During Seoul Art Week, Henri Alexander Levy unveiled his first solo exhibition, \u00153Final Achievement is Ruin,\u0013 at Shinsegae Gallery, presenting paintings, sculpture, and large-scale installations of metal cages. The American designer and artist founded the cult fashion label Enfants Riches D\u0000e9prim\u0000e9s in 2012 (translated as \u00153depressed rich kids\u0013), and has since cultivated a fiercely devoted following for garments in hand-painted leather and distressed silk, punctuated by cryptic slogans. The show extends that sensibility into a gallery context with an insistence on control, mood, and material intensity.<\/p>\n
\u00153Honestly, my artistic practice is the core of ERD\u0013\u0014it\u00019s there in everything I do as a designer,\u0013 Levy said. He describes designing \u00153in a cinematic way,\u0013 down to \u00153a very particular cut on a pair of black trousers\u0013 and a simplicity he prizes in menswear. Even when he is \u00153only designing,\u0013 he adds, \u00153I consider myself an artist first.\u0013 Inside the exhibition, recurring motifs\u0014ballet shoes, archival photographs of soldiers in uniform, guns, and the metal cages\u0014thread through a single, tightly drawn universe that, as he puts it, is assembled instinctually: \u00153What I\u00019ve made, what I\u00019ve arranged, what I\u00019ve decided is in my world\u0014and I\u00019ve just as instinctively rejected everything that isn\u00019t.\u0013<\/p>\n
The show\u00019s title clarifies his preoccupations. \u00153There\u00019s a very self-destructive nature in me that gets channeled into the work, in a very disciplined way,\u0013 he notes. He refuses to \u00153apologize for [his] work or modify it to suit any political agenda,\u0013 framing the phrase \u00153Final Achievement is Ruin\u0013 as a deliberate duality between success and collapse. Discipline structures his days: early mornings in the studio, running, collaging and sketching, long nights \u00153working on architecture in the evenings, from around eight to 11,\u0013 and an insistence on stepping away to see the work clearly.<\/p>\n
For Levy, fashion and art diverge at the point of function. He aims for \u00153lifetime pieces\u0013\u0014\u00153a button-down shirt, a trench coat, a T-shirt or a pair of boots\u0013\u0014while in fine art, he says, \u00153by dissolving the function, the process becomes more torturous. The piece has to stand alone, without any association to function.\u0013 The same exacting attention extends to printed matter\u0014\u00153an invitation, a book, a zine, a poster, a record\u0013\u0014which he calls part of his life\u00019s work.<\/p>\n
On provocation, Levy is unequivocal: \u00153My process is about entertaining myself. The viewer\u00019s perception of how I reappropriate something is beyond my control.\u0013 Collaboration follows the same logic. \u00153I have a very good relationship with [Vincent] Gallo\u0014it\u00019s very natural,\u0013 he said; a portrait of Vincent Gallo for Enfants Riches D\u0000e9prim\u0000e9s Spring\/Summer 2026 was photographed by Terry Richardson. \u00153So I work with artists I consider to be true artists.\u0013<\/p>\n
Levy\u00019s \u00153Anti Public Library\u0013 in Paris mirrors the rigor of his studio. Its shelves span catalogs of traditional Japanese masks, Joseph Beuys, Diane Arbus, Nobuyoshi Araki, and photobooks on the social unrest of 1960s Japan. He placed a bookstore, a bar, and a record store next to the Paris store to preserve a specific mood, with \u00153very hard guidelines about what can\u00019t be in there.\u0013 The arrangement is intentional: \u00153a Pierre Cardin book, a World War II book, a book on Clyfford Still, and a very crude little zine\u0013\u0014all within reach, by design.<\/p>\n
Across fashion, art, and collecting, Levy\u00019s self-enclosed world tightens around instinct and discipline, where achievement and ruin are kept in deliberate tension.<\/p>\n