In the paintings of Bryan Rogers, men—loose-limbed, fluid of form, hirsute and bemused and even beatific sometimes, contagiously blissed—lose themselves in forests and glens and interiors indistinguishable from those natural worlds. His acrylic-on-panel paintings often appear lit from within, their glow radiating through mazes of botanical detailing and proto-eroticism. A graduate of Pratt’s MFA program and co-founder of the erstwhile Honey Ramka gallery, Rogers now lives in South Orange, New Jersey, where he’s finishing an exhibition of new paintings called “Wallflowers,” opening Jan. 11 at the Monya Rowe gallery in New York.

Rogers took a moment away from his studio to email with Surface about patterns, productivity, and a “pre-sin state of existence.”

When did you begin painting, and what was it about the medium that called to you?

Like many artists, I always painted, even as a kid. I felt it was something I was good at and a productive way to spend my time.

You were a co-director at Honey Ramka. Why did you start your own gallery, and how did becoming familiar with the structure from that side of the desk affect your own work?

Honey Ramka was started with friends. I sort of fell into it because I could use a level. My favorite parts were the moments right after the work was installed. I also worked for other galleries and artists as an art handler. What I’ve learned is how much of this is a collaboration between artists and galleries. I’m more outside my comfort zone on the artist side of things.

Talk about your process as it relates to botanical imagery. Are you making plant and tree studies to incorporate? Are the anatomies of plant life striving for accuracy or surreality?

They’re striving for approximate representation. I have a general knowledge of plants and gardening. Plants often have patterns in their growth structure and I try to simulate some of those patterns in my work.

The scale relationships between the plants and human forms are interesting. Are you thinking about the shifts in their sizes within a single painting as changes in perspectives, in time? Or are they multiple men and multiple varieties united in a world?

I like for them to have that kind of ambiguity. Painting allows for a play with time and scale.

These paintings evoke the long histories of queer naturalist communities, like the Radical Faeries. Are you depicting groups that exist or dreaming them into existence?

Mine are fictional. I draw from my imagination.

Why the title “Wallflowers”?

I like the play on words—how it’s an actual plant but also used to describe a type of person. I’m also making paintings of walls and flowers so there’s something recursive about the title in relationship to the work itself.

In the press release, you say “their nudity returns them to an animalistic state.” What’s important to you about showing queer men safe, in “enclosures,” and as animals?

I think of them as being in a Garden of Eden, pre-sin state of existence.

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Just across the cobblestone alley from the beloved Bob Ellis shoe store, now home to The Pinch, a 22-suite boutique hotel, proudly stands the 1843 Lequeux-Williams House, a private residence-turned-tavern-and-tasting-menu destination Lowland designed by Method Studios. On the Greek Revival building’s ground floor, the Tavern offers à-la-carte dining from James Beard Award–winning Chef Jason Stanhope, formerly of the town’s famed FIG. A restored wood-burning fireplace cozies up the place, where diners can sup at the antiqued copper bar, head into the Tavern Room and sink into overstuffed leather armchairs, or survey the Parlour Room’s original windows with porcupine shades and plastered 12-foot ceilings.

Upstairs, the Dining Room offers elegant, unfussy tasting menus surrounded by a psychedelic floor-to-ceiling mural of Spanish moss and cypress trees by Dean Barger Studios, framed by original moldings and thickets of emerald green banquettes. Stanhope learned the art of biscuits from Savannah legend Cheryl Day, and serves them up with pepper jelly downstairs, alongside feel-good takes on his blend of pub and omakase like a Grilled Grey Triggerfish with scallion dashi, and an à-la-minute Banoffee pie. The Dining Room is home to wilder flights of fancy, where a 40-seat home for tasting menu experiences might take in anything from an ode to Italian red sauce joints to recent dishes of Kobe beef with Carolina Gold rice, and salt-roasted celery root with black truffle.

Mimi Shodeinde’s latest collection for her Minimat Designs firm sets the heft of Brutalism in motion. The Borris Collection comprises a suite of ten pieces, starting with an elemental Borris Chair that seems to suspend a soft seating within an aluminum armature as if waiting to launch the chair into orbit. When paired, the Borris Console creates an interruption within its framework of Black ash and aluminum. And the Borris Dining Table, with its three reconfigurable modules, appears to turn into itself as if creating its own seating arrangements around the angled aluminum base and alternating tops of tinted glass and Nero Marquina marble.

Our weekly scoop on industry players moving onwards and upwards.

The American Institute for Architects (AIA) has inaugurated Kimberly Dowdell as its AIA National President for 2024. Dowdell, the first Black woman to assume the role, previously headed up the National Organization of Minority Architects in 2019 and serves as a principal in HOK’s Chicago office. In another milestone for the organization, Greg Switzer was named the first Black president in the AIA New York Chapter’s 167-year history. He has helmed the New York studio Switzer Architecture for the past 20 years.

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec aren’t the only creative sibling duo parting ways. Last week, the filmmaking Safdie brothers announced they would no longer make movies together. Benny Safdie confirmed the “amicable” breakup with his brother, Josh, in an interview with Variety. “I will direct on my own, and I will explore things that I want to explore,” he said. “I want that freedom right now in life.” In the meantime, a new film that was scheduled to follow up the nerve-wracking hits Uncut Gems (2019) and Good Time (2017) has been put on pause.

Ian Wardropper, director of the Frick Collection, announced his retirement in 2025. During his 14-year tenure, the New York museum realized a polarizing expansion of its Gilded Age mansion by Selldorf Architects and temporarily relocated to Marcel Breuer’s brutalist building on Madison Avenue. Known for its trove of Old Masters paintings dating back to the Renaissance, the museum has lately tested new waters amid surging demand for contemporary art. It recently wrapped up an exhibition of portraits by Barkley Hendricks and showcased works by artists dealing with gender and queer identity. Wardropper is working on two books, one about the renovation, while the board finds his successor.

Logomania supposedly drew its last, heaving breath as a national fervor for neutral, well-made basics swept shoppers off their feet last year. If Celine didn’t revive the lust for logos, it was certainly stoked by the French label’s summer 2024 presentation, which teased these soon-to-launch embossed headphones. They do everything your over-ear headphones do, with one exception: yours don’t scream CELINE. $950

Synonymous with French taste and style without ostentation, based on exceptional expertise and furnishing design, Liaigre is a house of creation whose value proposition lies in simplicity, quality, balance, and beauty. The brand has been designing spaces and furnishings for more than 30 years and is represented in showrooms around the world and three offices in Paris, New York, and Bangkok.

Surface Says: To this day, Liaigre embodies its founder’s timeless elegance with a deft eye for contemporary art, furnishings, and interior styling.

A huge statue of pop legend Shakira is unveiled in her native Colombia.

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An artistic masterpiece of medieval Christianity has gone fully immersive.