Fresh off his showstopping collaboration with Christian Louboutin at Paris Fashion Week, legendary photographer David LaChapelle is heading south. On November 29, VISU Contemporary in Miami Beach will unveil "Vanishing Act," a sweeping exhibition of more than 30 of LaChapelle’s photographs, including nine brand-new works premiering to the public for the first time.
For a gallery as intimate as VISU, landing LaChapelle is no small feat. The artist—whose surreal technicolor photographs have featured everyone from Madonna to Tupac—has chosen this compact Miami Beach space as one of only two venues in the Americas to show his work. It’s a coup that cements VISU’s growing rep as a small gallery making very big noise.
Curated by VISU founder Bruce Halpryn, "Vanishing Act" is classic LaChapelle: lush, bold, spiritual and a little apocalyptic. The show captures a world-spinning faster each day, where beauty and crisis blur together in the glare of neon light. “It’s about how quickly things shift,” says Halpryn, “and how LaChapelle turns that chaos into visual poetry.”
Among the new pieces debuting is Will the World End in Fire, Will the World End in Ice (2025), a haunting continuation of his earlier work Spree, which depicted a cruise ship trapped in frozen seas. Now the vessel glows under a burning sun, a vision both gorgeous and unsettling. Another standout, Negative Currency (1990–2025), transforms banknotes from Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea into glowing relics, asking viewers to question the very idea of value.
Elsewhere, Tower of Babel (2024) skewers digital overload with a dreamlike skyline of chaos and chatter (“everyone is speaking, but no one is listening,” LaChapelle notes). And in works like Annunciation and Our Lady of the Flowers, he brings a reverent, contemporary twist to religious imagery, proof that even amid the madness, LaChapelle hasn’t lost sight of the sacred.
The show also revisits iconic series like Gas and Earth Laughs in Flowers, reminders of his knack for turning decay into high-gloss transcendence. It’s all wildly theatrical, deeply human and unmistakably LaChapelle.
The exhibition runs November 29, 2025, through January 31, 2026, with a free public opening and artist appearance on December 5 from 6–9pm.
VISU Contemporary is located at 2160 Park Avenue in Miami Beach. Admission is free.