be geographically categorised – by its inspiration, or the location it was painted, or your descent? Perhaps it simply cannot comfortably be boxed up…

KP: I don’t want to categorise the work. One of the beautiful things about art is that you can find relationships across temporal and geographic boundaries. I want to allow my work that freedom.

LUX: I was speaking to an artist yesterday that said that a painter has to confront and get over the fact that what he does is – in absolute terms – utterly pointless. Do you agree? Have you had to to confront a sense of uselessness?

KP: Maybe an artist that has nothing to say in their work could feel that painting is pointless, but I absolutely disagree with that notion. Art is a healer. Whether for the artist or the viewer, the act of creating is therapeutic and experiencing someone else communicate through any medium is both thrilling and comforting. It’s an expression of being alive. There are so many things art can do. It raises awareness, it becomes a record of a time, it tells stories, and it imagines alternative ways of being. Art is endless in its possibilities.

A Voyage For Tea & Spices, 2023, Acrylic on canvas over panel, 84 x 60 inches

LUX: Should art’s political role be more respected – and is art, or should it be, inherently political?

KP: Art is made by people. Some individuals exist in worlds that are heavily politicized, and some don’t. Artists make work that is, directly or indirectly, a reflection of their reality, so you could argue that art is always social and political.

LUX: How do your Iranian roots play into your work?

KP: My Iranian identity has always been a big part of how I navigate my reality. It has influenced both how I’ve engaged with the world, and how the world has engaged with me. I’ve used Iranian imagery in my own practice, and that identity has also guided some projects that are not directly related to what I’m doing in the studio. In 2022, I opened an exhibition project space in my studio complex in Inglewood, called Guest House. The first show was of Iranian artists living in Los Angeles, born out of what I perceived as a lack of engagement with the Iranian community by the city’s art scene. Which is crazy, given how many Iranians there are in LA – the city has the largest population living outside of Iran.

Eternal Springtime (Nowruz), 2017 – 2021, Acrylic on canvas over panel, 96 x 144 inches

Two weeks after we opened the exhibition, the Woman, Life, Freedom protests broke out after Jina Mahsa Amini’s death in Tehran. Guest House immediately became a hub for the community. We would have people come visit the show and trade news about what was going on back home in Iran, we had film screenings, and we tried to respond in whatever way we could to what was going on. That sense of community, and the relationships that I made over the course of that first exhibition, have entered the studio and now help inform the totality of my studio practice.

LUX: Hip-hop and carpet painting seem an unlikely combination. What about the music inspires you, and is it hip-hop’s differences or similarities to your medium which feed your works?

KP: One of the things that initially drew me to hip hop was the idea of sampling: taking a sound from a song, transforming it, and adding it into another song. This matches up with the way that the carpets I’m interested in were made: images would travel along the Silk Road and there would be this incredible intermixing of cultures. A single rug that was assigned Persian origin would have images from as far west as Venice and as far east as China. I think that the language around sampling in hip hop is a perfect way to speak about these works.

See more: kourpour.com

The South Korean collector and founder of New York’s Shin Gallery on the flea markets, fashion and food hotspots of his native Seoul.

Hong Gyu Shin at his New York apartment

1. My ideal dinner guest and my ideal restaurant destination.

I would love to host Angelina Jolie at Keunkiwajip, a quaint restaurant in the 600 year old Bukchon Village. They specialize in Ganjang-gejang, raw marinated crab, which is made with their soy sauce that has been fermented for around ten years!

2. Where I go in Soul to escape.

Bongeunsa is a Buddhist temple in Gangnam which was founded in 794 CE. The experience of walking through the temple and smelling the incense burning throughout is calming, as I escape by absorbing my surroundings which allows my inner thoughts to subside.

Looking out over the rooftops of the historic Bukchon Hanok Village to modern Seoul beyond

3. The most unlikely thing I love doing in Seoul.

I have an affinity for antiquing and always visit the Seoul Folk Flea Market! I began my collecting journey there when purchasing World World II militaria and antiques, the vendors have the most unexpected and intriguing pieces which continuously spark my curiosity.

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4. Where I would send a 20 year old party animal friend.

I would definitely send them to Itaewon in Seoul! It’s renowned for the nightlife and mix of International and Korean influences, and also abundant with bars, clubs, and rooftops. It is walking distance from the Leeum Museum of Art, the perfect first destination for a cultural yet lively night.

Bukchon Hanok Village

5. Where I would send a culture animal friend

Bukchon Hanok Village was built in the Joseon dynasty where officials and wealthy nobility lived. There are over 900 houses with traditional Hanok architecture which feature clay, stone floor, and ancient tile roofs.

6.Where I go to discover new art and trends

I discover new art and trends when visiting the multiple contemporary art galleries surrounding Bukchon. The artworks exhibited share the depth of skill obtained by Korean artists and their visionary practices. The MMCA (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art) is also nearby and I always attend when in Seoul.

7. My favorite single dish in the city

I will always get Jajangmyeon, a Korean style Chinese noodle dish topped with a thick sauce made of chunjang, diced pork, and vegetables. It is the ultimate comfort food and an incredibly delicious meal I will forever cherish, especially in Korea for the most authentic and flavourful experience!

The sunset over the high rises in the city of Seoul

8. One development in Seoul I am sad about

Recently there has been an influx of Cafes throughout Seoul which is quite displeasing to see. Many of the traditional and historic restaurants have been replaced with Cafes which is shifting the culture and atmosphere.

9. The best living artists in the city

The best living artists are: the pioneer of avant garde mixed media Kim Kulim and abstract artist Youn Myeung Ro, particularly his 1960s tattoos series.

10. The most interesting place to go clothes shopping

Dongdaemun is one of the largest wholesale and retail shopping districts for Korean street fashion. There are also shops of young fashion designers breaking boundaries within Korean street style, and juxtaposing commercial designs.

Dongdaemun Market

11. One area to keep an eye on over the next couple of years

I am always fascinated by the transformation of the Yongsan District. Since the Korean War it has served as an American military base, and was only converted last year! The base continues to evolve with gardens, museums and nightlight attractions and is an upcoming
cultural destination in Seoul.

12.The best street market in Seoul

The best street market is in the back alley of Jongno 3-ga’s Nagwon Arcade. The street is full of “Pojangmacha” (outdoor food stalls) which sell a variety of freshly made Korean street foods such as Soondae (Korean Sausage), Dakbal (Chicken Feet), Dwaeji Ggupdaegi (Pork
Skin)

13. K drama or K pop

I love both and can not pick! My favorite K pop star is Kim Kwang seok who sadly died at the age of 32.

This article was first published in the Autumn / Winter 2023 issue of LUX

shin-gallery.com

LUX checks into the Bellevue Palace, Bern, Switzerland.

Le Lobby is a true classic reborn, a convivial meeting place to exchange views and discuss weighty matters over drinks as well as sushi and sashimi.

The wow factor:

The walk from the train station in the Swiss capital of Bern, to the Bellevue Palace, takes in some traditional cobbled streets and a stretch along a hilltop, alongside some Swiss government buildings. Walking into the grand atrium of the Palace, you pass through a gin bar and onto a terrace, at the end of the same hilltop, from where the ground drops away into a pastoral Alpine view of meadows and forests. There are even cows grazing on the hillsides: all of this from the most city centre luxury hotel of a capital city. All very Swiss.

