KALEIDOSCOPE

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ISSUE 43 FW23

KALEIDOSCOPE's Fall/Winter 2023 issue launches with a set of six covers. Featuring Sampha, Alex Katz, Harmony Korine, a report into the metamorphosis of denim, a photo reportage by Dexter Navy, and a limited-edition cover by Isa Genzken.

Also featured in this issue: London-based band Bar Italia (photography by Jessica Madavo and interview by Conor McTernan), the archives of Hysteric Glamour (photography by Lorenzo Dalbosco and interview by Akio Kunisawa), Japanese underground illustrator Yoshitaka Amano (words by Alex Shulan), Marseille-based artist Sara Sadik (photography by Nicolas Poillot and interview by Daria Miricola), a survey about Japan’s new hip-hop scene starring Tohji (photography by Taito Itateyama and words by Ashley Ogawa Clarke), Richard Prince’s new book “The Entertainers” (words by Brad Phillips), “New Art: London” (featuring Adam Farah-Saad, Lenard Giller, Charlie Osborne, R.I.P. Germain, and Olukemi Ljiadu photographed by Bolade Banjo and interviewed by Ben Broome).

FROM THE CURRENT ISSUE

ISA GENZKEN

For her retrospective exhibition at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, Isa Genzken has presented 75 sculptural assemblages from across her career to celebrate her 75th birthday. On this occasion, we sorted through her archive of invitations cards—historical documents which double as allegories of communication and traces of an unfixed identity.

HARMONY KORINE

With a career stretching from the pre-9/11 nihilistic hedonism of New York City to the gamified, small-screen fictions of TikTok’s psychedelic everyday, American filmmaker and artist Harmony Korine is emblematic of America’s aesthetics. His latest film, Aggro Dr1ft, combines worldbuilding and AI into a heightened, hyperreal, dreamlike state, pushing narrative cinema to its glitching limits.

ALEX KATZ

Born in New York, where he still lives and works, Alex Katz has been painting for 78 years. Across these decades, he’s maintained a revelatory and playful eye for the essence of the image: whether it’s a landscape, a self-portrait, flowers, his wife, or images appropriated from advertising, there’s a glossy, stylized truth at the heart of the work.

TREND REPORT

The most ubiquitous of fabrics, with a history dating back to the 17th century and a lead role in many subcultural revolutions, denim has recently been dominating the stage once again, undergoing a new transmogrification. Paying homage to its undying relevance, this report explores the startling ways in which designers are reconceptualizing denim through the warping lens of luxury fashion, emancipating it altogether from its material base.

SAMPHA

The long awaited sophomore album from Sampha, Lahai, released this fall to universal acclaim. Titled after the artist’s middle name—a tribute to his grandfather—the record is an exploration of loss and healing, reflecting on the passing of his parents, the birth of his daughter, and the inevitably cyclical nature of life and memory.

EGYPT

The Faiyum Oasis is a small sanctuary of life springing out of the harshness of the desert in Egypt. Led by a desire to reconnect with his own roots, British-Egyptian photographer Dexter Navy spent time with the Bedouin tribes who populate the region, navigating existence with graceful frugality.

ESCAPE TO MIAMI

The most southernly city in the US, Miami exists in the tropical recesses of the American imagination: land of celebrity, thunderstorms, Tony Montana, and Art Deco architecture. Here, we meet the latest generation of Miamians—committed radicals in the fields of art, fashion, and music, who are dreaming up new narratives for the city they call home.

CAT POWER

In a career stretching over 30 years, Chan Marshall, under the moniker of Cat Power, has established herself as one of the most acclaimed singer/songwriters of the century, creating some of the most emotionally powerful music ever recorded. Among her talents, she can turn cover versions into moments of transcendent beauty.

ANDREW DOWNTOWN

Nick Katz, Pres Rodriguez, and Adrian Douzmanian met when Nick was building a community skate park and Adrian and Pres were hosting parties at a nightclub that shared the same space. Together they formed Andrew, a skate shop and apparel brand named after the most devastating storm to hit Florida.

