Joseph Geagan, photographed by Gaylord Studios.
Las Vegas just got another high-voltage dose of New York City. Last month, Alexander Shulan and Ralph DeLuca’s experimental Nevada outpost, Lomex Las Vegas , opened its third show, Sophisticated Boom Boom , bringing together the twisted minds of DeSe Escobar and Joseph Geagan for a joint exhibition in the gallery’s Atomic Age home in Paradise Palms. Green carpet, ceramic tigers, a hot pink baroque bed, and Art Deco lamps curated by model and artist Carlotta Champagne set the scene for two artists taking very different routes to get to Vegas. Escobar, returning to the fabric skills she picked up at fashion school in L.A., built six-foot upholstered partitions using images pulled from old Dior and Prada couture shows—the ones she likes to watch on YouTube in bed. Geagan’s paintings, meanwhile, are full of Vegas staples: feathers, sequins, showgirls, Dita Von Teese, and crowded scenes inspired by James Ensor. Galliano meets Luxor, old Europe meets fake Europe, the 1920s meet the 2000s meet the ’80s all over again. In Vegas, chronology is a myth.
Last month, the two artists called in from disparate locations—Geagan from Vienna, where he’d just curated a show with Gaylord Fine Arts, and Escobar from the parking lot of Jet Rag in Hollywood—to talk about Vegas, accidental community-building, the colors they’re sick of, and their death row meals.
SUNDAY 4 PM SEPTEMBER 13, 2026 VIENNA & L.A.
JOSEPH GEAGAN: Hey, DeSe. Where are you right now?
DESE ESCOBAR: I’m at Jet Rag in Hollywood.
GEAGAN: Oh my god. Have you found anything good yet?
DESE: About 20 things. I’m parked in my car with the AC on. It’s been hot.
GEAGAN: Wow. Well, I’m in Vienna right now. We’re going to talk about our show, Sophisticated Boom Boom , which opened at Lomex Las Vegas a week ago. What was your favorite moment of the opening?
DESE: I liked meeting Carlotta [Champagne] and the friends who came out from London, New York, and L.A. to celebrate with us.
GEAGAN: It was really cute. Everyone got dressed up and we had a ball.
GEAGAN: The works in the show are different from a lot of the things you’ve shown recently. How’d you come up with the idea of what you wanted to make for our show in Vegas?
DESE: It really started with scale and having the opportunity to be in L.A. to fabricate everything. Also, Satchel McCarthy and August Blum provided a space for me to create works on this scale. It was a last minute thing that I wanted to make these partitions at six feet, because in the beginning I wanted to do furniture. Facebook Marketplace was also kind of a design class for me. It fed me with ideas. I saw that one partition and I just happened to be with the right people in the right place at Satchel’s, especially Ross Daniel Eaton. He’s an Italian living in L.A. and he just offered to help me. He’s like, “Hey, do you need help cutting wood? We can make our own partitions,” because I kind of wanted to make a copy of the first one I saw. Then I learned how to cut wood and reupholster, and I wanted to move forward with that new skill.
GEAGAN: The imagery used in the work is from two different shows, a Dior Couture show and a Prada show. Was there any reason you wanted to source images from those two?
DESE: That era, from 2000 to 2018, was very formative in fashion and continues to inspire me to this day. I constantly watch fashion shows in bed, the ones where they take you backstage. So a lot of the images are screen grabs of the beauty and glamour from backstage.
DESE: People recognize my work as beauty and makeup, so I wanted to tap back into that.
GEAGAN: Totally. Now you can ask me the same.
DESE: And how about you? What were you thinking about when you were coming up with the works for this show?
GEAGAN: I wanted to figure out how to embrace Vegas aesthetics in the paintings since we’re showing in Vegas, but also in this very specific Atomic-era house in Paradise Palms. I wanted to show the theatrical, showgirl side of Vegas, so I incorporated a lot of feathers and sequins, things that are stereotypical of a certain type of person who comes to visit or performs in Vegas. I wanted the paintings to work as though they could exist in any realm, but I really connected it to that city. I also used some 19th- and early-20th-century European paintings, because I was really interested in this strange thing that happens in Vegas with The Venetian and the Paris Casino—how they’re rebuilding these images of old Europe, but in this over the top, over sensorial amusement park style. I was interested in how the intersection of this Vegas aesthetic and old world European mentality could be brought in. Two of the paintings were [James] Ensor-inspired, one of them being Christ Entering Brussels. It has hundreds of figures in it who are very small in the background, but I use Dita Von Teese instead of Christ. Speaking of which, you saw Dita Von Teese there. How was that experience?
DESE: She was at The Venetian, and as often as I visit Vegas, I actually had never been there. But I remember going to Vegas a lot in the mid ’90s as a kid with my family. Luxor, Excalibur and Treasure Island were the bigger casinos. So the shows that I picked to be graphics for the pieces were from my favorite casinos at the time.
GEAGAN: Yeah. As a child, these things do seem glamorous and over the top. It was nice to see Dita Von Teese and see The Venetian because my parents never really took me there.
DESE: Yeah. A lot of it was about revisiting the Luxor Casino through art and exploring couture collections that were a bit silly at the time. It’s glamorizing these certain themes, especially Luxor, which is an Egyptian-themed casino.
DESE: Also, I love Prada and Dior, but there was something about Galliano Dior that was very Vegas.
GEAGAN: For sure. Lots of glitz, lots of sequins, feathers, all of that stuff. I’m also thinking about Parisian showgirls in the ’20s. But something that I try to do with my paintings is meld together eras and pull out certain aspects of artifice and fashion. It makes it greater than its whole and adds this kind of discordant quality to things. And that’s what you were doing too with your sculptures?
