10 December 4-10, 2025 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Including reimagined music from Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, plus Courtney Bryan’s House of Pianos, and more! FEATURING PJ MORTON & FRIENDS ADRIENNE ARSHT CENTER DEC 19 GET TICKETS AT NU-DECO.ORG/CONCERTS Instagram — the ones I put my heart and soul into; the ones that I’m trying to touch people in a deeper way with. And I do see how they work together in that way. “Maybe life is like a pool,” he adds, airily. “It would be boring if we always swam in the shallow end or the deep end. I think it’s nice to swim back and forth. And that’s what I try to do in my artwork.” It’s worth noting here that in 2012 LaCha- pelle told Blouin Artinfo that the two artists who influenced him the most were…Michel- angelo and Michael Jackson. There is a con- necting thread between those two ends: Clarity of intent. In LaChapelle’s estimation, a plague of va- garies has descended upon the contemporary art world, and he’s seeking to counter it. “With a lot of exhibits today, people have to read a big wall of text to understand it,” he says. “They need someone to explain the meaning to them…I like clarity, not confusion. Just like I like light instead of darkness.” It’s that sort of self-awareness — perhaps even self-interrogation — that allows LaCha- pelle to remain such a vital and impactful voice in a popular arts landscape that is in a state of flux, if not outright devolution, thanks to a tidal wave of generative AI and social me- dia-truncated attention spans for which the culture was, to put it gently, ill-prepared. “I still think in analog,” LaChapelle says. “I worked for so many years in analog — I spent a lot of time in that East Village dark room. So, even though the physical means of getting to the final piece have changed, my thought pro- cess is very much the same as it always was…I think very theatrically. And the tableaus I cre- ate, it’s like putting on a play. I make the sets, cast them, choose the colors and palette, and use very hands-on, intuitive direction to direct what the figures will be doing.” The truth is, LaChapelle’s success in the shallower end grants him the breathing room to imbue the work with that precious clarity, that light. “I like having one foot in the world of popular culture…it also sustains my art- work, because I’m free of having to worry about whether it will sell or not,” he says. “I can make work that’s really from my heart and not think about sales because it’s not the only way I generate income. I am my own benefac- tor in that sense, which is very liberating.” It also allows LaChapelle to entrust smaller, scrappy, passion-driven galleries with his deepest end work. “For a young gallery in Miami Beach to be presenting new, world-premiere works by Da- vid LaChapelle is nothing short of extraordi- nary,” VISU Contemporary owner and curator Bruce Halpryn says. “Our mission has always been to showcase cutting-edge, thought-pro- voking art that resonates with today’s cultural pulse. To be one of two galleries representing LaChapelle’s work in the Americas is a tre- mendous honor — and speaks to Miami’s growing stature as an art world capital.” The VISU show also reflects LaChapelle’s understanding and acceptance of a world in which the relationship between artist and viewer has been levelled, if not democratized. Our aforementioned attention spans are shorter than ever, and the power of images has been diluted in the common imagination. This might be demoralizing to some, but to LaChappelle, it’s a signal to double down. “I have to work harder than ever on making my image compelling enough to hold some- one’s attention long enough for them to under- stand what it is that I want them to understand, or to feel what it is I want them to feel,” he says. “Beauty, to me, is the tool to accomplish that. Even when there are ideas or feelings I want to express and get out into the world that are challenging or not pretty, I use beauty to make sure people don’t just walk on by.” David LaChapelle’s “Vanishing Act.” On view through January 31, 2026, at VISU Contempo- rary, 2160 Park Ave., Miami Beach; 305-496- 5180; visugallery.com. LaChapelle will attend the grand opening at 9 p.m. on Friday, December 5. I N LACHAPE LLE’S E STI MATION, A PLAG U E OF VAGAR I E S HAS DE SCE N DE D U PON TH E CONTE M PORARY ART WOR LD, AN D H E’S S E E KI NG TO COU NTE R IT. Annunciation, 2019 Vanishing Act from p8 © David LaChapelle
Miami 12-04-25
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