Breathtaking views from the comfort of your own room

People watching:

Smartly dressed Swiss gentility were all around us; conversing quietly behind their Chopard necklaces and Audemars Piguet watches. The hotel, which was built in 1865 and rebuilt in 1913, is a place where such people have come for generations.

overlooking the River Aare or the Bernese Alps, each room has unique features

Show me to my room:

Our suite had a view out to the Alps: from our balcony we could see the white slopes of the peaks of the Bernese Oberland, the triangular Jungfrau and frightening Eiger, in the far distance. Inside the suite, this was truly a palace of a hotel in the traditional sense: antique furniture, thickly carpeted rooms, huge marble bathrooms and acres of space.

The open kitchen at Noumi Restaurant celebrates world food ideal for combining and sharing. Taste experiences in bowls and from the grill, including vegetarian variations, which are inspired by simplicity

Come dine with me (and other things):

The lobby, with its ornate Belle époque atrium, is the place for a drink when the weather doesn’t suit the terrace with a view outside: the speciality is gin, and it’s a power broker type of place for Switzerland, with important besuited men sipping at Martinis, all in surroundings more dramatic than, say, Claridge’s. But the real surprise restaurant action is downstairs at Noumi Bar & Grill; here you walk into a different universe from the traditional elegance of the best of the hotel, with a DJ spinning tunes in a booth, open plan kitchen, speakeasy lighting and a funky atmosphere. Food is best described as modern wealthy Asian: poke, tataki, simple grilled steaks. Ingredients are of superb quality and the kitchen’s touch is light but delicate. Very vibey, if rather out of keeping with the rest of the hotel. We could eat there every night.

Find out more: bellevue-palace.ch

Curator Angeliki Kim Perfetti has created a supercar-themed exhibition to match the celebrated vehicles at Kiklo Spaces, outside London. She writes for LUX of her inspirations to bring high quality art to a revered location for motoring enthusiasts

The exhibition features artworks by Ed Ruscha, Polly Morgan, Johan Deckmann and Nancy Cadogan among others, interspersed with some classic supercars of the last four decades

Love is a language that we all speak, and here within the exhibition di nome e di fatto:
LOVE /𝐥ʌ𝐯/, brings together an infinite collection of references to art history, visual culture and contemporary storytelling that is reflecting on and relating to the many topics of love.

Love runs through the exhibition as a fil rouge and presents eleven artists who are united in their diversity and their works forms a presentation of text, abstraction, light, figure, colour, and form.

Ultimately, LOVE /𝐥ʌ𝐯/ is a dynamic feel-good exhibition featuring an eclectic group of artists. Who are working across a variety of media from sculpture, traditional work on canvas, photography, light installation to mirror, whilst exploring the many topics of love.

Juliette Loughran, founder of Loughran Gallery, said, “We wanted to start the year on a high, uniting audiences and artists with the most powerful human emotion of all.

Love drives everything we do and this exhibition will explore its significance in art history with Dynamisk founder Angeliki Kim Perfetti, in the first of what we hope will be many collaborations.”

Follow LUX on instagram @luxthemagazine

LOVE /lʌv/ runs 4 March – 31 May 2024 at Loughran Gallery

See More: loughrangallery.co.uk

Angeliki Kim Perfetti is the Founder of Dynamisk, Independent Curation and Art Advisory

Arnaud Champenois is Senior Vice President, Global Brand, Marketing and Communications at Belmond (LVMH). LUX Leaders & Philanthropists Editor, Samantha Welsh speaks with Arnaud Champenois about hospitality, sustainability, and how 2024 is set to be a game-changing year for Belmond

Belmond Legends – Mount Nelson Hotel (Photographed by Rosie Marks)

LUX: ‘One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.’ (Henry Miller). When did the first shoots of experiential hospitality emerge?

Arnaud Champenois: Experiential travel continues to grow in popularity as the world has become an increasingly mobile place. Prior to the 1980s, airfares were sky-high and the majority of commercial flights were to highly anglicized locations, very much on the beaten track. During this time, travel was also fairly limited to western travellers.

As ‘untrodden’ locations became an option, boomers were somewhat pioneers of experiential travel – which in that time was defined more as ‘activity-packed’ exploration holidays. Then came the internet, followed by social media and the trend snowballed from there…

Since then, the term ‘experiential travel’ has evolved. Modern luxury travellers now want something different. Tick-box, fast and thoughtless travel is in the past. Travellers want to go much deeper into a destination rather than purely seeing it and ticking it off their list. They wish to stay longer, try local delicacies, enjoy traditional music and crafts, understand the people, discover the real local treasures. They want to live the stories, not just hear them.

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Luxury travel is now providing this kind of experience, but to do this long into the future, it is vital that we as travel companies play our part in protecting and preserving the most cherished traditions and heritage of the destinations and communities travel relies upon and strive to make a net positive impact.

LUX: Looking back or looking forward, what is Belmond’s approach to restoring heritage buildings?

AC: History in built environments is fundamental to creating a sense of community and character. They are examples of a particular time and style of architecture that would otherwise be long forgotten. Whether it’s a building’s historical roots, its distinctive architecture, the materials used or some aspect of the decoration that’s particularly interesting, these buildings are visual reminders of an area’s cultural heritage, the people and industries that once and still do, establish an area.

But the hospitality industry caters to the travellers of today. Though many are interested in the historic cultural elements, they want to experience that heritage in an authentic way, whilst being allowed modern-day comforts.

MITICO 2024 – Copacabana Palace (Daniel Buren, Escala colorida para Copacabana Palace, trabalho in situ, 2023)

We believe we have a responsibility to be custodians of this timeless heritage, and to help preserve and enhance it for future generations. Our renovation and rejuvenation strategy follows our property-first approach to honour each renovation’s storied and timeless heritage; whilst celebrating the authenticity of each place and injecting contemporary soul to ensure they live on for years to come. We need our more historic assets to live and breathe and be enjoyed, not just be consigned to a museum.

Last year (2023) we revealed four major rejuvenations – the painstaking renovation of Maroma in Riviera Maya, the re-imagining Coquelicot, Belmond’s new luxury barge Coquelicot, Venice Simplon-Orient-Express and Splendido in Portofino. We will continue to reimagine and rejuvenate, arming each property with the contemporary allure, enriched storytelling and meaningful guest experiences that propels them to be the best in their markets.

MITICO 2024 – Daniel Buren at Mount Nelson Hotel, 2023

LUX: What is the role for art in offering responsible hospitality?

AC: Art is a powerful medium which can support local communities giving both local established and upcoming artists a stage to reach new, larger audiences, whilst connecting guests to local cultures, inspiring and facilitating the appreciation of art.

One such example is Belmond’s partnership with internationally renowned contemporary art gallery, Galleria Continua in which we host large-scale art installations by global artists, across several of Belmond’s legendary properties. Entitled MITICO, the installations invite guests to see cultures through a different lens. Through MITICO’s acclaim and the representation of globally renowned artists through Galleria Continua, we have been able to further support local artists. Such as with the following two initiatives, equally launched with Galleria Continua: La Residencia in Mallorca’s “Artist in Residencia” programme, now in its second year. And PANORAMA, a city-wide exhibition conceptualised and organised by Italics bringing ancient, modern and contemporary art to the town of Monferrato, where Belmond will be a proud partner for the third year running.

In Cape Town at Mount Nelson, we’re working with young talented curators Heinrich Groenewald and Shona van der Merwe of RESERVOIR, who have curated an exhibition across the hotel with works from the Norval Foundation. Whilst at Castello di Casole in the undulating Tuscan hills, the hotel works closely with the archaeological museum in Casole d’Elsa, as most of their artefacts were found on the property grounds and even exhibit across the hotel.

