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 On this occasion, we sorted through her archive of invitations cards—historical documents which double as allegories of communication and traces of an unfixed identity.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.

NITE OWL DRIVE-IN

LORENZO BASILICO

How long have you been running the Nite Owl Drive-In?

NAYIB ESTEFAN

Coming up on 11 years now. It’s had different forms throughout the years and various theaters, including one with you guys in Italy, which was probably the best experience of my life. It’s a shapeshifter.

Where did the idea come from? Why did you decide to start a drive-in? They used to be very popular, but it’s not so common anymore.

We’re the only drive-in in South Florida and one of the last remaining drive-ins, period. In 2019, when we did a pop-up in Milan with KALEIDOSCOPE and Gucci, the mantra was: “Take something from the past and take something from the future, then put them together and tell a new story.” That’s kind of what the Nite Owl is.
We’re taking something which was very popular in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and we’re adding a new twist, which is 4K laser DCP projection and first-run movies, which is something that drive-ins usually didn’t have. We used to be a lot more known for repertory programming, which is classics basically, and we would show a lot of classics in upgraded 4K restorations. That’s how we started the whole run of Nite Owl Drive- In, because there was a point when we were the only place that people were allowed to go to in Miami during COVID—we were literally the only activity that was permitted. And it was very high tension and very high pressure, but the shows were incredible.
I will say that the drive-in is almost like its own genre. And the whole thing I’m all about is this thing that we say, which is “for the culture.” You got to do things for the culture because, if you don’t do the culture, it’s going to stop happening. So you have to keep the culture alive by doing it. Also, I think we inadvertently created the most Miami movie theater of all time, because you can sit outside your car with chairs, a radio, and other stuff.

How did your passion for movies start? Did growing up in a creative family [Nayib is Gloria and EmilioEstefan’s son] influence that?

My grandfather would take me to a VHS store nearby, and he didn’t speak English so he didn’t know the kind of crazy movies I was renting. So when I was eight years old, I was watching, like, John Waters’ movies and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Also, my parents’ bus driver used to also be the bus driver for bands like Kiss and Motley Crue and Dolly Parton. And he would have hundreds of VHS cassettes on the bus, almost like if he had his own video rental store, because the bands would be traveling overnight. So I also spent a lot of the time on the road with my parents watching all the classic movies from back in the day, things like Revenge of the Nerds, Porky’s and Police Academy—the classics.

And you also directed some movies, right?

I’m secretly a director because I don’t want people to be like, “Oh my God, if I go to this guy’s theater, he’s going to force me to watch his stuff.” But I create. It comes out in a lot of the content. We do pre-shows. We don’t give people commercials but we give them almost like mix tapes before the movie. And the mix tapes have everything from music videos to movie clips. I feel it’s almost like a new format.
And we do that at Dream Arcade, which is our secret spot and which, ironically, you guys are directly responsible for. When we came out to do the KALEIDOSCOPE and Gucci’s Nite Owl theater, the one thing I thought in my mind was, “Wow, I can’t just let Italy be the only place to see this. We got to make one of these back home.”

What exactly is the Dream Arcade?

It’s a multidisciplinary space that combines a micro-theater with a 1980s video store and a 1980s arcade all in one space that everybody is in together at the same time, having shared experiences, watching curated content, and experiencing live movies that are based on them. It involves a lot of technology. It also involves weird things, everything from magic shows to hypnotism to video art to glitch art. My partner on Dream Arcade is this gentleman named Alec Jerome who is very forward-thinking in terms of storytelling. So we get all this information about the audience, and, all of a sudden, almost like a horror film, it starts to unfold in front of them. We’ve been called the “Black Lodge lounge act.” We’ve been called “MK Ultra Movies Unlimited.” We’ve been called “Bohemian Grove Blockbuster.”
It’s an art installation but it’s an art installation that is designed to have people hang out in and watch content and experience live events in an intimate setting, which feels very magical. And we use dream logic a lot to basically be able to seamlessly mix between things live. No two shows are ever the same, and every show is improvised.
Nothing is ever planned. And there’s characters on the screen that are live animation, and they speak to the crowd, and the crowd speaks to the screen. It’s very, very, very psychedelic.

Are you planning to open it to the public?

No. It’s all secret.

How do you enter then?

One of the ways is through our partnership with Soho House. Soho House will send us their members. The members for the most part have no idea what’s going to happen. So, already by them showing up, they’re showing that they’re kind of down for whatever, and then we give them something to take home that can maybe change the way that they do things. It’s an art joke that grew completely out of control. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever done.
Dream Arcade has become a place for the continuance of our work to preserve abstract thinking in Miami. Also, we’re starting to make a lot of content, and it is leaking out at Nite Owl Drive-In before the shows in the form of pre-shows. But if you come to see Dream Arcade, you get the full untapped auteur vibes.
So there’s no excuse nowadays to not become a director. Before, you were limited by money and equipment and things like that. Now a kid can learn to make a movie using the same software that they make Fortnite with.
As long as cinema’s been around, there’s always been moments where they’re like, “Oh my God, VHS is going to kill cinema. Oh my God, DVD is going to kill cinema. Oh my God, streaming is going to kill cinema.” But the bottom line is: people like to get together with each other. It’s all about shared experiences, and that’s what I try to do.

That’s beautiful to hear. And you’re a native of Miami. How do you envision the future of the city?

Honestly, as my friend told me once, Miami is a thing that a lot of people didn’t used to know about. And now everybody knows about it. The secret is out. There’s been people that have been in the city for a very long time, and, ironically, a lot of those people are getting pushed out by the new people coming in. I think that happens in a lot of different places. I’m sure it happened in Los Angeles. I’ve seen different eras. I’m like that guy from Blade Runner. “I’ve seen attack ships on fire.” That’s how I feel about Miami. I’ve seen Hurricane Andrew, Bitcoin, this, that. I’ve seen it all, dude.

Protect Miami at all costs.

Protect Miami at all costs, dude. Honestly, man, it’s probably the future, because I’ve seen the past, and I know what Miami is now: what it’s always been, which is a mix of beautiful cultures, people, histories, traditions. I mean it was started by a woman. Come on, dude. You know what time it is. It’s a wonderful place.

Nayib Estefan (b. 1980, Miami) is a Miami-based enterpreneur active in the cultural field. In 2021, he founded Nite Owl Drive-In and, in 2020, the interdisciplinary space Dream Arcade.

Lorenzo Basilico is KALEIDOSCOPE’s associate editor and creative assistant.