<Studio Ahead’s installation for The Future Perfect recalls the pre-internet days of IRL antique hunting — Art News
arrow_back Back to all stories
museum exhibitions calendar_today Friday, January 23, 2026

Studio Ahead’s installation for The Future Perfect recalls the pre-internet days of IRL antique hunting

Studio Ahead, led by curators Homan Rajai and Elena Dendiberia, has created an installation for The Future Perfect titled 'The Houses Are Haunted by White Night-Gowns,' running as a satellite to the 12th edition of FOG Design+Art in San Francisco through January 25, 2026. The show features 13 designers who each produced unique bowls, displayed on a stacked arrangement of vintage furniture sourced from Berkeley-based Mid Century Møbler and San Francisco's C. Mariani Antiques, blending Scandinavian design from the 1940s–1970s with 17th–19th century antiques.

The exhibition matters because it deliberately evokes the pre-internet experience of in-person antique hunting and thrifting, offering a tactile, community-oriented alternative to digital shopping and hyper-curation. By juxtaposing contemporary craft with historical furniture, the show challenges the diminishing imagination of modern life—a theme drawn from a Wallace Stevens poem—and underscores the role of curators in creating layered, lived-in contexts that resist algorithmic consumption.