Beyond events and installations, the curation of a rich portfolio of guest experiences centred directly around traditional art practices is a great way to support local communities. At Belmond we have a rich portfolio of experiences such as, traditional Peruvian pottery painting hosted by local pottery artists, exclusive Mexican folk art – ‘Mojigangas’ – workshops with resident artists and Balinese egg painting with third-generation egg painters, to name a few. Not only does this support the livelihoods of local artisans, but these guest experiences also help to ensure the continued existence of their crafts.

MITICO 2023 – Villa San Michele ( Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s Teenager sculpture greets arriving guests. Photography by François Halard)

LUX: Why is l’art de vivre a core value for Belmond?

AC: The French concept of l’art de vivre takes its cues from France’s particular penchant for the finer things in life: art, wine, dining, fashion, even romance. At Belmond, we understand the components that make up the wonderful world of luxury and, with more than 45 years’ experience, we like to think we are well placed to help our guests appreciate the art of living well!

Contemporary creativity is wonderfully engaging in helping guests celebrate l’art de vivre of the destinations we operate in. Beyond in-person art installations and photography exhibitions, a good example of how we have celebrated the distinct character of our destinations is Belmond Legends, which is a contemporary photography series that offers alternative perspectives.

With camera in hand, exceptional talents from the likes of Jalan and Jibril Durimel, Thomas Rousset and Rosie Marks immersed themselves in each iconic hotel and destination to encapsulate intimate, dynamic and authentic moments that provide a glance into genuine guest experiences within these destinations. The photographs offer a progressive and personal perspective on these already iconic destinations – showing each property in a new light.

Beyond the topic of art, we help guests celebrate l’art de vivre through many experiences that enrich the mind, body and soul; from historical tours and enriching activities such as open water swimming in the Scottish Highlands as part of the Royal Scotsman itinerary, truffle foraging in Tuscany, or private culinary classes at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons.

Belmond Legends – Villa San Michele (photographed by François Halard)

LUX: And finally, can you share a taste of this year’s art program?

AC: Since Belmond’s inception, we have had an intrinsic connection to the arts community, with our portfolio spanning heritage buildings and vintage trains – museums of ancient decorative crafts. Our ambition is to continue highlighting this historical aspect of our portfolio, whilst maintaining its relevancy in contemporary culture through photographic artistic collaboration.

BELMOND LEGENDS brings this concept to life with its incredible roster of international contemporary artists, whilst we lend our properties’ remarkable landscapes as their canvas.

So far, the project has brought an entirely new perspective on 11 of our legendary properties as captured by 10 internationally acclaimed photographers – Chris Rhodes, Francois Halard, Letizia Le Fur, Coco Capitan, Jalan and Jibril Durimel, Thomas Rousset, Rosie Marks, Jeano Edwards, and Jack Davison. With more announcements to come at Photo London in May 2024.

Belmond Legends – Venice Simplon-Orient-Express (Photographed by Coco Capitán)

belmond.com

Cristina Scocchia has led illycaffè, the Italian premium coffee company, through two years of record growth. She speaks with LUX Leaders & Philanthropists Editor Samantha Welsh about strong leadership, ethical behaviours and custodianship of a quintessentially ‘Made in Italy’ brand that is also a B Corp and leader in sustainable practice

Cristina Scocchia CEO of illycaffè

LUX: What is your approach to leadership, what are your values?

Cristina Scocchia: In my opinion, good leadership is made of many components. Early on in your career, you need to focus on strategic thinking and work on an ability to make decisions, even the toughest ones without feeling the pressure. It is also important to stand up for the decisions you make, whether they are easy or tough.

As your career progresses emotional intelligence becomes more important as you begin managing different people. It is important to take care of your teams, to be emotionally intelligent, authentic and empathetic in order to engender trust and an effective team. As you start managing bigger teams, which could include different markets, it is important to have a political intelligence.

At the very top of the pyramid, I feel the most important element of leadership is moral consistency. This is important because as a leader, you need to set the tone, you need to integrate economic, financial, social, environmental and ethical value – all of which are integral to illycaffè. Leadership is not power; it is a responsibility.

Follow LUX on instagram: luxthemagazine

LUX: How do these values match illy’s pillars, the mission?

CS: One of the reasons why I decided to accept the role as CEO of illycaffè was because I had had the opportunity to get to know the company beforehand. I learned that sustainability for illy is not just a trend for them, even 30 years ago, illy was integrating sustainable initiatives.

For decades it has built value across all elements of the value chain starting from the growers in Brazil to the baristas in every city across the world. The brand has a true focus on ethical behaviours which is something illy and I have in common.

illy selects the finest Arabica coffee plants, grown sustainably by their farmers in over 30 countries around the world

LUX: illy is quintessentially Italian, do people have a nostalgia for the brand?

CS: Founded 91 years ago by Francesco illy and now under the wing of the 3rd generation of the family with Andrea Illy, illycaffè has long been a much-loved brand. We have been, since day one, an icon of the ‘Made in Italy’ concept. When we think about ‘Made in Italy’ products, we think about quality, innovation, creativity and an Italian style of life. As a company, we try to be ambassadors across the world for this Italian style of life and make people feel at home when they see an illy coffee shop.

Our objective is to offer a holistic experience for the consumer, we want to focus on the best quality and most sustainable products, as well as evoke emotion and creativity.

This is why 30 years ago we decided to create the illy Art Collection. This collection is now one of the largest contemporary art collections in the world. Utilising illy’s iconic Mattheo Thun designed espresso cup as a canvas, we have partnered with more than 127 contemporary artists including Ai Wei Wei and Jeff Koons.

A couple of years ago, we launched a new collaboration with Italian design company, Kartell, who primarily focus on sustainable furniture. We sourced a selection of materials which were at the end of their life including our illy coffee capsules which we then transformed into a chair, partnering with illustrious designers such as Philippe Stark.

illy has perfected the process to obtain a coffee with a rich aromatic flavour and a one of a kind aroma

LUX: How has illy continued to lead in R&D and how does knowledge transfer impact the supply chain?

CS: We have several knowledge sharing programmes between illy and our growers. We are constantly working with them to produce the best quality and most sustainable coffee which has the least impact on the environment. With quality important to us, we select only 100% Arabica coffee beans, buying only the best 1%.

Through our University of Coffee, we support growers throughout the whole production process, working together on ways to use less fertiliser and pesticides and how to reduce the production of CO2. The University of Coffee also supports consumers and baristas internationally, educating them about the coffee world.

LUX: Can you tell us about illy’s early move into regenerative agriculture, also how this adds value?

CS: illy has long been committed to mitigating the effects of climate change and we work with the entire supply chain to promote the sustainability of regenerative agriculture. This model allows for proper nourishment of the plants, regeneration of the soil and reducing CO2 emissions, as well as improving the wider health of the ecosystem.

This year, we developed our first regenerative coffeemono-origin, the illy Arabica Selection Brazil Cerrado Mineiro, which we are very proud of. It is the first of its kind worldwide and is fully certified and regenerative, marking a shift from plant to soil. It is the first Italian coffee company to be certified BCorp.

LUX: What is illy’s sustainability strategy going forward?

