REIMAGINE YOUR
CULTURAL STRATEGY
"The luxury industry will have to adapt to conscious consumerism and the increasing demand for a luxury purchase to have substantive value, beyond aesthetics and craftsmanship.“
“The path to purchase is not linear, and luxury brands will have to continue to adapt and meet consumers wherever they are and how they expect to engage. Right now, that’s across many digital mediums and in stores but the channels will keep evolving. What won’t change is the consumer’s desire to engage with stories and content that are inspiring and relevant to them, and products and experiences that are authentic, distinctive and trustworthy.”
IMMERSIVE INSTALLATIONS
Hermès x Robert Wilson
The wonderful world of Hermès collided with the spectacular, creative vision of the director and artist Robert Wilson in New York. Working together to present a surreal, off-kilter realm centered around Hermès’ home collections, the performance-driven installation, entitled ‘Here Elsewhere,’ was a captivating articulation of the label’s values.
Upon entering a prismatic, mirrored archway, guests found themselves in an abstracted home environment, adorned with Hermès furniture, flatware, home accessories and jewelry that a cast of Wilson’s performers delicately interacted with.
In the next circular room, an actress, decked out in a silver number that looked fit for the New York City Ballet stage, stood on a podium as the Hermès objects rotated around her on a 360 degree video screen to the sounds of a dramatic Philip Glass score. She was followed by another actress in a sparkling red gown, who repeated a series of dancerly movements on the podium.
Swarovski
x Iris van Herpen
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Swarovski’s Kristallwelten flagship store in Vienna, Iris van Herpen was invited to take over the space with five experimental art installations. For one of the works, model and artist Lekeliene Stange was 3D-scanned and modeled to create a larger-than-life woman’s head.
Kristallwelten is one of three Swarovski stores in Austria in operation with the aim of fusing art and lifestyle to ‘transform Swarovski crystal into a living experience.’ Van Herpen’s work for the company went straight to this point: Biomorphism – the body of installations created for the store – was the designer’s ode to the performance of femininity.
Nike x Neville Wakefield
As Global Curator for Nike’s Flyknit Collective, Neville Wakefield invited six architects, designers and artists from around the world to create pavilions responding to local communities in New York, Shanghai, London, Milan, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo inspired by the Nike Flyknit technology and its core benefits.
For the shoe’s debut in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto, who is known for his inhabitable immersive woven fabric structures, built a 40-by-12-meter crocheted walkway that communicated what the Flyknit shoe was about: lightness, performance, sustainability, and adaptive architecture.
American artist Jenny Sabin’s ‘myThread Pavilion’ in Manhattan, with its harder outside construction and softer, organic inner material, was composed of adaptive knitted, solar active, reflective photoluminescent threads and a steel cable net holding hundreds of aluminum rings.
"The focus on experience, curation and culture has proved popular with young consumers and are a vital cultural currency that communicates sophistication to their peers."
Times Square Edition
x Sila Sveta
For the 2019 opening of Ian Schrager’s new Edition hotel in New York’s iconic Times Square, Sila Sveta took over one of the largest and most technically-advanced LED displays in the world with site-specific artwork that augmented architecture with environment.
Covering the building’s facade along its perimeter, the studio created the illusion of a glass box brimming with abstractions of bright hues on the massive 18,000 square foot screen. The content coated the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue for several months, repeating on a loop eight times per hour for Times Square’s 330,000 unique daily visitors and establishing a new visual dialogue with the city.
Media coverage included The New York Times, Document Journal, and Whitewall.
Van Cleef & Arpels x Robert Wilson
To create the drama necessary to make its new High Jewelry come to life, the venerable French house Van Cleef & Arpels commissioned Robert Wilson to build an installation around the collection, creating a dreamlike travel through a timeless interpretation of Noah’s Ark.
Using light and space to simulate the experience of a ship at sea, that story translated into an alternately soothing and unsettling multisensory experience. On first entering the eerily lighted space, guests were jolted by thunderclaps and flashing lights; inside, they were lulled by projected ocean waves lapping the perimeter, the meditative strains of Arvo Pärt, drawing them toward the black jewelry cases.
‘Noah’s Ark’ traveled to Shanghai, Seoul, New York, Hong Kong, and Paris.
