VISU Contemporary Presents David LaChapelle Exhibition, “Vanishing Act,” Through January 31, 2026

MIAMI BEACH, FL – VISU Contemporary announces its new exhibition for 2025 featuring works by internationally acclaimed photographer David LaChapelle. The expansive presentation, titled “Vanishing Act,” curated by VISU Contemporary gallery owner Bruce Halpryn, will be on display through January 31, 2026, and will feature over 30 significant photographs from the artist’s career, including the world premiere of 9 new works.

LaChapelle, whose career spans over four decades, continues to confront the paradoxes of beauty and decay, artifice and authenticity, with a unique visual language that merges theatricality, spirituality and social critique. “Vanishing Act” gathers landmark works from across his career alongside new and never-before-seen pieces that reflect the deepening urgency of his practice today.

Highlights of the exhibition include the world premiere of the following works:

• Will the World End in Fire, Will the World End in Ice (2025) 

  Over the past three decades, LaChapelle has explored the tension between nature and civilization through meticulously staged still-life photography. In series like Seismic Shift (2012) and Aristocracy (2014), he depicted symbols of wealth, flooded museums and deserted private jets, undone by environmental or societal collapse. This narrative evolved in Gas (2014), where overgrown forests reclaim abandoned fuel stations, and deepened with Spree (2019-2020), a haunting image of a cruise ship frozen in an arctic seascape. Inspired by Shackleton’s doomed expedition and the unchecked growth of the cruise industry, Spree eerily mirrored the onset of the global pandemic, completed just days before lockdowns and no-sail orders took effect. In 2025, LaChapelle revisits this world in Will the World End in Fire, Will the World End in Ice, capturing the same vessel now illuminated by a haunting sun.

• Negative Currency (1990-2025)

  In this ongoing series, LaChapelle transforms global banknotes into glowing, negative icons that appear more like precious gems than instruments of commerce. Originally inspired by Andy Warhol’s One Dollar Bill (1962), The newest additions feature currencies from Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea. These luminous new works highlight the tension between value and image, reminding us that societies, like individuals, must continually adapt in order to survive and to reimagine value beyond the purely economic.

Other works on display include:

• Tower of Babel (2024) 

  Drawing from the biblical myth of hubris and disconnection, Tower of Babel presents a fragile human monument set against a digitally projected Los Angeles skyline. Constructed from handmade sets, and populated by a diverse cast of figures, the work critiques the noise and fragmentation of modern digital culture. LaChapelle describes it as “a scene where everyone is speaking, but no one is listening.”

• Sacred Figures Reimagined 

  Spirituality runs as a central thread throughout the exhibition, embodied in intimate and reverent tableaus like Annunciation (2019), Our Lady of the Flowers (2018), and The Sorrows (2021). In these works, LaChapelle reinterprets traditional Christian iconography through a contemporary lens.

A selection of LaChapelle’s classic and seminal works will also be on view, including:

• Earth Laughs in Flowers (2008-2011) - Still life photographs inspired by Dutch Vanitas, reflecting on mortality and material culture. 

• Gas and Land SCAPE (2012-2014) - Surreal, futurescapes gas stations and oil refineries reclaimed by nature. 

• Biombos (1986-2017) - Stained glass panels of hand-painted negatives reflect on faith, loss and transcendence. 

• For Men Will Be Lovers of Self & The Sorrows (2021) - A diptych of contemporary parables addressing vanity, vulnerability and the search for grace.

“Vanishing Act” arrives at a moment of global uncertainty and cultural introspection. With his singular ability to create narratives that blend theatricality and intimacy, LaChapelle presents a visual archive of a world in flux, where beauty meets crisis, and spirituality finds space within the chaos. The exhibition reflects on what we’ve built, what has disappeared, and what remains sacred.