CS: A strategy of ours that we are currently working towards is quantifying CO2 emissions and understanding how much CO2 is produced by the growers when they cultivate our coffee When we obtain this information, we then share this throughout the institution and community in order for others to benefit from what we are learning. We are hugely committed to having the lowest impact possible on the environment. Our plan is to be carbon neutral by 2033 – to mark our centenary.

Read more: Marcus Ericksen on keeping our oceans healthy

LUX: Where do you see opportunities for illy to grow?

CS: Our objective is to become more of a global company. Within the next 5 years, we are looking to expand into the US as this market for us is the second biggest worldwide, following Italy. We are already very strong within the ecommerce space and highly profitable, however, we still have a desire to keep evolving.

We are also interested in exploring areas of white space, an example of which is China. These markets are traditionally more focused on tea than coffee, however, in recent years, coffee has become more and more integrated within markets and we see this as significant growth opportunity.

illy.com

Gallerist, Superblue founder, and blue-blood British aristocrat Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst recently set herself a unique challenge: curating a show at Claridges’ in London by the sculptor Richard Hudson and his two sons, Richard WM Hudson and Henry Hudson. The twist? They are her partner and his sons. Here, Dent-Brocklehurst and the Hudsons, father and sons, speak to LUX about this unique family affair

Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst with the Hudson Family

Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst:
“The Hudsons are are a close knit family. Talking multiple times a day, they often pick up a conversation started weeks before. Their discussions revolve around visual ideas and practical solutions, each bringing a slightly different angle to the table. Richard WM has an exquisite sense of balance and composition in his photographs and interior design, whilst Henry is more driven by ideas and process. He writes and speaks beautifully about his and others’ work. Richard Sr. corrals and encourages. He is intensely motivated and perfectionist, always pushing everyone forward.

Rich combinations fill Claridge’s ArtSpace, from Henry Hudson’s plasticine-sculpted paintings of dream-like worlds, to Richard Hudson’s psychological interests, to Richard WM Hudson’s ecological inspirations

Selecting the works for the show was easy as the Hudsons’ work is genuinely harmonious. Setting out a rhythm within the space was harder as there were a lot of works and I wanted the artists to have separation as well as collusion. The install was probably the most intense with so many moving parts and a few flared tempers. But really, it’s during this part that some of the magic happens.”

Henry Hudson:
It dawned on me only after the installation that it’s rare to see a family of artists work all exhibited together. In fact, I couldn’t think of one show I have ever seen that displays a father and two sons work together. Family dynamics are at play in all our lives. As a unit we have all naturally found ourselves becoming artists and directly working with our hands.

The Hudson family – Richard, Henry, Richard WM – create an exhibition together for the first time

Historically our family have been farmers and land owners and we have a direct connection to the land and nature. It is hard to be objective about the exhibition as I am one of the three parties but I do find myself seeing the roles played out, like sitting in a psychiatrist’s chair, and listening to the responses given by my father and sibling.

Henry Hudson, 2023. Plaster, pigment, glue and beeswax on aluminium board

My father’s work is organic yet firm and sits with a fist on the table. I often see us as dancing around him to fill in the extra space. It feels elemental and planetary in that regard. My brother and I started making work in an intellectual capacity around the same time as my father. He was 42 years old, the age my brother and I are now. We were 12 and 14 – growing into young adults. I, myself, use a wide range of tools, techniques and technology in my practice, from AI to iPad painting, performance art and plasticine, to name a few. My brother found ceramics and coiling pots as well as wood from dead fallen trees. What binds us artistically is earth and earthen materials, all working directly with our hands.

On top of this is a love and understanding of the cycle of life in nature and our complex and sometimes troubling relationships with it. What differentiates us can be both cultural experiences and subject matter, and a yearning to find a slightly different path up to the top of the mountain.

It is hard to articulate what is in essence a daily ritual for us and a language we all use. I sense that the viewer may sense and feel the internal experiences of each individual artist but also the complex psychological aspect of three men, all working in the artistic realm. There is a lot at play, and playful it is, and so it should be.

Richard Hudson:
The opportunity to exhibit with my sons has always been a personal ambition. When this opportunity arose, we collectively turned to Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst to curate. Although our artistic practices have taken different directions, one can see through our farming background, there is a continuity inspired from nature and the use of earthen materials with our hands.

Richard Hudson, Twisted, Polished Mirrored Steel

Richard WM Hudson:
Working with my father and brother to bring our art works together has been rare and interesting. Only seen together in private dwellings, the excitement of seeing our work on mass in such an elegant setting, thanks to Claridge’s ArtSpace, is truly fulfilling.

Richard WM Hudson, Untitled, Carbonised Pine Wood and Ceramic Black Clay

Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst has such a professional approach with the difficult task of sifting through our works to bring a cohesive view into the family of objects. I’m thankful for the push from Katy Wick [of Claridge’s ArtSpace] to bring about such a show. We work in such different ways, but one can see the organic references. We only call upon each other at times for clarity and guidance, when we are lost in the ‘artist block’. I hope this collaboration of exhibition continues into the future.

The Hudsons: Family Ties is running in Claridge’s ArtSpace in Mayfair, London until 2 April. Entrance is free

See more: claridges-artspace

LUX visits one of London’s hidden gems, an atmospheric and authentic Japanese restaurant a mochi ball’s throw from Hyde Park

The decor is minimal-chic, the ambience relaxed and buzzy

A row of townhouses in central London is not where you might expect to find Japan, But, turn left from Marble Arch, walk a few paces up the street and up a couple of steps and..abracadabra. Tokyo. Or is it Kyoto?

Tokii is the very authentic-feeling restaurant in the heart of the Prince Akatoki hotel, a boutique-chic five star London sleepery that seems to be the city’s best-kept secret. The hotel lobby, just up those steps, is minimal and Zen, but with authentically switched-on staff and thought-of design detail, just as you would find anywhere self-respecting in Japan (which is everywhere).

Tokii itself is a few steps further on: inside, you are swirled into a world of dark lacquered woods and gentle lighting and intricate design detail. It’s large enough not to feel oppressive, like some high-end Japanese restaurants, and yet has an intimate vibe.

Service is friendly and prompt: our aperitifs of sparkling saké and champagne arrive swiftly. Sparkling saké is an acquired taste, we decide. The champagne is excellent, though we would have liked more choice than just the big brands: Veuve Clicquot, Krug, Dom Perignon. The finesse of Japanese food matches well with champagne, even more so with blanc de blancs, made only from Chardonnay, or precise, small-grower champagne from single plots.

Sashimi paired with a brut champagne – or sparkling saké, though we preferred the champagne

There is plenty of choice in the menu, We choose starters while nibbling on salted edamame: yellowtail maki rolls, pork belly skewers, yellowtail sashimi. All are super-fresh, richly flavoured, perfectly prepared, not too meagre and not too hefty. Superb. Some good white Burgundy arrives to accompany, although champagne would do even better with a spectrum of colour to match the salt, umami, and hint of sweet and fat in the food.

For mains, we try the shabu shabu, a Japanese broth in which meat and vegetables are cooked at the table, fondue-style. The wagyu version arrives with slices of wagyu beef laid out on a plate alongside, and vegetables already cooking in the bubbling broth. A few seconds of cooking sees these come out as slices of fleshy unctuousness. The vegetables stay crunchy while cooking in the umami, slightly sour broth, a bitter counterpoint on the tongue. Two shabus are enough for three of us.

Cook your own wagyu beef shabu shabu. The broth is delicate and beautifully balanced

The great surprise is the yellowtail shabu shabu. Also thinly sliced, it should be a disappointment after the wagyu but is triumphant. More restrained, a slow release of recognition on the palate, and then joy.

