MSCHF bends two Lexuses out of shape for New York art week
Two Lexus electric cars have been tied in knots in New York. They will never drive again.
The Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF built the pair for Motomorphosis, a sculpture project commissioned by Lexus for the city's fall art week, Designboom reported. The two works are called Circle Car and Twisted Car, according to Dezeen.
Circle Car starts with a Lexus RZ450e, an electric SUV, stretched long and looped back on itself in a full circle. Twisted Car starts with a Lexus RX450h+, a plug-in hybrid SUV, its body wrung into a tight spiral. Both were installed at Chelsea Industrial, an event space at Hudson Yards on Manhattan's far west side.
Each sculpture sits beside a working version of the same model. Visitors can walk from the road-ready car to its warped twin and compare panel by panel. The side-by-side display makes the changes plain, even for anyone who has never followed car design.
The show runs for two days, 25 to 26 September, during New York's Armory Week, the cluster of art fairs and gallery openings that fills the city each autumn. Entry is free with an RSVP made through motomorphosis.com, Lexus said in its announcement.
Neither sculpture runs. Each is built around a steel armature, a rigid inner frame that holds the shape, covered with thousands of small individual pieces joined to form the outer skin. The team used some real Lexus parts in the finish, but the cars do not start or light up, Dezeen reported.
MSCHF said the project plays on the concept car, the one-off prototype that manufacturers build to test ideas and draw crowds before a production model exists. Lexus, in a press release titled "MSCHF TURNS TWO LEXUS ELECTRIFIED VEHICLES INTO SCULPTURE FOR MOTOMORPHOSIS", described the transformations as recalling the plasticity of geometry found in 3D animation, where forms stretch and bend without breaking.
What makes this stand out for visitors is the simplicity of the set-up. No tickets to buy. No engineering talk required. Just four cars in a room, two straight and two bent, for one weekend only.