NITE OWL DRIVE-IN

Miami born and bred, Nayib Estefan has been running creative cinematic endeavors for over a decade. At the Nite Owl Drive-In, nestled between neon-lit high-rise condos, he shows 35mm repertory prints ranging from classic to guilty pleasure while, at Dream Arcade, he’s building an interactive piece of lysergic art.

SUSAN KIM ALVAREZ

Born in Honolulu and raised in central Florida as part of a Cuban, Vietnamese, and Jewish household, Susan Kim Alvarez returned to the Sunshine State after graduating from art school. Now based in Miami, she makes rich, abstract compositions, exploding with strange figures and fantastical narratives.

FARED MANZUR

Built in 1905 and left uninhabited for decades, artist Fared Manzur has turned Rice Hotel in Downtown Miami into a studio space for himself, and a gallery of sorts. Here, leaving the architecture of the space largely untouched and bare, he welcomes artists from across the world to work, exhibit, and experience the city.

NEW ART: LONDON

The art world’s compulsion to categorize by the yardstick of “hot or not” has historically been the driving force behind the market and the gallery system. Commerce is intertwined with this metric, spurred on by the insatiable appetite to find talented young things to build up. This system is uninteresting: what’s in vogue rarely reflects those operating at the cutting edge. Who are those young emerging artists making work against all odds—work that is difficult and costly to make, store, exhibit, move, and sell? These five individuals typify this path. Working across video, sound, installation, and sculpture, they march onwards, carving out their own niche—exhibiting in empty shop spaces one day and major institutions the next. For them, making is guided by urgency, and persistence is motivated by blind faith.

ADAM FARAH-SAAD

Working in a range of media and performative gestures, Adam Farah-Saad dwells on various ephemeral and poetic moments in order to open up critical reflections and connections. His works revisits and explores past experiences revolving around the mnemonic and a process of mapping.

CHARLIE OSBORNE

Working across video, performance, sculpture, and sound, Charlie Osbourne’s films have been screened alongside artists such as Ryan Trecartin, Mica Levi, and Tai Shani.

R.I.P. GERMAIN

Drawing from Black experience, R.I.P. Germain’s practice delves with double meanings, deep resonances, and a tension between accessibility and occlusion.

OLUKEMI LIJADU

Focusing on moving image and sound, Olukemi Lijadu is an artist and DJ who uses the power of cinema to take listeners on sonic journeys weaving between cultures and time.

LENARD GILLER

London-based artist Lenard Giller explores the life-spans of time-based technologies and their translations into language, memory, and perception.

KAYODE OJO

Out of cheap jewelry, wigs, mirrors, fake fur, and counterfeit luxury goods, New York-based artist Kayode Ojo makes precarious, luminous sculptures—delicately arranged accoutrements of fake glamor. Titled “Eden,” his latest exhibition at 52 Walker is both a reference to the mythic garden of Bible legend, and an exploration of America’s history and present politics.

TOHJI

The hip-hop artists of the Reiwa era emerge from a tangled mesh of cultural references that Japan has imported, exported, and re-imported again, in an endless loop of cultural osmosis with the West. None exemplifies this more than Tohji, whose new-wave music and potently nostalgic Y2K asthetic seem to fulfill the broken promise of a futuristic utopia.

SARA SADIK

KALEIDOSCOPE hosted a solo exhibition by Marseille-based artist Sara Sadik (b. 1994, Bordeaux), in November 2023 at Spazio Maiocchi in Milan, with the support of Slam Jam. Inspired by videogames, anime, science fiction, and French rap, Sara Sadik’s work explores the reality and fantasies of France’s Maghrebi youth, addressing issues of adolescence, masculinity, and social mythologies. Her work across video, performance, and installation often centers on male characters, using computer-generated scenarios to transform their condition of marginalization into something optimistic and poetic.