We braced ourselves for disappointment with the dessert of chocolate fondant – this is a Japanese restaurant after all – but the breaking of the fondant led to that slow ooze and a richesse of combined flavours that spoke of a chef pâtissier who loves flavour and experience as much as looks, and isn’t scared of a little opulence.

Outrageously good chocolate fondant, just in case the rest of the meal was too healthy

We were among the first to arrive at Tokii, and among the last to leave. Why is it such a secret? Let’s get it out of its boudoir: Tokii deserves the limelight.

tokii.co.uk

LUX drives the latest iteration of one of the world’s great supercars, the V10 engined, open-topped Huracan Spyder

It may look good outside the yacht club…

The latest evolution of the flamboyant Italian car company’s brilliant two-seater looks like something run by an avatar from a games console, more mini-spaceship than vehicle. With the roof down (Spyder is Lamborghese for convertible) it looks more like a pair of aliens (driver and passenger) are taking a little tour of Earth.

Colour is a fundamental element of cars like these. If our Huracan had been green, purple, orange or any of the other eye-popping colours Lambo drivers like to choose, it would have been one kind of statement of personality: perhaps the most attention-grabbing car in the world in an attention-seeking hue. But in a dark metallic grey, it looked intriguing: more space vehicle, less boulevard poser. The interior was also restrained, black leather with blue piping, although the company’s design flair was everywhere, playing on hexagonal patterns and forms. This is not a car that could be mistaken for any other.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

The Huracan has a V10 motor that howls on startup and growls its way around town, quickly turning again to a howl when you find a patch of open road.

…but the Evo Spyder is happiest on fast, empty roads

With the wildness of the shape and the sound, you may expect the Huracan also to be wild to drive: like trying to tame a bucking bronco, or the raging bull that is Lamborghini’s emblem. And here, you would be in for a positive, or negative, surprise, depending on how you like your steeds. While it’s sensationally fast, corners flat and steers racily, the Huracan is underpinned by the latest driving technology engineered in association with its parent company, which also owns more sober brands like Audi and Bentley.

Shoot out of a roundabout into an unexpectedly tight curve and the car just clings on, happily. Accelerate through a wet corner and hit a patch of slippery leaves? Lamborghinis of earlier generations may have skidded or bucked, heartstoppingly for the driver; the Huracan just uses its four wheel drive system and fancy electrics to keep you zooming on track.

It makes for a thrilling experience for a passenger, who can enjoy the sounds and feel and looks the car receives, without feeling like they are in peril.

The Huracan Evo is powered by a V10 engine, of a kind that will never be made again, that makes a characteristic howl

Read more: Ferrari F8 Tributo and F8 Spider

And let’s spend a final moment on that engine. It is what the motoring world calls a “naturally aspirated” V10, with no turbocharger to help it. That means that its noise and punch get steadily more thrilling as you rise up through the rev range: maximum yowl means maximum acceleration, and you have to get there either by whipping down through the gears with the paddle shift by the steering wheel, or allow the revs to build up in each gear. It’s something that even current hyper efficient petrol engines, with turbos or electric hybrid help, can’t offer, let alone electric motors. And given the tiny mileages these cars tend to cover, you don’t even need to worry about whether you are being green.

Find out more: lamborghini.com

Picture Ladbroke Hall – a cocktail of Beaux Arts elegance, Edwardian grandeur, modern creativity. This ex-car factory has transformed itself into a sprawling arts complex, from gallery to jazz bar to fine-dining. LUX Editor-in-Chief Darius Sanai meets its mastermind and co-founder, Loïc Gaillard

Darius Sanai: Ladbroke Hall is a major development. What made you want to do it?

Loïc Le Gaillard: Ladbroke Hall has been an incredible journey! The inspiration behind this project was simple – we aimed to establish a unique arts and social club, a central hub for creativity. From contemporary art to collectible design, encompassing culture, dining, and music, all within a single space. Beyond being a physical location, Ladbroke Hall is a meeting place for everyone – the public, friends, Patrons, and collaborators alike. It tangibly serves as a haven for those who appreciate the arts and seek meaningful connections, bringing together diverse minds and kindred spirits.

Ladbroke Hall also houses our flagship gallery, Carpenters Workshop Gallery in London. After 17 years of developing Carpenters Workshop Gallery, we made the decision to expand on the traditional gallery model to facilitate artistic exchange through a more immersive experience.

DS: It has elements of members’ club, but it’s not. Who is your market, and why are they coming?

LG: Ladbroke Hall is a distinctive haven for our community of art and design enthusiasts. In response to the growing need for spaces that foster community and connectivity, we introduced the Patron’s scheme. This scheme is designed to give our Patrons exclusive access to Ladbroke Hall’s vibrant community. This includes special privileges such as entry to private spaces like the Lamyland Patrons bar, ensuring that our Patrons are involved in every facet of Ladbroke Hall’s endeavours. Priority access to the live programme of Patron only events, the restaurant, and private dining experiences further enhances the Patron experience. Despite these exclusive perks, our commitment to inclusivity remains unwavering, ensuring that the enriching ambiance and offerings at Ladbroke Hall are accessible to all.

Functioning as a dynamic stage for the Arts, Ladbroke Hall creates unforgettable experiences. Our philosophy centres on providing Patrons with unparalleled access to the thriving artistic community, emphasising the shared experience within this vibrant creative hub.

DS: Tell us about how the commercial gallery, F&B and cultural programming work together.

LG: At its core, Ladbroke Hall is a stage for the Arts – a place to experience multidisciplinary arts all under the same roof. When visitors dine at our restaurant, Pollini, they are not only savouring the finest Italian cuisine by Chef Emanuele Pollini; they are doing so in a designed space crafted by one of our core artists and fellow Italian, Vincenzo De Cotiis Architects. The space features a specially commissioned, site-specific sculptural chandelier by Nacho Carbonell and four paintings by Sir Christopher Le Brun PPRA.

Visitors are also invited to enjoy our weekly Friday Jazz, accompanied with a specialised dinner menu. This event welcomes both jazz enthusiasts and new audiences, featuring some of today’s top musicians with a focus on high-quality straight-ahead jazz. The essence of this musical genre, breaking barriers and fusing cultures, resonates with Ladbroke Hall’s ethos as a multidisciplinary creative hub.

Recently, we’ve introduced the Classical Masters series, showcasing performances by some of the most distinguished classical musicians. Additionally, Carpenters Workshop Gallery currently hosts three solo exhibitions by Michele Lamy, Roger Herman, and Wendell Castle, all running until April 26th.

We also are excitingly opening Ladbroke Hall’s garden this spring designed by Luciano Giubbilei – so stay tuned! Ladbroke Hall has something for everyone, providing a space for people to gather and enjoy the Arts.

Ladbroke Hall is an imposing building, just a few minutes from the heart of London’s shi shi Notting Hill.

DS: Why has it taken a French person to create such a visionary construct in London?

LG: London has long been a melting pot, drawing incredible talent from across the globe. It has been my home for half of my life, a place that continues to surprise and inspire me daily. London will always be international. As the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, once said, when the UK officially left the EU, “London is open and no matter where you’re from, you will always belong here.” Therefore, I do not see it as a French person in a British city constructing something so visionary. Several years on from Brexit, London continues to attract the world’s most exciting artistic talent and in turn collectors. It’s a hub for exchange and that is exactly how we see Ladbroke Hall.

