To coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach, Snarkitecture has created a custom installation in the lobby of the Delano hotel. A marble run, the classic children’s toy, is reimagined in stark white as a ten foot-high freestanding sculptural object greeting visitors as they enter the hotel. The amplification in scale and reduced color palette act as a foil to the associated playfulness of the familiar item. The piece is constructed atop a large, circular mirrored plinth, which visually doubles the structure. Throughout the duration of the installation hotel guests and visitors are invited to interact with the piece, depositing black glass marbles into various points of the structure to watch them descend in unpredictable and circuitous paths, only to be deposited amongst thousands of other marbles sitting on the base.
Carmen, To Havana and Back, a theatrical Cabaret and immersive nightlife experience. Created at PUBLIC ARTS.
Inspired by the pulsing nightlife of Havana’s 1950’s Tropicana Club, the iconic story of love, jealousy and betrayal unfolds around the audience in a vibrant 360 degree spectacle of live music and dance.
“Party Like It's 1950s Cuba In New York's Hottest New Immersive Show” - Forbes
“The Most Seductive Theater Scene in New York Right Now” - Wall Street Journal
Morgans Hotel Group partnered with MUNCHIES, VICE Media's food channel, to create "Dinner Party™," a one-of-a kind communal dining experience that launched in November 2014 and spent the next year roaming the globe with chefs such as Carlo Mirarchi of Roberta's, Andy Ricker of Pok Pok, and Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski of State Bird Provisions.
Bringing together MUNCHIES' groundbreaking content and perspective with Morgans' creativity and leadership in lifestyle hospitality, Dinner Party™ was a communal dining experience based around the ideals of creative collaboration and shared experiences. Moving from city to city, these Dinner Party™ events appeared in New York, London,Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco over the next year. Each Dinner Party™ will exist for only a moment, empowering chefs to cook the food they love in an honest and open environment that is exciting, inclusive, and interactive, just as a dinner party would be in one's home. Each Dinner Party™ was unique, tied together by a theme, as will the guests who experience the evening. MUNCHIES and Morgans founded their respective businesses on looking at the world through a different lens, and the companies intend to celebrate unhealthy obsessions, bizarre inspirations and delicious adventures with these imaginative and thought provoking evenings.
The Dinner Party™ kitchen was overseen by Tien Ho, one of the leading culinary innovators of our generation and Morgans' Corporate Executive Chef. Tien is widely recognized within the food community as one of the creative innovators that helped to place Momofuku on the culinary map, and is the winner of such accolades as "Best New Chef" by GQ Magazine, and "The People's Best New Chef in New York" by Food & Wine Magazine. Tien and MUNCHIES will handpick a chef to collaborate with for each dinner, creating individual experiences representative of what the chefs and their creative partners would like to express at their meals. The menus at Dinner Party™ will be experimental but always casual. Tien will work with the chefs to try new things depending on the season, a far-flung location recently visited, or a new ingredient that they've come across.
The beverage program for Dinner Party™ featured guest mixologists and sommeliers overseen by Ryan Chetiyawardana, A.K.A Mr. Lyan. Ryan has been involved in several of the U.K.'s best bars for over a decade including White Lyan (Best New International Bar 2014) and Dandelyan (Best New International Bar 2015) at Mondrian London at Sea Containers. In 2015 he was named Best International Bartender and he has been named U.K. Bartender of the Year twice. Under Ryan's direction and vision, Dinner Party™ will partner with the most innovative minds in the world of cocktails, bringing together new techniques, exotic flavors, and super creative food pairings to complement each chef.
The theme for the first season of Dinner Party™ will be "Exchange Students," in which chefs synonymous with a particular city or region will take their skills to a different city and provide a once in a lifetime dining experience to a new audience. The MUNCHIES team worked to select its favorite chefs from each city to send on the road. The chefs will include some of the most recognized names from the MUNCHIES series "Chef's Night Out," and will be released as details are announced about specific Dinner Party™ events.
For a new installation at the Mondrian South Beach, artists Jen Stark and Misaki Kawai painted large, canvas teepees surrounding the hotel's pool.
Stark, who is from Miami, often works in colored paper to create geometric, rainbow shapes. Her teepee pulls from this vibrant color palette; it's covered in squiggly lines that remind you of the florescent coal populating the waters of Miami.
Stark was hanging out in her teepee when we got a chance to ask her about the project. "A lot of my work is based of organic and psychedelic shapes, based of shapes in nature and a little bit of math involved too. For this, I wanted to do all of my crazy, psychedelic mish-mash, which kind of ties into the whole peyote ceremony," she said. Stark also explained her process: "I pretty much just took a pencil and started sketching. I had an idea in my head. Then I marked the colors and had some assistants help with painting in the lines."
Running November 30 through December 6, Artsy and SIXTY present the aptly named Artsy Projects: Nautilus South Beach, wherein travel and art come together for a stunning series of installations, performances, and events. Presented across the hotel’s grounds, the series features work from artists Katherine Bernhardt, Dan Colen, Mira Dancy, Nicolas Lobo, Eddie Peake, Scott & Tyson Reeder, and Chloe Wise.
Curated by Artsy’s Elena Soboleva, Artsy Projects: Nautilus highlights works that complement the nature of Miami itself. Each piece calls to mind a sense of play, wonder, and a clever reimagining of the daily milieu. You’ll find Dan Colen’s M&M boulders, Chloe Wise’s take on baked goods, a mural from Mira Dancy, and site-specific works in vibrant palettes by Katherine Bernhardt and Eddie Peake.
Responsible for curating, financing, producing, and marketing the Somewhere Over the Rainbow Project. Working with Sam, Tury, and the FriendsWithYou team was a dream come true, not only because they are tremendously talented, but because we share a mission to bring positivity, love, and happiness to the world by creating and sharing our passions. This was a truly rewarding experience that married consciousness, commerce, and creativity to make the world a better place.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow is a colorful experience created with the intention of transcending the viewer to an enhanced state of happiness and self-healing. The installation is a physical manifestation of the Rainbow Spectrum-transforming ideas and emotion into a colorful, translucent, toy-like inflatable world that will colorize the environment and int's participants. Each piece is a symbolic reference to the human emotional spectrum. With each color corresponding to a different emotion, varying in meaning upon each visitors personal point of view, the viewer is urged to reflect on their inner state. An iconic concept often seen in FriendsWithYou's work, the viewer can physically experience the color spectrum and how that connects to your emotions.
FriendsWithYou is the fine art collaborative of Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III, working collectively since 2002 with the sole purpose of spreading the positive message of Magic, Luck, and Friendship™. As artists working in a variety of mediums, including paintings, sculpture, large-scale experiential installations, public playgrounds, published works and live performances, FriendsWithYou’s mission is to affect world culture by cultivating special moments of spiritual awareness and powerful, joyous interaction.
Hospitality brand SIXTY Hotels has teamed up with New York-based design firm Knowlita to launch an online pop-up shop dubbed “The L.E.S. Pool Club.
The shop will welcome a series of summer-long collaborations from the likes of Garrett Leight, The Academy New York and swimwear brand Solid & Striped. Each exclusive capsule will house an assortment of summer items, such as T-shirts, tank tops, beach totes and towels.
Products will receive a staggered release over the course of the summer, starting with a collection of pool-inspired items by Knowlita.
During Miami Art Basel with Baron Von Fancy partnered with the Mondrian Hotel South Beach. Producing and designing 1000 limited edition pillows for hotel guest amenity. And his signature “This Must Be The Place” mural in the lobby of the hotel.
