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“I appreciate being able to pretend that my studio is not where all the messy work takes place and it’s just a room where the work exists.”
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| | | At Art Basel, FriendsWithYou Aims Higher Than Ever Before
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| What’s Happening: With a little help from their new pal, Starchild, the duo wants to remake (and rename) the world in their own image.
The Download: In their 20-year-career, Los Angeles cheer purveyors Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III have made Coachella kawaii via candy-colored stage sets for J. Balvin. They joined forces with Pharrell to build Netflix the animated blockbuster True and the Rainbow Kingdom, and populated the metaverse with the fRiENDSiES web3 community. They even achieved Peanuts levels of populism with Little Cloud, their 30-foot float in this year’s Macy’s Day Parade. Now, they’re aiming even higher.
At this year’s Miami Art Week, Starchild will land in Henry Liebman Square. The city of Miami Beach commissioned the 50-foot steel sculpture, which looks sort of like if Alexander Girard had designed a Wicker Man. But Starchild is no pagan harbinger of destruction. With its bright orange outstretched arms and radiating head, the “warrior of fire” Starchild transforms with an atmospheric kiss Earth as we know it into OCEAN, a whole new world of peace, joy, and a kinder cast of characters than the ones currently running things.
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The mythology will perhaps become clearer via not one but two shows of new work at Art Basel Miami Beach, where their kaleidoscopic paintings of intersecting cartoon icons and fluffy brand of pop sculptures may well coax flocks of collectors to the Nanzuka Gallery and GAVLAK booths. Those looking for more will gobble up their new Friend line of custom jewelry and apparel, or volley for one of the 500 miniature iterations of Starchild, each packaged with more details of the origin story-cum-prophesy: “Starchild exists in every living being on OCEAN,” the legend goes, “and if you close your eyes, you can see its light still bright in you.”
In Their Own Words: “Culture has a way of materializing what we need, and what we need is uplifting and optimistic,” Sandoval told the New York Times.
| Surface Says: Starchild might be a folly, one way or another, but it sure is fun.
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| | | Surface NFTs Powered by Mint
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In celebration of our partnership with Polygon and our multi-day, immersive activation during Miami Art Week, we’re excited to announce the launch of several limited-edition digital Surface magazine covers. Through Dec. 5, members of the Surface community can mint one of three 3D Surface NFTs, each of which represents the themes of our Art Week Salon Sessions: sustainability, fashion, and community.
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| | | The Design Industry’s First Cactus Leather
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When brands from Karl Lagerfeld to COS start using a material, it’s time to start paying attention. And cactus leather—the vegan alternative made from dried pads of mature desert cacti varieties—is definitely earning its moment in the sun as a new fashion mainstay. Sadly, the design industry has been slow to get on the bandwagon. But the L.A.-based interior, product, and textile designer Natasha Baradaran hopes to change that.
Her Livwell Cactus Leather, likely the industry’s first cruelty-free option, is sourced from an organic farm in central Mexico. The cactus itself is grown without damaging irrigation systems, watered only by rain; it’s dried only by the sun, without additional energy use. The leather is fully biodegradable and complies with the Global Recycled Standard. Little of this would matter, of course, if the vegan leather wasn’t appealing. Fortunately, it’s as beautiful as it is ethical. Baradaran is betting she can herd designers towards iterations in pebbled, canvas, and geometric patterns in colorways like terracotta and sky—and away from their bovine predecessors.
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| | | Sofia Serves Up a Plateful of Pink at Miami’s Design District
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Miami’s Design District gets even buzzier this year with the arrival of Sofia. The southern sister to Toronto’s Sofia Yorkville, this latest boite from INK Entertainment (of Byblos, Amal, and Level 6 Rooftop fame) offers Italian fine dining within glammy interiors by Studio Munge. Its teak terrace, dotted with frilly pink umbrellas, will whet guests’ appetite, further stimulated by, say, a negroni siciliano sipped on an amethyst velvet-and-chrome stool beneath the custom tubular-resin light fixture at the Enigma marble-topped bar.