DS: You opened less than six months ago; what would you want people to be saying about Ladbroke Hall in ten years?

LG: That’s a great question. I envision Ladbroke Hall in ten years to be the premier social and arts club where everyday visitors create wonderful memories and forged new friendships and collaborations. It is exciting to think what else Ladbroke Hall has in store, making it a journey we can only fully appreciate by waiting and enjoying the ride.

DS: What were your biggest challenges in its creation?

LG: Crafting Ladbroke Hall was in no means an easy feat. It is thanks to our team, collaborators and artists who helped create Ladbroke Hall. My business partner, Julien Lombrail and I pulled together a band of artists that were keen on joining the vision for this ecosystem.

Loïc Le Gaillard and Julien Lombrail are the co-founders of Ladbroke Hall, which blends a high end restaurant, a bar, a commercial arts-ace, a jazz club and a new garden space.

DS: What do you seek to achieve, and who do you seek to attract, through your programming.

LG: Curious, creative and kind people.

DS: You run the restaurant yourselves, yet you are not a restaurateur. Why? Is that challenging?

LG: The desire to open a restaurant has been a lifelong dream of mine. London’s competitive scene presents its challenges, but it’s an honour to collaborate with Chef Emanuele Pollini, who brings his brilliant culinary expertise to us.

Has Rosewood’s Sonia Cheng created the best city hotel in the world, with the Rosewood Hong Kong? Darius Sanai revisits, five years after the grand opening

The Asaya Kitchen. The Rosewood is built along the water’s edge in Tsim Sha Tsui, facing the towers of Central Hong Kong.

Standout new hotels in cities are hard to create. If you are building a resort on a tropical island, as long as you have the right hardware – pools, beaches, spa, restaurants and bars, leisure facilities and access – and the right people to operate and sell it, then the right crowd should start flowing in.

The world’s great cities are different. They tend to have existing hotels which are part of the social fabric and history of the city – think of the Pierre or the Carlyle in New York, Claridge’s or the Ritz in London, the Plaza Athenee or Bristol in Paris. Newcomers can’t just win by offering the right suites and chefs. They have to establish their own legend among the locals. And they are hypersensitive to location. Claridge’s wouldn’t be what it is if it had been built 200m north across Oxford Street.

In this context, Hong Kong’s Rosewood had a battle on its hands when it opened in the spring of 2019. It was a new building, part of a broader complex created by one of the city’s big families, the Chengs, on the “wrong” side of the water, in Kowloon. There was no history or legend: despite being from Hong Kong and operating hotels around the world, Rosewood’s owners had never had a Rosewood Hong Kong, One of the city’s landmark properties, the Peninsula, was just down the road.

A Manor Suite. There is an intellectually-driven curation of design detail throughout the rooms

Just weeks after the lavish launch party, which I attended, Hong Kong was thrown into social unrest as political protestors barricaded streets, burned buses and fought running battles with police in full body armour firing tear gas. No hotel was immune to having its guests risk walking into a teargas barrage. Then came the pandemic, with Hong Kong suffering among the most severe lockdown restrictions in the world; at times any visitor from the rest of the world had to self-quarantine, at their own cost, for weeks on arrival.

Now, nearly five years later, I have been back to the Rosewood Hong Kong for the first time since its launch party. I expected a fine luxury hotel in the mould of other new-ish city hotels, still finding its feet, perhaps. After a four day stay, I am increasingly convinced I found something that changes the game.

LUX checked into a Harbour Corner Suite. We were dreamily distracted by the coffee table book selection, the view, and just out of picture, the drinks trolley, and telescope.

Rosewood’s dramatic tower sits linked to the equally new K11 MUSEA complex on the Victoria Dockside in Hong Kong. The hotel’s designers have made a virtue of its waterfront location across the water facing Hong Kong Island: I tried three rooms, each with an unbelievable view across the water, through floor-to-ceiling windows, of the city’s skyline and the Peak mountain rising up behind. By night, it is a Supernova-style light show. By day, you are distracted by pleasure boats and other traffic floating back and forth along the water.

Design is a difficult element at a time when the wealthy are going through a generational change: do you create interiors aimed at the older or the emerging generation? Rosewood has succeeded in doing both, primarily through the sheer thoughtfulness and quality of the materials, designs and public areas. If it were a luxury brand, this hotel would be Hermes: traditional yet playful, compromising nothing on cost or quality, with a clearly executed and thoughtful vision.

The Butterfly room, featuring Damien Hirst’s Zodiac series.

Lift lobbies are created as drawing rooms, with beautiful furniture and cabinets containing everything from Chinese vases and models of 1970s cars to the best curated selection of coffee table fashion and design books I have seen anywhere. In the bedrooms, it’s all about the quality of detail. My coffee machine and waste baskets were nestled in cool contemporary leather pouches. The bath had a wooden book and magazine holder on one side .

The glass bottles of Votary shampoo, shower gel and conditioner were encased in their own glass cabinet, swathed in light wood, within the two-person, walk through marble showers. The extending reading light had its stem swathed in stitched leather. The drinks trolley, with its curved metals, contained a beautifully presented nest of hyper-artisanal bottles of spirits and liqueurs and a couple of good cocktail books.

From the door fixtures to the lacquering, from the choice of marbles to the design threads of the bathrobes and staff uniforms, everything at the Rosewood is a level above your average luxury hotel.

The look is not fussy or traditional. It’s firmly up to the minute, yet unites a Gen Z fashion leader and a Boomer conglomerate owner. The creativity of the design combines hints of art-deco, sprinkles of 20th-century modern, and a very up to the minute aesthetic which somehow takes in classicism. Solid woods, brass, and other metals are everywhere. Things that should ring hollow, literally, make a “thunk”. Yet there is no brashness, not a hint of bling.

Outside the rooms and lift lobbies, I spent quite some time in the Manor Club, a 40th-floor refuge containing a dining room, bar, snooker room and drawing room. Again, everything was about the detail. Lighting was exquisite, and slightly different for each area – I liked the darkness of the two-seat table by the floor-to-ceiling window in the bar area. The cocktail list combines the confidence of a family that owns one of the world’s bar legends, Bemelmans at the Carlyle in New York, with a next-gen curiosity and edge. Even the wines by the glass are perfectly curated – I remembered that Sonia Cheng’s husband is, independently, the most respected importer of fine wines in Hong Kong, and although I he doesn’t input directly on the lists, this is a place that is obsessive about details.

The Asaya Spa has indoor and outdoor wellness facilities, giving an island resort feel

Meanwhile down on the 6th floor the spa is another feast of organic, artisanal design detail, with a room devoted entirely to which herbs, extracts and smells should accompany your treatment and an outdoor terrace with a view. The outdoor pool (closed for annual maintenance when I visited) is open year-round and a destination in itself with its dramatic views.

None of this would work without service and local engagement – nobody wants to stay at a tourist hotel – and the Rosewood has both, and how. Staying in a suite, I was assigned a team of butlers, nattily dressed in the group’s trademark grey and black check. Butlers can sometimes be a mixed blessing in hotels. Unlike your own personal Jeeves, tomorrow’s butler may have no recollections of your conversations with today’s, meaning for sometimes tiresome repeat conversations. These ones had nailed it with their handovers: it’s as if butlers on different shifts had the same brain but different faces. They were charming, too, not service robots: chic young locals. I had a lively conversation about my sneakers with one, a big Off-White fan.

