In the interiors Kelly Behun designs, art is never decoration—it’s a surprise and, sometimes, a provocation that brings a space to life. Think: a Nick Cave Soundsuit standing guard by a Manhattan home bar, or Lady Gaga video portraits by Robert Wilson pulsing from a Park Avenue dining room wall.
This month, the ELLE Decor A-List designer is turning the tables. Instead of sourcing art for her clients, she is curating it herself. Her exhibition Against Type takes over New York City’s Amelie du Chalard gallery from September 11-24, 2025. The show launches the new Assemblage series, which invites designers to choose works from the gallery’s collection and display them as if they were decorating a home.
Du Chalard, who also runs a Paris gallery, has long rejected the cold “white cube” model in favor of rooms that feel lived-in. With Assemblage, she ups the ante: Designers are asked not just to select art, but to blend it with furniture and atmosphere, creating what she calls “a single lived narrative.”
Behun was her first call. “When I visited the gallery in SoHo, I was really moved by the environment Amélie brought to life,” Behun says. “It’s beautiful and highly creative while also feeling familiar and welcoming. You have the feeling you are just hanging out at your friend’s loft—an impossibly chic one.”
Art and furniture in dialogue.
Her concept for Against Type grew from her love of typography and text-based art—but also from her resistance to labels. “It’s about opening your mind up to artists, mediums, and ideas that deviate” from the mold, she says. The show brings together six artists who work across painting, sculpture, and ceramics. Behun selected Bruno Dufourmantelle’s moody florals and Ramón Enrich’s surreal landscapes nodding to de Chirico, along with an 80-inch folding screen by Natalia Jaime-Cortez and a new mobile by Choun Vilayleck, created just for this exhibition. Even the installation takes risks: Kees van de Wal’s shaped paintings seem to whisper across the room to works by Bonnie Colin. “I wanted it to feel idiosyncratic, even conversational,” Behun explains.
A painting by Bruno Dufourmantelle (center) in Against Type, an exhibit curated by Kelly Behun.
For du Chalard, it’s exactly the kind of experiment she envisioned. “Kelly is immensely talented, fearless, and unfailingly art-first,” she says. “Her interiors don’t decorate around art. They detonate it.”
Ingrid Abramovitch, the Executive Editor at ELLE Decor, writes about design, architecture, renovation, and lifestyle, and is the author of several books on design including Restoring a House in the City.