FROM THE SHOP

FROM THE ARCHIVE

230321 MKE KALEIDOSCOPE Shot 10 032 RGB HD

THE (UN) OFFICIAL PREPPY HANDBOOK

TOSH BASCO

MARK FLOOD

MANIFESTO

In 2023, from June 22 to June 24 during Men’s Fashion Week in Paris, KALEIDOSCOPE and GOAT presented the new edition of our annual arts and culture festival, MANIFESTO. Against the unique setting of the French Communist Party building, a modern architectural landmark designed by legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the festival will bring together visionary creators from different areas of culture across three days of art, fashion and sound. The 2024 edition will run from June 21 to June 23.

CAPSULE PLAZA

In April 2023, a year after the launch of the magazine, Capsule introduced Capsule Plaza, a new initiative that infuses new energy into Milan Design Week by redefining the design showcase format. A hybrid between a fair and a collective exhibition, Capsule Plaza brings together designers and companies from various creative fields, bridging industry and culture with a bold curation that spans interiors and architecture, beauty and technology, ecology and craft. The 2024 edition will run from April 15 to April 21.

A SENSE OF PLACE

ADAM FARAH-SAAD

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BOLADE BANJO
INTERVIEW BY BEN BROOME
FOOTWEAR EXCLUSIVE: REEBOK LTD

BEN BROOME

The first time I saw your work was at Camden Arts Centre. North London is where you grew up but, more than that, it’s a starting point for a lot of the work you make. Is a sense of place important within the work you make?

ADAM FARAH-SAAD

I was born and raised in London—I’ve been stuck here my whole life. I’ve started to identify as a psycho geographer. I tend to spend a lot of time walking around London exploring. Before I started to think of it as psychogeography, I was exploring London because I was cruising. That builds a different kind of relationship to place—it makes you more aware of how desire functions in the city. Even before that, I was interested in place as a way to mourn; when my mum died, my process of mourning has been to go to the places that we spent time in: Brent Cross Shopping Center, Staples Corner. I visited these places in a therapeutic way to try and make sense of my past.

I think of the shopping center as a kind of monolith. It’s so democratic: for everyone who lives in the suburbs, the shopping center is a place of gathering. In this internet world, the shopping center doesn’t function as it once did. Have you witnessed these places change?

AFS

I’ve always been interested in my generation’s relationship to technology and place—how this accelerated forward-push of capitalism got rid of a lot of the sociality that evolved around places like the shopping center. They’re classified as obsolete, but, when I explore, I see that they’re not obsolete for everyone: there’s people still making use of these places. People always assume my work is about nostalgia, but it’s not really about nostalgia for me if I haven’t actually gotten over these moments.

People consume your work within the context of nostalgia, whether or not that’s your intention, but you also impose methods of consumption on an audience relating to obsolete technology and obsolete ways of living. Do you think about viewership when you’re making?

AFS

I might make certain aesthetic decisions to try to dictate how people are viewing it, like, I’ve been thinking about visibility and obfuscation in relation to the idea of generosity. What does it mean for an artist to be generous, and should an artist need to be generous when they’re exhibiting work?

You’re about to show at Frieze. How are you approaching that?

AFS

I get to a point where I’m really desperate to just show work to people, to the point where I can’t afford to be picky about context. The work I’m going to show at Frieze is still going to be the same work I make. It might not necessarily be what is considered as very commercially viable work these days, especially for the average collector. I went to Frieze last year for the first time in a long time, and it was so boring. As an artist, every single space we go into where we see artwork, we think about how we can use that space. So obviously I have my anxieties about the context and how the work will be received, but I always want to experiment with my practice in different spaces.

As an artist, surviving sometimes means that you have to compromise. You said you “can’t afford to be picky about space”—does the kind of work you make afford you less choice?

