In Mayfair, amid the hush of private galleries and the polished calm of Georgian façades, Against Nature unfolds like a secret interior. Staged within an elegant townhouse, the exhibition transforms domestic architecture into a site of beauty. It is part salon, part show: an immersive encounter with poetry. The show coincides with PAD and Frieze Week.

The title borrows from Joris-Karl Huysmans’s 1884 novel À Rebours (Against Nature), that decadent hymn to artifice and desire, and the exhibition channels its spirit of refined excess. Furniture are like sculpture; paintings breathe with intimacy; materials hum with memory. Works by Louis Fratino, Elizabeth Peyton, and Jonas Wood infuse the rooms with vibrancy. In contrast, Andy Warhol’s stunning Male Nude dialogue with Glenn Ligon’s language. It’s sensual and edgy. James Lemon’s ceramics, raw and immediate, bridge those worlds: surfaces both fragile and defiant, vibrating with touch and time.

Curated with precision and sensuality, Against Nature resists the neutrality of the white cube. The domestic setting dissolves hierarchy (with objects by Conrad Shawcross, Jojo Corvaia, Tino Seubert and more), paintings lean above marble consoles (did you notice the amazing Chris Ofili?), ceramics rest beside silkscreens, light pools like pigment. Annabel Agbo Godeau’s oil on canvas resonates with a Fornasetti candle in a shelf. Everything feels alive.

Ultimately, Against Nature is an exhibition about inhabiting art, design, architecture and style rather than merely observing it. It invites slowness. Within these quiet rooms, the decorative becomes radical. This exhibition was presented by Bureau Of Innovation and Lindon & Co.

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Images: Louis Fratino, Crying Portrait, Elizabeth Peyton, Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas), 1998, Andy Warhol, Male Nude (FL 05.00015), 1987, featured in the show.