Glossier x
Lily Kwong
For its Seattle pop-up, landscape designer Lily Kwong partnered with cult beauty brand, Glossier, on the design, production and installation of a landscape inspired by the area’s natural topography.
The bright space was filled with plant-covered mounds of varying sizes highlighted by splashes of pink and purple wildflowers in peak season. Live moss, Mexican feather grass and flowering shrubs were among the array of species used to adorn the hills, which were constructed using wooden ribs and wire mesh. Many of the plants were indigenous to the region, and all of the vegetation was locally sourced.
The botanical installation paid homage to the remarkable mountain ranges and rolling meadows of Washington, including Mount Ranier. The landscape was repurposed as part of a charitable regifting initiative following the end of the pop-up.
STAGE DESIGN / PERFORMANCE
Drake x Sila Sveta
Rapper Drake and hip-hop trio Migos kicked off their North American concert tour, ‘Aubrey & The Three Migos,’ in support of Drake’s new album, ‘Scorpion,’ which had over one billion plays in the week after its release.
Sila Sveta developed the visual stage design at the invitation of American director Willo Perron, who is known for his work with Kanye West, Rihanna, Jay-Z, The Weeknd, and others. It was at once a light box and a gargantuan projector on which images of mermaids circling around Drake like sharks were shown and molten lava morphed into a rippling, sun-dappled pool. Its ever-shifting designs became a visual feast for the duration of the show.
Drake’s Spring 2019 European tour, “Assassination Vacation,” utilized the same stage design.
‘Pelléas et Mélisande’
x Marco Brambilla and Iris van Herpen
This new incarnation of Claude Debussy’s only opera, staged on the 100th anniversary of his death by Opera Vlaanderen and Royal Ballet Flanders, presented a new concept in abstract staging from an all-star creative team. Based on the 1892 play by Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas at Mélisande describes how innocence is able to transform into a dramatic – and deathly – love triangle.
Lending an epic element to a minimal stage concept, Marco Brambilla used original NASA footage manipulated from real photography taken by the Hubble Telescope as brushstrokes to emphasize the opera’s rhythm in a series of eclipses that travel deeper and deeper, inspired by the classic, psychedelic ‘stargate’ sequence of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Having worked with NASA on a commission in 2015, Brambilla had access to a vast library of high-resolution imagery, with which he was able to render familiar shapes and objects as mesmeric, terrifying, and artful, adding dimension and advancing the narrative.
Fashion designer Iris van Herpen served as Costume Designer for this breathtaking operatic production. A former ballet dancer herself, van Herpen has also created costumes for the Paris Opera and the New York City Ballet, collaborating with the choreographer Benjamin Millepied and the Sasha Waltz dance company in Berlin.
Yeezy x John Torres
Arguably the season’s most anticipated New York Fashion Week show, lighting designer John Torres was called up to imagine a set of light atmospheres for the Yeezy Season 3 presentation and ‘The Life of Pablo’ album reveal at New York’s legendary Madison Square Garden.
With 20,000 people in attendance, the star-studded event featured 1,200 models and extras, special guests including including Travis Scott, Vic Mensa and Virgil Abloh, and a performance by renowned contemporary artist Vanessa Beecroft, all masterfully illuminated.
Givenchy x John Torres
For his 10th anniversary with Givenchy, creative director Riccardo Tisci partnered with lighting designer, John Torres, and performance artist and art world celebrity, Marina Abramović, on a tour de force on the Hudson River – the House’s first show in New York.
Abramovic’s installation, which spanned the length of a New York City pier, included a diverse assortment of surreal happenings including, but not limited to, women climbing ladders, llamas, grand pianos, Serbian folk singers, cellists, and violinists, which were interspersed throughout the space.
With guests arriving more an hour before the show began, there was plenty of time to take in the beautifully lit installations high up on plinths as artists performed in delicate vignettes against the changing backdrop of the setting sun.
Lexus x Gareth Pugh
Underwritten by Lexus in celebration of its RC F performance coupe, which was reportedly the product of a carte blanche given to Lexus designers and engineers, fashion designer Gareth Pugh transformed New York City’s Pier 36 into a multi-chamber installation space with live ‘tableau vivant’ fashion performances in which he unveiled his seasonal collection in New York for the first time.
Known for garments described as wearable sculptures, Pugh created a series of large-scale film installations and live performance pieces with a singular and compelling vision, featuring a live immersive fashion experience harnessing design, performance and technology.
