Over the last dozen years, the Los Angeles painter Math Bass has developed their own visual lexicon, in which fragments of bodies and architecture swim around in fluid media and meanings. Solo exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, MoMA PS1, and the Jewish Museum have led to placements in the collections of the Yuz Museum in Shanghai and MOCA. This fall, they unveil a collection of work at New York’s Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. “Roses Are Red” sites inner-logic oil paintings within interventions like Chromosomal Wall, formed by interlocking Xs and Ys, or the undulating Full Body Parenthesis.

In the conversation below, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, Bass called mid-installation to talk about flatness, humiliation, and navigating binary options.

Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up and start making art?

I was born in Queens and my family moved to Long Island when I was in elementary school. My earliest experiences of making art were centered around painting and printmaking. Then I went to Hampshire, and my primary focus was performance, sculpture, video installation, and drawing. Over the years, I navigated back to painting. I was always building backdrops, and part of that process had to do with painting. Flatness and repetition have been central to my work since I was a teenager.

What is it about flatness that appeals to you?

There’s something about the coincidence of images sharing a plane, oscillating between presence and absence—the way something can appear and disappear. I’ve always been interested in that. If you look at a greenscreen video, there’s a flat quality and a collapsing of information. It’s inherent to flatness. We collapse in order to expand. Or, once we expand to a certain degree, we start to collapse.

Was the recent move to using oil on linen connected to that?

The paintings I was making before were gouache, which is one of the flattest materials, almost anti-gravity flat. But I was jealous of my friends who painted with oil. I loved the way the material was imbued with time. At first, using oil was humiliating because it was so hard. It took a long time to figure out what the material does. It has a mind of its own that you have to tap into. Humiliation is the key word for the process. But now I’m in love with the material.

The lexicon I’ve been working with expanded in surprising ways when I applied oil to that language. ​​I’ve been working with it for a decade. The actual symbols are open containers for meaning. It’s kind of phenomenological. When I feel like something has animated potential, or I feel like it’s moving, that’s when I know it’s working.

You work in the American Cement Building. How has that informed your sculptures?

It’s an iconic building recognizable by this X-shaped concrete exoskeleton. I was interested in inverting that experience and in transposing something from my studio into another space. I wanted to have two options for entering [the show] to create a fluidity of movement, a circularity. I also thought about binary options, you know, especially being a trans and queer person. There are so many binary bias structures in our society that you have to navigate.

Why “Roses Are Red” for the title?

I’m interested in cliché. We understand its basic structure, but there’s room for improvisation. There’s an overwrought romance in its overuse, the love poem of all time. It becomes flattened, too.

Have a news story our readers need to see? Submit it here.

Reach the design world every morning. Find out more about advertising in the Design Dispatch.

In 2015, then London-based designer Fernando Laposse returned to his native Mexico to launch a collaborative workshop in the Puebla village of Tonahuixtla with the idea of countering the disastrous effects of globalized agriculture on the local industries and environment. Meanwhile, the Central Saint Martins product design program alumnus designed for Faye Toogood while making his own work, now held in the permanent collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, SFMOMA, and Victoria & Albert Museum.

This September, for his first show at Friedman Benda’s New York gallery, Laposse goes back to the land of his workshop. “Ghosts of Our Towns” studies three materials developed in the collaboration. An heirloom corn husk veneer forms an intriguing marquetry across the Totomoxtle Snake Coffee Table and the Corn Kumiko consoles. Research into the waste generated by the avocado industry led to an innovative use of the pit to dye tapestry tributes to the self-governing Michoacán town of Cherán. He combed and knotted sisal, the raw fibers nestled within agave plants, to form the charmingly fuzzy ring around the Plywood Mirror, the exterior of the Hair of the Dog cabinet, and the inviting embrace of the Pink Furry Armchair—each proof that the serious business of agricultural ethics can still be a ton of fun.

On the heels of its foray into home and personal fragrance with its apothecary collection, L’Objet has opened the doors to its Paris flagship designed by founder Elad Yifrach and Anno Mille’s Costantino di Sambuy. The boutique is in the former home of Madeleine Castaing, the late French antiques dealer and interior designer who took inspiration from the works of Marcel Proust and Honoré de Balzac, and counted Jean Cocteau among her clients. In its current iteration as the home of L’Objet, eclectic chrome finishes add an edge to the space otherwise grounded in ecru and wood tones. Apothecary scents and tabletop accents pop against plaster walls and displays, while an alcove clad in burnt-orange velvet and dark-stained walnut creates a dramatic staging ground for the brand’s dinnerware.

Our weekly scoop on industry players moving onwards and upwards.

Heron Preston has joined H&M as Creative Menswear Advisor, launching a long-term partnership dubbed “H2.” Unlike typical fashion collaborations that aim for short-term hype, H2 will focus on long-term impact with Preston overseeing all aspects of menswear and designing a seasonal capsule collection starting next year. The news arrives shortly after Preston announced L.E.D. Studio, his new creative endeavor for sustainable products. In other fashion news, longtime Prada and Miu Miu design director Fabio Zambernardi will depart following the spring 2024 collections. His tenure dates to 1981.

Over in the design world, Pentagram has appointed new partners for the first time in four years: London-based graphic designer Samar Maakaroun and Colombian-Italian type designer Andrea Tabucco-Campos, who will be based out of New York. Tom Dixon also has a new CEO in Henry Jones, who served as managing director of Hay and senior vice president at parent company MillerKnoll.

The Studio Museum in Harlem has announced Sonia Louise Davis, Malcolm Peacock, and Zoë Pulley will participate in its next class of Artists-in-Residence, a program that uplifts artists of African and Afro-Latinx descent. In Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum made many key promotions: Naoko Takahatake as Director and Chief Curator of the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts and Paulina Pobocha as Robert Soros Senior Curator. Aram Moshayedi was named Interim Chief Curator after it was announced that his predecessor, Connie Butler, would become the director of MoMA PS1 this fall.

On September 6, Surface and Herschel Supply Co. ushered in a jam-packed Armory Show and Fashion Week with a panel and cocktail party in the brand’s newly opened Soho flagship. Herschel creative director Jon Warren joined furniture designer Djivan Schapira in a conversation moderated by Surface associate editor Jenna Adrian-Diaz. Before the talk, guests perused the new store and custom screen-printed graphic tees over drinks from Blue Point Brewing and tacos and elote from Café Habana.

Venice’s permanent residents number only 49,000, but each year, millions of tourists pour into the Floating City, straining its infrastructure and complicating the day-to-day life of the island’s students, residents, and workers. After a short pandemic-era reprieve, tourist traffic has again surged to such an extent that the city will soon pilot a program in which daytime visitors must pay €5, or approximately $5.35. Exemptions will be granted to students who attend school on the island, hotel guests, and residents. In a related effort, mayor Luigi Brugnaro announced a forthcoming crackdown on short-term rentals in the form of a restriction on tourist leases exceeding 120 days.

Tend is the first dentist you’ll look forward to. Launched in October 2019, Tend was created to set a new standard for oral health by providing dentistry the way it should be—hassle-free, personalized, and straightforward, with a focus on patient happiness—all in a calm, inviting, and thoughtfully designed space.

Surface Says: By prioritizing hospitality and design in equal measure, Tend has made dental care downright chic.

A creative outdoor pavilion comes to life thanks to inflatable donut structures.

More and more restaurants are opening without a big-name chef at the helm.

These animated collages deftly showcase the Mercury Prize shortlisted artists.

Researchers believe that AI can help humans communicate with other species.