Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1545129
"At this point, it takes a lot to truly knock me off my feet." 68 Exhibitions that rocked your life. One of the very first I remember visiting was "I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin" at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1994. Before we went, my mother explained to me that Pippin painted in oil and that oil paint "never really dries," which completely fascinated me as a child who had never experienced oil as a medium firsthand. At one point, left alone for just a moment, I ran my hand across one of the paintings to see if it was true. We were immediately kicked out of the exhibition. My father later went back in and bought me a T-shirt from the show, which I still have to this day. And, honestly, every time I encounter a Pippin painting in a permanent collection, I think about how he and I came from the same place [West Chester, Pennsylvania], and how in my mind that painting somehow still has not dried. Another major touchstone for me was the 2002 "Space 1026" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. I was 17 years old, and it completely shifted my understanding of what a creative life could look like. More recently, the 2014-2015 "Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art was unforgettable. During the final weekend, the museum stayed open for 48 straight hours, and I went at around 2:30 in the morning after a long night out. It was almost dreamlike. It felt less like visiting a museum and more like stepping into a shared cultural hallucination. Lastly, my first experience encountering Dimorestudio during Salone in Milan in 2015 was truly transformative. Moving through the space, every one of my senses felt activated at once. The atmosphere, the scent, the sound, the lighting, the emotion of the objects themselves — it completely overwhelmed me, and I unexpectedly started to cry. It was a pivotal turning point in my life — the moment I understood that what I wanted to create was not simply exhibitions or interiors, but emotional experiences. It taught me the true meaning of immersion and made me want to give that feeling to my friends, clients, and community through the spaces and worlds we build at The Future Perfect. On TFP's obsession with historic properties. I really have to tip my hat to David. While I am deeply involved in the search for our future locations, he is the visionary behind our relationship to architecture and historic spaces. He has an incredible knowledge and instinct for environments, and I love learning from the way he sees the world. What has always made The Future Perfect so compelling to me is that our spaces already carry history, personality, and emotional texture before a single object is installed. Those environments create natural limitations, and strangely, limitations often allow the work itself to — Laura Young Clockwise from top left, all products exclusively at The Future Perfect: Untitled Lamp 1, 2025, by Jane Yang-D'Haene. Laura Young. Jogakbo credenza by D'Haene Studio; Untitled Lamp 1, 2025, and Untitled Lamp 15, 2025, both by Jane Yang-D'Haene; Petite Cathedral sconces, Pair 2, by Jason Koharik; and Petite Cathedral sconces, Pair 3, by Jason Koharik. Mirror No. 55 by Ben & Aja Blanc; Sketch light large – sulfur bronze by Anna Karlin; Merlot pine Table Lamp 2 by Natalia Triantafylli; and Trompe l'oeil painting by Ashley Zangle.