PRODUCT DESIGN
Gucci x Coco Capitán
Fusing personal experiences with a spontaneous sense of composition, Coco Capitán’s signature hand-written prose, poems and aphorisms reflect a culturally pertinent tone, defined by its oscillation between irony and sincerity, naïveté and knowingness, relativism and truth, optimism and doubt.
Catching the eye of creative director Alessandro Michele while Capitán was still in art school, Gucci featured a selection of her otherworldly musings on a limited-edition collection of apparel and accessories, which organically grew into a multi-faceted collaboration between the emerging artist and the globally recognizable luxury brand.
Taking the synergistic collaboration one step further, Capitán’s handwritten prose was celebrated with the unveiling of Gucci’s flagship store façade in Miami’s Design District, as well as text-based murals on Gucci Art Walls in Miami’s Wynwood district, on New York’s Lafayette Street, and in the Corso Garibaldi district of Milan.
Dior x
Jack Pierson, Friedrich Kunath, and Matthew Porter
The Lady Dior bag was first introduced in 1995, immediately after Princess Diana premiered the fashion classic, making it an instant icon. As part of the ‘Lady Dior As Seen By’ project, artists Jack Pierson and Friedrich Kunath and photographer Matthew Porter re-designed the fashion house’s classic bag, recognized by its intricate leather stitching and distinctive metal charms, with their own creative inspiration.
Jack Pierson’s Lady Dior bag was inspired by the dreamlike art-deco sketches he drafted in Paris with whirlpool doodles and bright-orange details on the handles and custom charms; Friedrich Kunath’s rendition featured a warm impasto painting of a couple in an intimate exchange at sunset with a playful cloud charm and glossy rainbow handles, and Matthew Porter utilized his series of ‘flying car’ montages, featuring shrunken models of cars, to create an effect of mid-air suspension along with a red car key ring.
Dom Pérignon x Iris van Herpen
Dom Pérignon collaborated with Iris van Herpen on an avant-garde limited-edition champagne box and 3D-printed sculpture as part of its ‘Power of Creation’ project. Van Herpen’s gift packs drew inspiration from concepts of metamorphosis and the length of time involved in making the champagne. Each box was signed by the designer and bore a sprawling, crystal-like green graphic set on a black backdrop.
The partnership also saw van Herpen design the Cocoonase – a 3D-printed sculpture with space for a champagne bottle. Both concepts were commissioned to celebrate the first release of Dom Pérignon Vintage 2004 drawing to a close and to mark the introduction of the second, called the P2-2004.
To accompany van Herpen’s work, photographer Daniel Sannwald directed a minute-long video that saw a ghost-like Anja Rubik emerge from an evolving green mist, harking back to the notion of metamorphosis. Previous ‘Power of Creation’ collaborators have included Jeff Koons, Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Newson and David Lynch.
Equinox x Darel Carey
Los Angeles–based visual artist Darel Carey’s work includes dimensional line drawings and immersive installations using his signature medium: tape. During the 2019 Frieze Art Fair, Equinox commissioned Carey to create an immersive tape installation at its High Line club in New York City.
Over a period of eight days, Carey fabricated an expansive geometric design on the club’s interior windows and collaborated with Equinox on corresponding limited-edition yoga mats, which were available for purchase at The Shop with proceeds donated to charity.
Moncler x Greg Lauren
American artist and designer, Greg Lauren, collaborated with Moncler on a collection of 200 unique and limited-edition clothing pieces that crossed over into the field of artistic expression. Simply entitled “Collide,” the collection linked the Italian brand with the highly experimental world of the designer, who is known for his incredible eye for detail.
The collaborative range featured Lauren’s signature juxtaposition of textures through the combination of old and new. Men’s, women’s and unisex pieces focusing on iconic designs from the brand’s heritage were dismantled, intersected and recomposed using Lauren’s signature striking distressed fabrics, such as vintage US military tents and duffle bags, antique hemp, antique Japanese Boro and antique African indigo.
LECTURE SERIES
Cartier x Neville Wakefield
Held over three days in April at a converted hangar in San Francisco’s Mission Bay, curator Neville Wakefield brought together a diverse panel of artists and trendsetters to speak candidly about their fearlessness, the thrill of invention, and the essence of bold connections as part of the Cartier Social Lab, a series of intimate conversations and events honoring the Cartier ethos and aesthetic.