Sparing no luxury, Alessandro Munge specified a full five pink-and-white honed marbles for the floor, along with custom Barovier & Toso milky white glass chandeliers. In the pink dining room, mirrored columns and chrome cabinets offer frames not only for the rotating art collection whipped up by Taglialatella Galleries but also the fashionable guests twirling forkfuls of Chef Daniel Roy’s campanelle con aragosta or spooning their zeppole with pistachio gelato. For those craving intimacy, Munge tucked away blush-red niches and a private dining area with a sparkling chandelier by Rosie Li. “We conceived it as an art dealer’s entertainment pad,” says Munge. And it surely will be.
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| | | In Park City, Susannah Holmberg Fashions an Indoor-Outdoor Retreat
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When it comes to the joys of indoor-outdoor living, L.A. seems to be regarded as the ultimate destination for putting down roots. But when Susannah Holmberg’s interiors firm recast the basement level of a Park City residence into a host’s dream, complete with a music nook, dining room, and eat-in kitchen, she made a compelling case for the hilly Utah hotspot as the ideal setting to revel in both the natural scenery and stellar interiors.
Each vignette in the entertaining space pulls inspiration from the soft edges and rounded motifs prevalent in both Art Deco and neotenic design. Earth tones in the form of white oak, unglazed terracotta, linen and sherpa textiles, and a natural stone breakfast bar tastefully reference the picturesque landscape outside.“The goal of this project was to bring the home’s walk-out level to life,” Holmberg says of the basement, which opens directly onto the sloping landscape outdoors. “Our clients really love to entertain and we wanted to create a space that embodies their indoor-outdoor dreams while entertaining large groups and their families.”
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| | | SuperRare x Art Republic: CryptoArt, Today and Tomorrow
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| When: Dec. 1–2
Where: Nobu Hotel, Miami Beach
What: NFT art marketplace SuperRare teams up with Art Republic on an immersive digital art exhibition, speaker series, and related programming at the Nobu Hotel during Miami Art Week. Work by SuperRare artists Guy Bourdin, Reuben Wu, Bruno Urli, Maria Fynsk Norup, and Jekein will be on display. Panels featuring artists ThankYouX and Andres Reisinger will also accompany the exhibition as part of the platforms’ Creative Intervention speaker series.
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| | | ICYMI: In The Menu, Fiction is Scarcely Stranger Than Fact
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It’s telling—or perhaps revealing—that Mark Mylod, the director of the new haute dining horror-satire The Menu has also directed 13 episodes of the hit HBO drama Succession since it premiered in 2018. The new film, which stars Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Nicholas Hoult, explores what happens when the power dynamics between the absurdly privileged patrons of an exclusive restaurant and the staff who cook for and serve them are flipped.
The film is set at Hawthorne, a remote restaurant on an island with a self-contained agricultural ecosystem: scallop beds, produce fields, and a “Nordic-style smokehouse,” all tended by employees who answer to the simmering rage of chef Julian Slowik (Fiennes). The restaurant may be fictional, but it’s a composite of many real-life cult-favorite spots, the clientele they draw, and, in some cases, the ignominious scandals the industry has finally begun to take seriously.
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Reach the design world every morning. Find out more about advertising in the Design Dispatch.
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| | | Member Spotlight: Blu Dot
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| Blu Dot is a Minneapolis-based designer and maker of modern home furnishings. The brand began with three college friends who loved modern furniture, but couldn’t afford what they liked and didn’t like what they could afford. The trio began designing and making the furniture they wanted and it so happened that their accessible modern designs spoke to other people facing the same issues with furnishings.
| Surface Says: Blu Dot’s high-quality, accessible furniture is rooted in the sculptural and architectural know-how of its founders. That’s why the brand’s products are at once beautifully designed, practical, and versatile.
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| | Today’s Attractive Distractions
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Bondi Beach goes nude for photographer Spencer Tunick’s latest artwork.
How long can one survive the “quietest place on Earth” without going crazy?
Winston, a cream-colored French bulldog, wins the National Dog Show.
Scientists genetically modify a tobacco plant whose leaves produce cocaine.
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