october exhibitions from DESIGNBOOM RADAR
October brings a new set of exhibitions that open conversations across art, design, and architecture, with museums and galleries presenting projects that look back through history and forward into the future. Among them are Virgil Abloh: The Codes at the Grand Palais in Paris, and Dream Rooms at M+ in Hong Kong. The aptly-timed show, Ghosts: On the Trail of the Supernatural opens in Switzerland, and the Museum of Wisconsin Art debuts a survey of Frank Lloyd Wright’s furniture practice. Meanwhile in Kyoto, teamLab unveils its first permanent Biovortex installation.
Some of the exhibitions highlighted in earlier radars and our dedicated event guide remain on view, giving designboom readers more time to encounter them in their travels. On the whole, the broad list of exhibitions shows the range of themes taken by both designers and galleries across the world.
virgil Abloh: The Codes
The Virgil Abloh Archive, in partnership with Nike, announces Virgil Abloh: The Codes, the first major European exhibition dedicated to the late designer’s work. Opening on September 30, 2025 — Abloh’s birthday — and running through October 9th at the Grand Palais in Paris, the show draws from the 20,000-object Virgil Abloh Archive to chart nearly two decades of his multidisciplinary practice.
Curated by Chloe Sultan and Mahfuz Sultan, the exhibition expands on the 2022 edition of The Codes, presenting hundreds of objects, prototypes, sketches, and images alongside pieces from Abloh’s personal collections and library. The installation traces the ‘codes’ that defined his approach to apparel, footwear, architecture, music, and beyond, while spotlighting the collaborations and collective spirit that shaped his influential career.
name: The Codes
artist: Virgil Abloh
gallery: Grand Palais
location: Paris, France
dates: September 30th – October 9th, 2025
image courtesy of Grand Palais
Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design
Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design highlights the architect’s overlooked contributions to furniture, presenting forty chairs alongside drawings and photographs that chart his evolution from Prairie School to Taliesin West. The show emphasizes how Wright used his homes and studios as laboratories, experimenting with form, materials, and the role of furniture in 20th century domestic life.
In addition to historic pieces, the show debuts newly fabricated works based on Wright’s unrealized designs, created from archival sources and exhibited for the first time. Produced in partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and Taliesin Institute, these reconstructions are framed as explorations of Wright’s process and philosophy, offering a deeper view of his design legacy.
name: Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design
designer: Frank Lloyd Wright
gallery: Museum of Wisconsin Art
location: Wisconsin, USA
dates: October 4th, 2025 – January 5th, 2026
image courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ
teamlab: Biovortex
teamLab will debut Biovortex Kyoto on October 7th, 2025, establishing its first permanent museum in the city and the collective’s largest venue in Japan. Set just east of Kyoto Station, the 10,000-square-meter space is designed as a fully immersive environment where the art responds to the presence of each visitor.
More than fifty works will unfold across multiple floors, combining new commissions with well-known installations such as the Forest of Resonating Lamps and the soap bubble-formed Massless Amorphous Sculpture. Each work reacts to movement and sound to generate an experience that is never the same twice. The exhibition emphasizes the idea that the artwork exists in the interaction between people and space, and with shifting light, color, and form to shape a fluid landscape.
name: teamLab: Biovortex
artist: teamLab
location: Kyoto, Japan
dates: October 7th, 2025 (permanent)
image © teamLab
leandro erlich
Amos Rex in Helsinki presents the first Finnish exhibition of Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich, known for immersive works that subvert everyday experience. Born in Buenos Aires in 1973, Erlich has built an international reputation for creating large-scale installations that invite audiences to question the reliability of perception and the stability of familiar environments.
The exhibition includes signature pieces that transform ordinary settings into disorienting encounters: a climbable Helsinki facade, a classroom which seems to be abandoned to ghosts, and an elevator lobby without a destination. Erlich overturns physical logic and visual certainty, and stages situations that are playful and unsettling.
name: Leandro Erlich
artist: Leandro Erlich
gallery: Amos Rex
location: Helsinki, Finland
dates: October 8th, 2025 – April 6th, 2026
Leandro Erlich, Bâtiment, 2004, courtesy of Leandro Erlich Studio 2004, France, Nuit Blanche, Paris
Ronan Bouroullec – Inchiostri
Ronan Bouroullec — Inchiostri presents a new series of Murano glass vases created in collaboration with Maestro Simone Cenedese. Each piece is composed of four distinct elements — blocks of cast glass, a blown glass tube, and a shallow dish — arranged in shifting combinations of size, thickness, height, and color. From a near-infinite range of possibilities, Bouroullec has selected twenty compositions that continue his long-standing interest in modularity, balance, and the reversibility of assemblage.
The works sit between sculpture and vessel, their layered transparencies and unpolished surfaces emphasizing color, light, and depth. With Inchiostri, Bouroullec extends a career-long exploration of form and function, highlighting how simple elements can be joined, reconfigured, and reimagined to probe questions of utility, fragility, and transformation.
name: Ronan Bouroullec — Inchiostri
artist: Ronan Bouroullec
gallery: Giorgio Mastinu Fine Art Gallery
location: Venice, Italy
dates: September 13th – October 30th, 2025
Ronan Bouroullec x Giorgio mastinu, image © Giorgio Mastinu
Robert Rauschenberg Guggenheim
This exhibition marks the centenary of Robert Rauschenberg with a focused presentation of key works from the Guggenheim’s collection, alongside significant loans from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Together, they trace the artist’s experimental approach to materials and media, underscoring his role as a pivotal figure in shaping the trajectory of contemporary art. The selection situates Rauschenberg’s work within a broader global tribute, celebrating a practice defined by risk, invention, and cross-disciplinary exchange.
At the center of the exhibition is Barge (1962–63), a 32-foot-long silkscreen painting executed largely in a single day. The largest in a series of roughly 80 works created between 1962 and 1964, Barge exemplifies Rauschenberg’s embrace of scale, immediacy, and image-based experimentation. The work returns to New York for the first time in nearly twenty-five years.
name: Robert Rauschenberg: Life Can’t Be Stopped
artist: Robert Rauschenberg
gallery: Guggenheim New York
location: New York, USA
dates: October 10th, 2025 – May 3rd, 2026
Robert Rauschenberg, Yellow Body (1968) © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/licensed by VAGA, New York, NY/ARS, New York
Diagrams by AMO/OMA
Diagrams: An Exhibition by AMO/OMA at the Fondazione Prada in Venice brings together more than 300 works, ranging from medieval manuscripts to contemporary digital media. Installed across the ground and first floors of the Palazzo Ca’ Corner della Regina, the exhibition assembles documents, publications, images, and videos that trace the diagram as both a historical tool and a contemporary mode of communication.
Organized thematically, the display situates diagrams within pressing global contexts while also highlighting their long and varied lineage. By presenting material that spans centuries and cultures, the show demonstrates the capacity of the diagram to bridge disciplines and eras, showing how visual systems continue to shape design and collective understanding.
name: Diagrams: An Exhibition by AMO/OMA
architect: AMO/OMA
gallery: Fondazione Prada
location: Venice, Italy
dates: until November 24th, 2025
