Luhring Augustine is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Yasumasa Morimura and Charles Atlas that will open in our Chelsea location on January 29, 2026, and remain on view through March 21. The show will highlight two artists whose practices explore distinctive and vibrant views related to gender and identity.

On display in the main gallery will be a selection of new and exemplary works by Morimura that span the artist’s over four-decade career. The presentation will highlight his signature approach to reinventing and reimagining iconic imagery, largely pulled from the Western cultural canon — references ranging from artistic masterpieces and historic photographs to film and pop-culture. Gender and cultures coalesce and conflate in Morimura’s ingenious transformations of himself, creating subversions to assumptions related to these subjects. Through his depiction of female stars and characters, Morimura subverts the concept of the “male gaze”; within each image he both challenges the authority of identity and overturns the traditional scope of self-portraiture.

In the back gallery Atlas will present a new 30-minute program of portraits that focuses on drag and gender play. Culled from material that the pioneering film and video artist shot in the 1980s and 1990s, the portraits feature many of Atlas’s frequent collaborators, such as performers Leigh Bowery, Hapi Phace, and John Kelly, among others.