Working out exactly which potions and lotions you wish to avail yourself of before your treatment is a relaxing experience in itself

You could, frankly, just spend your F&B time in the Manor Club, so special is its design, vibe and service, but the Rosewood has numerous other restaurants to try, and is umbilically linked to K11 MUSEA, the art, culture, retail, gastronomy and craft showcase created next door by Sonia’s brother Adrian Cheng – this is a creative family, creating stuff at a level not seen anywhere else.

One of the Rosewood bars is called The Dark Side, a self-ironic reference to what those on Hong Kong Island call the Kowloon side of the water where the Rosewood sits. There is a private members’ club on the 53th floor, Carlyle & Co, teeming with locals; apparently the hotel as a whole is a favourite for wealthy Hong Kongers on staycations.

The Rosewood has the confidence to be self-referentially ironic. The Dark Side bar is a humorous reference to what locals in central Hong Kong across the water call this side of the Harbour

And what about that location? The area has become a destination in itself, with K11 MUSEA and notably the new M+, Asia’s best contemporary art museum, along the road. If you need to get to Central Hong Kong for meetings or visits, it can take 10 minutes with no traffic, or more on a bad day. There is also direct access, via K11 MUSEA, to TST MTR (subway) station from which it is one stop to Admiralty station in the heart of Hong Kong Island. Or you can take the Star Ferry across the bay.

The ambition of Rosewood Hong Kong is immense, and it has been executed with a combination of mathematical thoroughness – Sonia Cheng is a mathematics graduate from Harvard – exquisite taste in design and materials, deep knowledge of how hotellerie should work, and an innate awareness of how to create timelessness, which always starts with quality. I can’t think of a better newly built city hotel anywhere in the world. Rosewood, originally an American hotel company, is Asia’s luxury brand now. Maybe we can expect some handbags and silk scarves next.

rosewood.com

Alain Servais is an investment banker and collector of art-as-ideas, whose family collection is showcased in The Loft, a repurposed factory in central Brussels. In a conversation moderated by LUX’s Leaders & Philanthropists editor, Samantha Welsh, Servais speaks with South Asian philanthropist and collector, Durjoy Rahman, about supporting artists who give minorities a voice and make people think.

Alain Servais (left) and Durjoy Rahman (right). Photo montage by Isabel Phillips

LUX: How has business shaped your your passion for art?

DURJOY RAHMAN: I started my career at a very young age when I started my business in textiles and garments production. It was when I started exporting that I found that I experienced a negative perception about Bangladesh. I had to engage in a kind of cultural diplomacy when I went to business meetings! I would talk positively about the good things happening in Bangladesh, sharing what was interesting for buyers in course of business development.

ALAIN SERVAIS: For me it was about filling a gap rather than part of my business plan. Investment banking is about trying to understand human nature, anticipating what will happen, asking questions, maybe about the effects of a societal drift to the far right, or changing attitudes to minorities, the potential disruption from new tech and social media, and so on. So understanding herd instinct is very important. In its way it’s pretty sterile as it is all about money. You are missing the voices of so many different people. That is what is interesting in Art.

LUX: How did you become interested in art?

AS: I have no collector-parents, no experience of studying or making art at all, I fell into art by accident. It’s about the convergence of those interesting parts of human nature, professional and private, a kind of curiousness. And that came from working in investment banking, because you are so used to absorbing a massive amount of data and opinion to make decisions.

DR: It was an accident for me too. I was visiting New York and I first saw the silk screens of Marilyn Monroe and Ingrid Bergmann (which in fact I eventually collected). I decided to license and reprint the graphics on a European fashion brand T-shirt, by Replay I remember. It was this fashion x art collaboration which catalysed my art journey.

LUX: So discovery is a big part of your vision?

DR: Yes, I was frequently away on business in Europe and North America, and I would visit the many galleries and museums as I was passing through, always noticing the contrast with South Asia, where we had few institutions despite our long cultural heritage and traditional practices. So that’s why I decided that one day I would do something about it by creating a platform of my own.

AS: I love traveling, discovering other cultures, getting close to parts of the world that people have prejudice and ignorance about.  I had the chance to go to Bangladesh and discovered a totally different, very rich culture. The way I process the experience is through bringing back works of art.

LUX: Should collectors open the door to alternative realities?

AS: We should stop making out that collectors are Superman/woman! We are just human beings finding outlets in art, revealing society’s many problems in the process.  This is about my own interest in contemporary culture.  I have a real problem with nostalgia and the selfishness of it all.

Artworks in a 2019-2020 exhibition at The Loft, the 900 square meter space which has housed the Servais family collection since 2010.

LUX: Is this why you collect ‘emerging’ artists?

AS: Emerging artists for me are the artists who are not selling-out to that nostalgic drive. It’s about the art created today that is worth preserving. Every major museum on the planet is based on the private collections of a few crazy collectors who plugged into whatever was going on in society at that time and collected artists who were expressing that in a particularly advanced way. For instance, forty years ago, Sophie Calle the French installation artist was already anticipating social media and reality shows – people want to watch people. So it’s about collecting and preserving artists’ works really early on, when Society does not yet understand their message.

DR: I agree, I really dislike the term ‘emerging artist’! These are claims not accurate predictions of who will be a great artist. In the art world, there is a structure, a platform, discipline, practice, so we can to an extent deduce who may emerge to be a strong or great artist. As to how successful they will be, that is far harder to judge. If you look at Bangladesh, Bangladesh is only 52 years old, so most artists here have actually been ‘emerging’ since 1971 ie post-Independence. DBF supports artists from this period and empowers them to create innovative bodies of work, influenced by social change. It’s about their context, their transmission of their knowledge and their influences.

Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation Creative Studio in Dhaka features works from around the Global South including, ‘Orator’ By William Kentridge (right) and ‘Rise of a Nation’ By Raghu Rai (left)

AS: Yes, yesterday I bought an innovative work from an artist from Bali. She had been totally underestimated to the extent she had never, in fact, even been called an ‘emerging artist’. She had, though, created new narratives through traditional Balinese painting and coloration, all pretty outrageous and about sexual liberation, lots of crazy images of penises, vaginas and everything. A good artist is someone that sends a message to the world, and a good collector is the one that understands this message before the masses. They are two sides of the same coin.

LUX: How is art messaging the voices of minority artists?

DR: We should first define what ‘minority’ means. After all, it means different things to different people. Sometimes, I feel like a minority when I enter the room at an event in the global North! It can be discomforting but I get over it with introductions and conversations.

AS: Yes, Durjoy, you’re right, you are a minority when traveling, and I am even an minority in Belgium – because when people visit The Loft they don’t get the art at all and probably think my kids should be taken into care! We are both minorities because we are both free-thinking individuals and non-conformists.

The Great Revel of Hairy Harry Who Who: Orgy in the cellar, 2015, by Athena Papadopoulos, in Dérapages & Post-bruises Imaginaries, the 2018-2019 exhibition at The Loft in Brussels.

DR: With the minority artists in Bangladesh, it’s not just about their religion or social status but can be about differences in cultural practice. For example, the remote Hill Tracts indigenous communities in Bangladesh are considered to be minorities, so when we talk about the cultural heritage of Bangladesh, DBF showcases their arts and crafts to the global North. By shining a light on their art we are bringing them into the discourse and including them in society. With our Future of Hope program during Covid, we included these indigenous artists from the Hill Tracts and two have become very prominent right now. Similarly, we took our project for Kochi Biennale from the remote northern region of Bangladesh. This was a very significant artwork created by ethnic communities who would never have been exhibited on the world stage.

