What’s Happening: The late painter deftly captured the turbulence and terror that reverberated throughout Japan during the “Lost Decade.” A new show at Gagosian New York showcases the epoch’s enduring relevance today.

The Download: The 1990s were a strange time for Japan. The country’s bubble economy burst in 1991, ending decades of rapid-fire growth following World War II. Four years later, the devastating Great Hanshin earthquake and sarin gas attacks on Tokyo’s subways stoked widespread fear. At the same time, technology was progressing—the advent of Windows 95 popularized computers, cell phones, and gaming consoles while computer-controlled robots replaced assembly line workers. Enter the “Lost Decade,” a period when young adults struggled to find full-time jobs or simply didn’t work. Japanese people may recall the slogan of the times as ibasho ga nai, or “without a place to call home.”

Tetsuya Ishida was coming of age during this precarious decade and, amid the economic stagnation, decided to translate his generation’s existential distress into paintings. Feelings of human alienation and hopelessness are palpable throughout his meticulously detailed canvases often depicting stoic-faced young men melding with everyday appliances, industrial machinery, and civic architecture. In one, suited salarymen laying supine on a conveyor belt are dissected, almost robotically, by scalpel-bearing factory workers, nodding to the punishingly long hours expected from both collars at the time. Other lost souls simply became hikikomori, or recluses who withdrew from society and often refused to leave their bedrooms, a visual Ishida captures viscerally in the joyless Untitled (1998).

Though he rose during a repressive time, Ishida dreamed big. He was learning English and saving money from his part-time job to fulfill his ambition of showing paintings in New York City. That dream would never materialize—he died in 2005, at the age of 31, due to a train accident. Critics and curators have been drawn to Ishida in the ensuing years, though, with Gagosian showing his paintings in Hong Kong in 2013, leading to appearances at biennales in Gwangju and Venice. Now, on what would be his 50th birthday, his dream is finally coming true. A new exhibition at Gagosian New York posits how Ishida’s deft fusion of realism with Surrealism captured Japan’s fraught national mood at the time—and perhaps had prescient insight into our current tech-saturated era of high-achievement hustle culture and burnout.

In Their Own Words: “At first, it was a self-portrait,” Ishida said. “I tried to make myself—my weak self, my pitiful self, my anxious self—into a joke or something funny that could be laughed at. It was sometimes seen as a parody or satire referring to contemporary people. As I continued to think, I expanded it to include consumers, city-dwellers, workers, and the Japanese people.”

Surface Says: If only Ishida knew his fantastical machinations about man and device would one day come true in the form of smartphones becoming extensions of our arms. Or did he?

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It always seems like the internet pauses during the annual Apple event, hungry for the latest details about new models of Apple Watches, iPads, AirPods, and more. That was no different yesterday when all eyes were on the soon-to-drop iPhone 15. During a demo of the updated device’s Super Retina XDR display and expanded 6.7-inch size, Surface made a cameo to show off the spacious screen’s ability to display more text. Our mobile site—and Jean-Michel Othoniel’s sculptures—have never looked better.

Name: Simultáneo

Location: Hotel Plaza, Barcelona

Designer: El Equipo Creativo

On Offer: The park comprising Barcelona’s Montjuic mountain is the city’s largest, but the Hotel Plaza wanted to take it even further. Located at the mountain’s verdant base, the hotel enlisted El Equipo Creativo to transform its ground floor into a new lobby, bar, and restaurant that embodies Montjuic’s winding slopes. The team placed reception to one side, so as not to disturb a path leading to a stepped platform to Simultáneo’s circular cocktail lounge. Ascending further, guests reach the all-day restaurant, bathed in natural light courtesy of the roof with gentle peaks of translucent glass.

The Turner Prize–winning artist Chris Ofili only met Khadija Saye once—they chatted quickly at a vernissage in Venice, where the young Saye was showcasing photographic self-portraits with other artists as part of the Biennale’s Diaspora Pavilion. One month later, she died along with 71 other victims in the fire at Grenfell Tower, the London apartment building where she lived on the 20th floor with her mother. A memorial to her now forms the centerpiece of Ofili’s latest artwork, Requiem, a monumental and gripping new mural that unfolds in three chapters across a staircase at Tate Britain, where it will display for ten years.

One chapter depicts a prophet cradling the burning tower; another shows Saye holding an andichurai, or Gambian incense pot, to her ear, an image taken from one of her self-portraits shown in Venice and currently on view at Tate Modern. “Public art can hold spaces of grief and it can keep alive collective memories of events that might otherwise completely just fade away in time,” Ofili says in an accompanying audio piece. “I intend the mural to invite reflection on loss, spirituality, and transformation; particularly these elements are important to me today in 2023 as we’re waiting for the final report on the Grenfell inquiry.”

When: Sept. 16–Oct. 28

Where: Roberts Projects, Los Angeles

What: The London-based artist’s work defies easy categorization. Sometimes described as collage or mixed-media painting, Crews-Chubb’s compositions layer charcoal, ink, fabric, and, yes, paint. In his latest show, he turns to textural impastoed oil, canvas strips, neon spray paint, and pumice to reflect on how the human form is replicated through history in everything from Italian Renaissance paintings to historical monuments. Through seven massive, mixed-media paintings and six paper studies, he reimagines iconography in his own way.

Last week, New York’s Salmagundi Arts Club celebrated the opening of Terry Tsiolis’s new exhibition “Portraits of My Mother.” Known for his portraits of stars like Margot Robbie and collaborations with Gucci, Burberry, and Tom Ford, the New York–based photographer used the occasion to explore and defy the norms of fashion photography and American beauty standards. Tsiolis was joined by his mother and muse for the exhibition, Dimitra, along with fashion industry friends and collaborators.

When was it? Sept. 7

Where was it? Salmagundi Arts Club, New York

Who was there? Elissa Santisi, Meenal Mistry, Christine Kuan, Isaac Mizrahi, Stellene Volandes, and more.

At a time when ever-increasing interest rates dominate conversations around home-buying, climate risk appears to be a less talked-about but significant consideration as well. It shouldn’t be a surprise—State Farm recently stopped selling new insurance policies to California homeowners, rising ocean temperatures risk bleaching Florida’s corals, and a combination of agricultural pollution and rising temperatures have contributed to algae blooms off the coasts of Florida and Texas that have left beaches riddled with thousands of dead fish. So much for California dreamin’ and the coastal charm of the Sunshine State. Of course, these are just a handful of examples of how climate is impacting living conditions all over the country.

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Surface Says: Sommelier-guided wine tastings aren’t inhibited by a little thing like geography thanks to this upstart platform ushering the interactive vineyard experience into the digital age.

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