DESE: Yeah. For as long as I can remember, even as a teenager, we were just cooking up different eras. Luxor was built in the ’80s, I believe.
GEAGAN: You’ve been going through an ’80s renaissance yourself.
DESE: Yeah. There’s something about the 2000s and the ’80s that blended really well together, when it was actually indie sleaze looking back at the ’80s. We’re going through this now with indie sleaze looking back at the 2000s.
DESE: Regardless of what people think, I think Galliano is a genius and I had no idea he was going to pull out of the show. Anyway, how about the Gaylord community that you guys have created?
GEAGAN: Well, John, my partner and I, who does Gaylord Fine Arts with me, met because of you. You set us up on our first date, which also spawned DeSe Escobar’s international matchmaking service. I don’t know how many successful couples there are, but at least one over here.
DESE: I think just one. We wouldn’t have Gaylord without me, right?
GEAGAN: That’s right. John and I met in New York one night, and then I moved to L.A. right at the end of the pandemic. John already lived at the Gaylord Apartments, and I moved in with him basically right away. This was towards the end of lockdown, and we started to think about doing something in the apartment, which is on the 14th floor and looks over Los Angeles. We started showing friends’ artwork, and one thing grew into the next. We’ve been doing shows at the Gaylord for five years now. The reason we’re currently in Vienna is because we just curated a group show of 10 artists at City Galerie Wien with Antonia Lia Orsi. It was a whole weekend of events and shows, and we’re lying down in the first district enjoying a schnitzel and ready to get some rest.
DESE: The show looked really great. I’m very proud of you guys.
DESE: And still in shock when I realized this all wouldn’t happen if we weren’t in that apartment in 2019. But hey, whether we realize it or not, we’re just building communities unintentionally.
GEAGAN: We’re a big family. We both really wanted to do this show together. I was working in L.A. and you were working in New York until the very end, and we didn’t really know what the show would look like.
DESE: To be honest, when you announced the name Sophisticated Boom Boom , I shifted and held that standard up for everything I was doing.
GEAGAN: Yeah. I had a question. What does showing work in a haunted city like Las Vegas allow you to do that showing work in a haunted city like New York doesn’t?
DESE: Scale, and also the environment we got to show in. It’s not a traditional white cube. I haven’t shown in a white cube since 2016, ’18-ish.
GEAGAN: Right. Also, Carlotta Champagne curated some of the 1960s and different vintage furniture in the house. There’s green carpeting and wallpaper and light fixtures. That changes the way you show an artwork. It looked like someone actually lived there and that this was their collection of paintings and sculptures, which you made fit really seamlessly into a living environment. It was unexpected to have that experience.
DESE: It was fun to see our artworks compliment each other in the space.
GEAGAN: I noticed that we both kind of gravitated towards purples. What is that purple, the leather?
GEAGAN: Regal purple. I was using that in some paintings and this kind of salmon orange.
DESE: The salmon was really nice. It looked like skin when you took photographs of it closely.
GEAGAN: Yeah. It was a very high quality leather that you used. Other than those, what are your favorite colors of the season?
DESE: I like hot magenta, even though I didn’t use that in the show. I think hot magenta for men, especially lean, skinny men who wear long sleeves that are really tight, is really nice. I’m so over teal. I love how that color looks on me, but I think it got too played out.
GEAGAN: Yeah. I’ve been really gravitating towards—you actually said it the other day—banana yellow. I was wearing it last night for this dinner in Vienna and I got a lot of compliments. And also oxblood is in my paintings and clothing. I’m very drawn to it, but I guess that’s kind of me wanting fall to come because it’s very tonal. What are you looking forward to doing in Los Angeles while you’re still there?
DESE: I’m working on another show for August Blum’s gallery called The Village . I am going to do the same thing, to reupholster something because I love working with textiles especially. And the Albany print shop that I’ve been working with has been really amazing. They became my family and friends.
DESE: I want to make a magazine of just 30 limited edition copies. I don’t know if it’ll be made in time for the show. I don’t want to rush it. October 9th is the opening, and I wanted to sell it out of the trunk of a car, like Angelyne LOL, but at the afterparty. Maybe that’s something I can do during Frieze.
GEAGAN: That sounds good. Also, you went to fashion school in Los Angeles. Has that helped you?
DESE: I did. I think I went at the right time. I had the most amazing mentors. I went to Otis. It’s where Rick Owens went to school, I believe. At the time, our junior year mentors were Urban Outfitters, Todd Oldham, Ed Hardy, La Blanca, and Lily Pulitzer. I did swimwear with David Meister and my second mentor was Todd Oldham. He actually came to the class to give critiques. I designed for a grandmother and I did this 1960s look with cheetah spots and decided that I would blanket stitch all the cheetah spots. It took about 50 hours, so my mom, dad, and aunt helped me. In my senior year, we had mentors like Bob Mackie, Du Soleil, BCBG, and Isabel Toledo. I got to work with Isabel Toledo in person, her and Ruben Toledo. Rest in peace, Isabel Toledo.
GEAGAN: It’s interesting to think about that in the context of the work you’re making now. Because having to upholster and buy large bolts of fabric, you’re doing something that integrates your schooling in a more practical way, in terms of handling fabrics and whatnot.
DESE: Yeah. Fabric manipulation is my favorite.
GEAGAN: What would you have for your last meal on Earth, for your appetizer, main course, and dessert?
DESE: Oh, I told you. Chicken wings and a hot dog.
DESE: A milkshake or an ice cream sundae. Neapolitan.
Source: Fashion
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