The series of unforgettable talks allowed luminaries from different walks of life, including Alex Prager, Chaz Bear, Es Devlin, Leo Villareal, Larry Jackson, and David LaChapelle, to discuss their creative process, challenges and passions with Wakefield as the host and narrator.
Samsung x Coco Capitán
As part of Samsung’s effort to reach young creatives in the US and Asia, Capitán was commissioned by Hypebeast to develop a branded content campaign and 360º activation showcasing the brand’s newest tech products.
Capitán’s collaboration with Samsung reimagined the conventional brand-artist partnership and in-store shopping experience, sourcing inspiration from the artist’s visit to New York and two-week residency in Japan to create a series of aspirational films following her on her exploration of the magnificent cities through an artist’s eyes with Samsung technology in hand.
Taking over Samsung’s flagship Galaxy Harajuku store, an 8-story cutting-edge retail environment in the heart of Tokyo’s most popular shopping neighborhood, Capitán designed an immersive installation that incorporated her customized handwritten prose, art films created with the new Galaxy Note10+, and sound design into a narrative circuit installation combining innovation, inspiration and additive technology.
The fully integrated campaigns came to life across digital, film, and social media channels alongside a cutting-edge immersive multimedia store experience, a series of in-store events featuring Capitán, and limited-edition merchandise, elevating the Samsung product through her masterful storytelling and reaching Hypebeast’s influential millennial audience of 9.4 million.
Adobe x David LaChapelle
Alongside notable creators such as Takashi Murakami, M. Night Shyamalan, Dave Grohl, Shantell Martin and Billie Eilish, David LaChapelle took the stage at Adobe’s annual Creativity Conference, Adobe MAX, to share an inspirational Keynote talk with the 15,000 member audience about how he found his identity as a photographer and artist and to offer advice for aspiring creatives.
EXHIBITIONS / PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS
‘Desert X’
x Neville Wakefield
Produced by Desert Biennial, a not-for-profit charitable organization, ‘Desert X’ was conceived as a recurring international contemporary art exhibition that activates desert locations through site-specific installations by acclaimed international artists.
Its guiding purpose and principles include presenting public exhibitions of art that respond meaningfully to the conditions of the desert locations, the environment, and indigenous communities – promoting cultural exchange and education programs that foster dialogue and understanding among cultures and communities about shared artistic, historical, and societal issues. ‘Desert X’ includes site-specific work by 18 artists selected by CXA artist and curator, Neville Wakefield, as Artistic Director.
Art Production Fund x Kehinde Wiley
Transforming a platform normally used for commerce into one for culture, Show Media collaborated with Art Production Fund on a citywide public art campaign featuring the work of painter Kehinde Wiley on the tops of 250 New York City taxi cabs.
The dynamics of the project were different at any given time – an exhibit constantly in flux, transforming with traffic patterns. Seen by over 5 million New Yorkers each day, Wiley’s artwork reached people of all ages, races, and backgrounds.
Known for his large scale portraits, the pieces selected for the project, ‘The Virgin Martyr St. Cecilia’ (2008) and ‘Femme Piquee Par Un Serpent’ (2008) were scaled down, allowing for Wiley’s racially and politically charged juxtapositions to still be taken in as a whole on the comparatively small canvas.
BMW x Studio Drift
Created as a tribute to Studio Drift’s fascination with nature’s grandeur and complexity, ‘Franchise Freedom’ invited viewers to see a poetic side of technical innovation and connect back with nature. A flying swarm of hundreds of drones, ‘Franchise Freedom’ exposed the tension between individual freedom and safety in numbers.
Never before had a natural phenomenon of this magnitude been recreated by autonomously flying drones. To make it happen, Studio Drift developed a special algorithm based on their observations of the flight patterns and behavior of starlings. The drones were then able to fly through the night sky as organic, autonomous beings.
In partnership with Faena, Future\Pace and BMW, ‘Franchise Freedom’ lit up the night sky above Art Basel Miami Beach and has since appeared in Amsterdam above the IJ, at Burning Man Festival and at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
“Retail is suffering because it’s replaceable in a virtual world. Art galleries are not suffering; they’re growing because we offer an experience."