AFS

It definitely affords me less choice in terms of commercial spaces. I had no commercial support for the majority of my practice up until recently, which is why I worked so hard to get platforms in public institutions. I have this weird urge as an artist to make exhibitions—it’s made me realize that one of my main mediums is actually “the exhibition.” I’m curious to see at what point my art practice will feel like a more sustainable venture, where I feel less insecure about my economic circumstances. It’s hard to deal with mentally when you’ve been practicing for more than ten years, and nothing’s really changed economically from day one. You obviously question whether you made the right decision in life.

Adam Farah Saad B Sides Ground Floor Install Shot 8

Adam Farah Saad NETWORK CONTACT N22 DISCREET MIX 2023 Steel 6 person wash fountain KA grape soda water pump 112 x 105 x 105 cm 3

Adam Farah Saad MEDICATED SUMMERS BENEFITS TRAP ENDS PORTALS N22 MOMENTATION MIX 2

Do you compare yourself to other artists and people in adjacent industries?

AFS

Lately, I have been. A good friend of mine went from sixth form straight into a professional nine-to-five industry. Every few years, their experience is recognized in the form of a pay rise, or, when they go into a new role, they can ask for that based on their experience. That hasn’t been the case with me and that’s obviously hard to deal with. Although I have my grievances, I’m not unaware of the fact that I’ve had a lot more opportunities than most other people—I just assumed those would come with a bit more security and sustainability over time.
I’m not bitter about the success of my friends; I want to see them succeed. I do have a problem with the system’s failure to recognize the imbalances that are created when an abundance of resources is poured into one person or entity whilst neglecting so many others. I question, “Do you truly love art if that’s what you are doing?” I would pose that question to everyone: collectors, curators, and directors of museums. Maybe it has something to do with art world trends. In our current climate, social clout feels like it has a lot to do with an artist’s success. That is something I haven’t engaged with. I’ve always had a private Instagram. I remember a curator friend telling me that I was shooting myself in the foot for not having a public Instagram but I don’t know how much those things really affect decisions. Maybe more so on the international scale.

You’re not an artist that has considered your brand or branding at all really. Your work exists only in physical space—it has to be seen.

AFS

My Instagram bio describes me as a “non-painter artist.” I’ve always loved painting, and, when I was in uni, I studied a BA in Drawing. For a while, I was interested in working with more traditional fine art mediums, but various things called for me to go down a different route.

Were you rejecting that traditional fine art approach?

AFS

I wasn’t really; I just found that, when I left art school, it was too expensive for me to develop using those traditional materials. You need to be able to waste materials to actually experiment and develop your practice. The work I was making after leaving art school was mainly video and installation, often with found objects. Video is something that you can do either with no budget or a mega budget. So, I was doing video with really low budgets on my phone or GoPros, and I was able to show that at the South London Gallery when I did the residency. That led to a few other video commissions.

You said that “in order to experiment, you have to waste.” Can you expand on that?

AFS

When you leave art school, you don’t leave as the best artist you’re ever going to be. I left art school and suddenly realized, “I’ve got a ton more developing to do,” which is natural. I had no money at that point—I was on Jobseekers and living in my dad’s flat. I was trying to carry on experimenting with certain materials, but I found that it was too expensive. Now that I’ve got more money, I could probably go back to painting and drawing, but that’s not where I’m at now. I had all these ideas that I couldn’t activate until I got a commission or an exhibition or residency... I have sometimes worried that my practice has had a stifled growth, which perhaps only I could. But that is why I’m still wanting to do more residencies. I sometimes wonder if I’m still doing the right thing, but, then, if I think about stopping making art, I just can’t. To be really honest with you, the thought of quitting art makes me want to kill myself. When I say I want sustainability, it doesn’t mean I want to be a mega art star—I just want to live a comfortable life.

ADAM FARAH-SAAD WEARS REEBOK LTD TRAINING T-SHIRT.
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND PUBLIC GALLERY, LONDON.