Ben Lee Ritchie Handler x MBBFW

Ben Lee Ritchie Handler: I come from a nontraditional art background. As an undergrad, I studied English literature, and after that, I spent a few years touring with a rock band. Actually, it was Nick McCarthy, the former guitarist from Franz Ferdinand, who introduced me to my first gallerist, which led to my first job in the art world. So I arrived at art through literature and rock and roll—at a moment when most of my aesthetic choices were shaped either by music or books.A lot of my favorite musicians have been deeply inspired by literature as well. Take The Smiths’ Cemetry Gates, where Morrissey sings, “Keats and Yeats are on your side, but you lose / ‘Cause whale blubber Wilde is on mine.” I’ve always been drawn to art that has a certain iconoclastic element—whether in visual art, design, or music—work that pushes against cultural standards and, frankly, spits in your face.I’m a loud and obnoxious person, and I like art that makes a statement. I don’t like art that exists in the background. The same goes for fashion and design—I’ve always been drawn to clothes that demand attention, pieces that refuse to be treated as secondary. The same applies to furniture, to the things we put on our walls. I’ve always believed that curators do themselves a disservice when they ignore the functional aspects of the environments in which art is seen.

BLRH: I think the most profound interactions people have with art don’t happen in a white cube or a gallery—they happen in someone’s home, when they’re dancing, hosting a dinner party, or staying up all night having fun. The environment shapes the way we perceive things.I recently heard Trevor Paglen talk about the two kinds of magic. There’s the sleight-of-hand kind, where you’re being tricked. But then there’s the Aleister Crowley kind, where your entire frame of reference shifts—you change your truth. And I think that’s the real power of music, fashion, design, and art at their best. They can rewire the way you think, alter your perspective, and create a completely new reality. When those four elements come together, they produce the most impactful, most consequential experiences you can have with any of them.I’ve connected with a lot of art through the rock bands I used to tour with. Eddie Argos from Art Brut introduced me to the work of Hernan Bas. The Franz Ferdinand guys turned me on to David Shrigley. The late, great Noah Davis, an old friend of mine, had a similar vision for The Underground Museum—which, though now defunct, created spaces where people could experience iconic and iconoclastic artworks in unexpected contexts. He wanted people to engage with art on a personal level, which often meant carpeting the floors, screening films in the back, or inviting people to lie on the ground and do yoga in the space. His brother, Kahlil Joseph, worked on Arthur Jafa’s Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death, a video installation set to Kanye West’s Ultralight Beam, where the song was integral to the experience. I remember watching its early iterations in the backyard at Noah’s museum—these moments completely transformed the way I saw both art and the world around me.Ultimately, the most meaningful outcome of these collaborations is their ability to shift perspectives—to change the way people see, experience, and connect with the world.

BLRH: Homeward Bound, the first show I curated for Nicodim, was a bit of a wordplay. The idea was to create a domestic space—a home-like environment—but the bound part referenced bondage, as well as the way the home is often the source of a person’s deepest trauma, nostalgia, and most intimate experiences with sex. The concept was a house where all the secrets were laid bare.I had always admired Oliver Furth’s work. He’s a perennial AD 100 interior designer, very polished, very buttoned-up—but he has a dark side. He suggested painting the walls in Barragán pink, inspired by Luis Barragán, the architect who was widely considered asexual, only for his home to reveal a hidden world of kink and bondage after his death. That became an allegory we played with in the exhibition itself.We created a full domestic setting—a bedroom, a bathroom, a living room, a TV room—where the artwork wasn’t just displayed but truly lived within the space. Lisa Anne Auerbach’s textile piece, which is usually mounted on a wall, was draped over a bed like a bedspread. Melanie Bonajo’s Furniture Bondage series inverted traditional relationships with furniture—people weren’t sitting on it, they were bound within it. The boundary between art and design was completely blurred. Oliver even brought in chairs by Joel Otterson, an artist whose practice integrates functionality as a core element. That’s something I love about these collaborations—artists are making functional objects, and designers are making things that are intentionally unfunctional. That tension creates a fascinating dialogue.From there, Oliver bonded—literally or not—with Devin B. Johnson, who invited him to design the exhibition space for his New York show. Oliver’s approach was totally at odds with how we’d normally install a gallery show—he painted the walls, hung pieces well above eye level, and disrupted expectations of spatial design. Devin’s work is all about viewing the urban, exterior environment as an interior, and Oliver played with that idea—incorporating furniture, creating seating areas, spaces to eat, places to linger. The show didn’t just invite viewers to look at art; it asked them to live within it. And so again, it’s kind of blurring this line of what an exhibition space can be. 

BLRH: I think a lot of fashion designers are very much interested in that. For example, we did an early collaboration with Barbara Sánchez-Kane at the gallery, where she set up a pop-up store alongside two of our exhibitions. If you’ve seen her work or her clothing, you’ll know it’s sculptural—it’s not exactly functional, but it’s definitely fashion. She brings these deeply intimate elements into her designs—many of them resemble bondage gear, or things you’d typically associate with private life—but she transforms them into extravagant, peacock-like objects that people can wear out in public to flaunt, or they can be displayed as if they were art objects themselves. TRANS WORLD and Formal Encounters, two shows I curated with interactions in our Bucharest gallery, both really played with that idea of mixing fashion design with contemporary exhibition.I think people are innately accepting of this intersection, where both artists and fashion designers, as well as the people who work with them or are inspired by them, understand the value of integrating contemporary art into their respective spaces and practices. Whether it’s in your lobby, your dining room, or your fashion store, having art around makes people feel better, think differently, and generally warms them to the idea of new possibilities.

