I did the opposite, I opened the website before looking at the comments and thought it was like a beautiful art gallery too. Then I read the top comment, and thought 'What are they talking about??'. Had a complete opposite feeling.
The issue is that it's beautifully designed for a portrait phone-ish-sized screen. Try viewing it in 16:9 and it's a mess. I'm not saying this to criticise; the author owes me nothing, and if I shrink my browser window down then it looks lovely. But I think this is where the confusion is coming from. Half the comments are from people looking at it on a widescreen and half are on a portrait monitor or a phone. "What this website looks like" can be two very different things and nobody bothers to ask which we are talking about.
Wow. I had (just now) made one comment on the bad layout. As you might guess, I'm on desktop, and looking at the site in a window wider than it is tall. I saw your comment and shrunk my window to be half as wide as it is tall, and the layout corrects itself and changes -- dramatically.
Surprisingly, I had the art exhibit impression opening it on 16:9 desktop. It's sparse, as a gallery, or a luxury boutique, where free space accentuates value of content. It looks OK on mobile, but on desktop it's the sparse, but non-monotonous layout, that guides attention and provides a second layer to the content.
For me at a wider presentation the layout was broken: text overlapping, images misplaced, etc.
I viewed it on desktop, I still think it looks pretty good. Not efficient in the way it displays content, but still beautiful.
I too thought it was a beautiful art gallery, and not an article. Mainly because all I could see was art. Apparently there was an article too but I couldn't read it. I assume it was made for 21 yr olds with perfect vision and not intended for people over 40yrs old.
When I saw the article (which, for some reason, I had no trouble finding) I felt the same way, but then remembered I could adjust the font size myself with a few keystrokes.