Westfield World Trade Center
x Marco Brambilla
For the second installment of their 2019 video art program, Westfield and Art Production Fund displayed a dynamic excerpt from artist Marco Brambilla’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase No. 3’ across the large-scale screens at Westfield World Trade Center in New York City and Westfield Century City in Los Angeles, measuring up to 4 stories tall.
‘Nude Descending a Staircase No. 3’ moved the iconic Duchamp painting (Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2) into the dimension of time. The illusion of movement in the painting was explored as the figures which inhabit the digital canvas constantly reconfigure themselves to cascade down an unseen stairway. The figures, shapes and color palette are pure cubism, now expanded into three dimensions using state-of-the-art computer technology. ‘Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2’ is a rare case where an artist drew from a “new” technology (Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic time-studies) as an inspiration for a painting. By taking the original Duchamp painting back into the technological realm and adding the dimension of time, Brambilla aimed to complete the circle and pay homage to the deconstructed image using a wholly contemporary visual language.
Using technology to reimagine and animate such an art historically significant work, Brambilla’s interpretation of the iconic painting afforded the public the opportunity to experience and contemplate ‘Nude Descending A Staircase’ like never before.
Venice Biennale x Studio Drift
As part of the 2019 Venice Biennale’s DYSFUNCTIONAL, an immersive exhibit presented by Carpenters Workshop Gallery in partnership with the Lombard Odier Group, Studio Drift’s ‘Fragile Future 3’ is a multidisciplinary light sculpture that sits at the intersection of nature and technology, combining both in a tender balance.
The three-dimensional bronze electrical circuits were connected to light-emitting dandelions, bolted together to form a power circuit overgrowing walls, floors and ceilings, forming modular sculptures and chandeliers.
The sculpture contains real dandelion seeds that were picked by hand and glued, seed by seed, to LED lights. This labor-intensive process, a clear statement against mass production and throwaway culture, is a critical yet utopian vision on the future of our planet, wherein two seemingly opposite evolutions have made a pact to survive.
Daelim Museum x Coco Capitán
Coco Capitán’s exhibit at the Seoul-based Daelim Museum, ‘Is It Tomorrow Yet?’ was curated as an immersive journey into a decade of the artist’s universe and featured over 150 works including photographs, paintings, writings, videos, and installations. The six-month exhibition was visited by a record-breaking number of art fanatics, teens, and photography lovers.
Gucci x Dan Thawley
To celebrate the release of A Magazine Curated By Alessandro Michele, Gucci and A Magazine together launched a trilogy of photography exhibitions in Hong Kong, Beijing and Taipei to coincide with Art Basel Hong Kong.
Petra Collins’s intimate family portraits photographed in Budapest took center stage in Hong Kong. Days later, Coco Capitán’s now iconic handwritings and snapshots of Rome and Florence were shown in Beijing. The final show transported an exhaustive portrait of Joshua Tree, California by Gia Coppola to Taipei.
In addition to their photographic work exhibited in a fine art context, a selection of objects and prints from the pages of A Magazine Curated By Alessandro Michele appeared together for the first time in a cabinet of curiosities selected by Editor-in-chief and exhibition curator, Dan Thawley. Each exhibition featured an immersive projection room, inviting visitors to enter into the pages of the magazine in a psychedelic audio-visual collage that brought Alessandro Michele’s universe to life.
Times Square Arts x Marco Brambilla
Apollo XVIII was a multi-channel video installation created by Marco Brambilla Studio that interpreted man’s relationship to space exploration and presented an imagined mission to the moon; a mission born in the virtual age. For one month, Times Square was transformed into a virtual launchpad as Apollo XVIII played across dozens of electronic billboards from 11:57pm to midnight.
In collaboration with NASA, footage was filmed at Cape Canaveral, combined with Hubble imagery, rare material from the NASA archives and original computer-generated imagery to fabricate the fictitious mission. Combining iconic moments from past and present with the wholly synthetic, Apollo XVIII presented a new collective viewing experience, calling into question the nature of fact and fiction, reality versus perception and context.
BOOKS
Books
For decades, CXA+ART has worked with artists, brands, and world-renowned publishing houses specializing in luxury, art, fashion, and design, such as Taschen, Assouline, and Rizzoli, to realize monographs, museum catalogues, and brand heritage books.
Recent projects have included books from Iris van Herpen, Coco Capitán, and Robert Polidori, as well as numerous publications from prolific artists such as David LaChapelle, François Halard, and Robert Wilson
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