BLRH: In recent years, there’s been a shift in the fashion industry, with designers changing what it means to be a catwalk model. If you look at any runway show today, although the waif-ish models are still dominant, you’ll also see actors, designers, and artists stepping into those spaces. Isabelle Albuquerque, for example, is tall, slender, and has a very severe look. She started as a performance artist, then transformed her body into sculptures, creating her “Orgy for Ten People in One Body” series. Suddenly, Miuccia Prada is calling on her to walk in the Miu Miu show in Paris. Isabelle became this living, walking sculpture—if you’re familiar with her practice, it’s only natural that she crosses these cultural boundaries.We’ve recently shown Tali Lennox, who came from the modeling world into painting. Now she uses religious iconography in her artwork, and fashion brands like Vivienne Westwood are at least as interested in Tally’s artistic output and aura as they are in model persona, which she uses to showcase their clothes. She becomes this recursive spiral of inspiration in and of herself—fashion inspiring art, and art inspiring fashion.Then there’s Devin B. Johnson, another artist of ours, who frequently features bodies in his work. He’s also physically fit, and the way he presents himself—his sense of style—is very much a part of his practice. Designers are drawn to that, inspired by it. Devin was recently part of the “Helmut Lang Seen By Antwaun Sargent” show at the Hannah Traore Gallery, which presented artistic responses to the brand’s famous reverse cowboy T-shirt. One of Devin’s paintings, City Slicker, was included in the show—“city slicker” is a pejorative term that cowboys would use to mock people from the city, but has become dated and comedic over time. It’s Devin’s riff on his own persona.And last but not least, Jeanine Brito did a collaboration with Harris Reed’s runway show for Nina Ricci, which was incredibly exciting. I love these kinds of interactions because often, when you look at a favorite painting, you wonder what it would feel like to wear it. Fashion provides a new context to view and experience art. As artists, curators, and people in the arts, we try to offer something that doesn’t necessarily instruct, but instead allows for the creation of new conversations and experiences.

BLRH: I think Saint Laurent has done a remarkable job of incorporating contemporary artists into their brand context. Anthony Vaccarello has really taken it to the next level. Within their Rive Droite store, they not only showcase art but also create a story around it and expand into design and artistic elements. They’ve even produced Emilia Pérez, a film that was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards this year.As we speak, Saint Laurent is showcasing a series of Rae Klein’s artworks, while concurrently we have DOUBLECROSS, her current solo exhibition, on view at our Los Angeles gallery. Someone like Rae fits perfectly in both environments. It used to be considered gauche to have your work displayed in a shop or a restaurant—back in the day, anyone who made money off their work or presented it in a commercial space was considered a “sellout,” which is what we used to call it in my punk rock days. But now, more people are open to spreading their wings and exploring different ways of sharing their art with the world.

BLRH: People like it, and I think art collectors are aware that museums are no longer distancing themselves from this. Quite the opposite, they’ve been evolving to accommodate these new conversations. Traditional art collectors would be remiss not to acknowledge that if a work exists outside the narrow cultural box of the art world, it extends its relevance in the broader cultural consciousness. If you see a painting in an art gallery and then spot it on a T-shirt somewhere, that doesn’t diminish its value—it actually expands its existence beyond the gallery space. So I think anything we do as artists, curators, and creative professionals that gives art life beyond these fixed boundaries isn’t just beneficial to the artist, but also to culture at large.

BLRH: We’re preparing our summer exhibition now, it’s going to be called The Amber of this Moment. The show is focused on presenting the body within the context of the natural landscape and vice versa. In the gallery, we call our summer shows in Romania “Basel East” because they take place the weekend of Art Basel, and we hope people coming back from Switzerland will feel drawn to visit Bucharest.It’s exciting to bring these ideas to Romania because the Soviet and socialist background of much of Eastern Europe makes everything far more vital and dynamic. Romanians inherit a very traditional, accepted way of doing things, and artists and their cohorts are more motivated to rebel against that. In places like Los Angeles or New York, people are constantly presented with challenges to the established order, to the point where it becomes almost blasé—everyone’s like, “Get over yourself.” I like to tell people the real wild west is in the east, where artists like Paula Dunca are creating experiences that feel more essential, more immediate, than anywhere else in the world. People in Romania don’t take things for granted the way they do in the States. Being in the art world is not an established way of life. By going to see contemporary art that’s a little different, Romanians are making a statement. Whether or not the locals recognize it, there’s a unique energy in the galleries here. The passion is condensed and tangible. If 50 people show up, those 50 will engage deeply with every piece in the show, talk about what it means to them, consider my opinions, challenge them, and express their own without fear. They’ll mention it to you three years later, eight years later. That’s what I really appreciate about Romania: people don’t take having an opinion for granted, and they relish the opportunity to voice it.