Installation view of Bhumi, with support from The Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation, at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India.

AS: I learn a lot from the artists from the global South. Recently, I bought a work by a photographer from Bangladesh. It is an image around infrastructure, bridges, highways and I wanted it not just because I loved the aesthetic but because the message around it was deliberately unfinished. After I’d bought the work, not before, I made sure I sat next to the photographer at the festival dinner and was grateful for the experience of talking with him, on equal terms. It is a two-way business.

LUX: What is the responsibility of the audience toward the artist?

DR: Artists practice as they wish. It’s how the audience accepts their work that is the question. As a collector and as a founder of a foundation, we open up the opportunity for a deeper engagement from the audience with the artist’s social concerns. These activations are beyond direct action and inventions, creating a positive ripple effect. You have to ask yourself, ‘Am I here to change the world or to support a range of alternatives?’ We enable artists to create bodies of work that widen their potential for recognition on the world stage by bringing awareness of their voice and their cause.

Parables of the Womb by Dilara Begum Jolly at DBF Creative Studio.

AS: As far as the responsibility of the artist is concerned, I don’t like the quasi-deification of the artist. There are so many bad artists around! It is not enough to call yourself an artist to be an artist. I was with a collector in Istanbul last week and he told me he had reserved an exhibition space for a solo exhibition by an emerging artist, emphasising it had to be an artist with no gallery representation. It was to be for six weeks. He actually refused the the first offer, saying “I want to see if artists will fight for it!” For him, the fighting was an important element as so many artists were not thinking about what they are doing and why they were doing it.

LUX: Where do you think your art philanthropy will be, ten years’ from now?

DR: With DBF, we want to be an influential and vital activist who has used the power of art and culture to good effect, to make positive, impactful change in terms of social justice. I agree with Alain, we must question everything and that curiosity must inform our vision for the next decade.

Servais hosts exhibitions from his collection of international contemporary artists at The Loft, where he also hosts artists’ residencies.

AS: Because governments are funding the arts the arts less and less, I spend more and more time documenting the works I’m acquiring! I’m doing this to record for posterity the complexity of the artist’s thinking. I hope institutions give more power to curators to offer opportunities to interesting artists so we have the vital two-way discussions. I think we are going to go through extremely difficult times and I would not like to be this young generation. We need people like Durjoy, we need these discourses, we must give people a voice, and we must make people think!

Find out more: durjoybangladeshfoundation.org

Servais Family Collection on Instagram: @collectionservais

The Lakeside building of La Réserve Eden au Lac Zurich which dates back to 1909

The venerable Eden au Lac, one of the landmark lakeside hotels in Zürich, was recently taken over by the flamboyant La Reserve group, and transformed into a luxe-chic destination for every destination. LUX checks in and samples the champagne on the rooftop

The Wow Factor

The rooftop terrace of the Eden. Sitting on a corner table, wearing a light gilet against a cool breeze blowing from the Alps. The rosé champagne you are drinking has a pedigree related to the hotel: this is no ordinary house fizz, but a champagne made by Michel Reybier who owns both the La Reserve hotel group which the Eden belongs to, and some of the most prestigious wineries in the world, including Châte au Cos d’Estournel, and this champagne house, Jeepers. Sitting here, you are distinctly amongst the Zürich in crowd.

People Watching

Behind us, two paper thin American women were discussing travel, plans, deals, and their yoga routine. A gentleman from southern Europe wearing a rare Patek Phillipe, who would have looked very at home in the Yacht Club of Monaco, is sipping cocktails with a young lady. The people here are international, glamorous, wealthy, and wanting to show that they are here.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine 

Show me to my room.

Our room faced out from the front of the hotel, over the lakeside road and directly onto a park and the bathing area of Lake Zürich. A small balcony was an excellent place for breakfast with a view of the forest of hills on the other side of the lake. The opera house is almost next door: this is a very centrally located hotel. The bed with the centrepiece of the room, with the bathroom behind. here it is all about high quality material finishes and details: the wood marquetry is exceptionally beautiful, reflecting the craft traditions in the nearby Alpine forests but presented in a contemporary way, with plenty of shiny metals and exquisite accessories from the glassware to the in room amenities.

The street level Eden Kitchen which features all day dining

Come dine with me (and other things)

We loved La Muña, the rooftop Japanese Pacific restaurant and bar, which has been designed as an imaginary yacht club by Phillipe Starck. As well as the
superb quality of drinks (as one would expect from this group), the maki, sashimi and ceviches were exquisite. When the weather was less good, we dined inside: no views, but a chic cosiness and intimate style.

Find out more: lareserve-zurich.com

This article first appeared in the Autumn/Winter 2023/24 Issue of LUX

LUX recommends our top hotels to check into this year. Compiled by Olivia Cavigioli

Glenmorangie House, Ross, Scotland
For a retreat into the Scottish Highlands, whisky distiller’s Glenmorangie House is the place to go. The brand just recently celebrated 180 years of craftsmanship, their single malt distilled and encompassed by the idyll of the Highlands, ‘Glenmorangie’ translating to ‘Valley of Tranquility’ in Gaelic.

Situated along the coastline on the Easter Ross Peninsula, the house is a a stone’s throw away from the distillery so guests are immersed in the whisky making process and the land from which it is crafted. Designer Russel Sage brought the brand’s protected Tarlogie Springs to the Tasting Room, and the barley fields to the guilded Morning Room, curating the hotel with the Glenmorangie story in mind.

The brand hosts an exclusive weekend, ‘A Tale of Tokyo Experience’, in collaboration with drink connoisseurs Joel Harrison and Neil Ridley, where guests can experience the mythologies of two whiskey making cultures. Celebrating Glenmorangie’s new whiskey, marrying Japanese processes and flavours with the classic Highland drink, the weekend offers a cocktail masterclass and Kintsugi cup-making, a touring of the distillery, and unique dining experiences by design of Head Chef John Wilson, as guests will partake in both a Scottish Highland diner and A Tale of Tokyo inspired tasting menu.

22nd-24th March 2024, at £950 per room for a two-night stay in a Standard Room or Cottage.

Find out more: glenmorangie.com

The Lana, Dubai – Dorchester Collection

The Lana Dubai Rooftop

For a culinary whirlwind, Dorchester Collection’s first Middle East location, The Lana Dubai, is one to watch. Set to open in February 2024, the hotel is something of a gastronomical meeting of the minds in the countless dining experiences. Celebrated chefs Martín Berasategui, Jean Imbert and Angelo Musa create four distinct concepts out of the eight restaurants The Lana hosts. Accoladed with twelve Michelin stars, Martín Berasategui develops Jara, a love letter to Basque cuisine and the first of its kind in Dubai.

For modern Mediterranean cooking and cocktails, guests can flock to Riviera by Jean Imbert, who has also created High Society, an after hours lounge located on the rooftop of the hotel. Angelo Musa’s Bonbon Café will bring French patisserie with his own avant-garde approach to The Lana.

Designed by Foster + Partners, the hotel is bound in bright vistas, positioned along the Dubai Canal, a vantage point from which guests can revel in the city’s famed sunsets. The Lana’s spa, and 225 rooms and suites, with interiors designed by Gilles & Boissier, brings together the contemporary and traditional, in Dubai’s trademark style.

The Hotel is now open as of February 1st, now taking bookings. Rates start from £735 per night.