Rainbow City

Rainbow City was originally presented at Art Basel Miami 2010. It arrives in New York this month, concurrent with FWY’s first NYC gallery exhibition at The Hole. The installation, which was commissioned by AOL, celebrates the opening of the second section of the High Line Park. While the first section of the High Line opened in 2009, the second section, which runs from West 20th to West 30th Street on Manhattan’s West Side, opens tomorrow.

Field of Dreams

Commissioned by the Fubon Art Foundation as part of the Very Fun Park 2010 exhibition, Field of Dreams covered the façade of the Fubon Financial building in Taipei, Taiwan. This large-scale art piece by FWY aims to be a visual representation of the year’s theme, “looking up”; as the viewer’s gaze is drawn upward, the image of the smiling cloud appears on the horizon. Field of Dreams is on exhibit through July 2011.

Kitty Ride

In celebration of Hello Kitty’s 35th birthday in October 2009, FriendsWithYou presented a one-of-a-kind work that was commissioned by Sanrio at the Three Apples exhibition at the Royal/T Gallery in Los Angeles. Like the kiddie rides seen outside of grocery stores, Kitty Ride moved up and down simulating a gentle voyage through the clouds.

Fun House

Originally conceived as an interactive show at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas in 2008, the Fun House installation has evolved into a world-traveling art exhibition. For the SCOPE Art Fair during Art Basel Miami 2008, SCOPE commissioned FWY to build a 4,000-square foot village replete with a bounce house, a romper room, restaurant, and an FWY store and fine art gallery. In its third and largest installment to date, the Fun House made its international debut in Berlin, Germany for Pictopia, one of Europe’s most distinguished design art fairs curated by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Museum in Berlin.

Dream Maker

Commissioned in 2008 by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Dream Maker is a giant inflatable mobile meant to invoke the solar system, fortune, and dreams. The work is exhibited rotating on its axis in the lobby of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Designed to demonstrate the powers of luck and possibility, and to “make dreams come true,” this piece supposedly grants your dream if you simply experience it.

Skywalkers

In 2006, FriendsWithYou opened Art Basel Miami with Skywalkers, an inflatable procession of artful blimps, including smiley faces, an exploding volcano, an outsize white puppy, and a variety of giant abstract balloons. Commissioned by Toyota Scion, the parade of 18 blimps was designed by FriendsWithYou and its artist friends, and presented with the assistance of over 300 volunteers, a high school marching band, and thousands of attendees “all working together to celebrate the Earth as the newest member of the universal community.”

Project Fox

Project Fox was a work commissioned by Volkswagen to celebrate the release of the VW Fox and the launch of the Fox Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark. For the piece, unveiled during a three-week lifestyle event that engaged 21 artists in the redesign of the hotel, FriendsWithYou designed four rooms in the hotel as a custom work of art that explored the “different realms of existence in the minds of FWY.” FWY also gave the new car a new “soul” by transforming it into an other-worldly character they called the “Albino Fox.”

View a slideshow of images from Design Miami 2009 now »

The 2009 edition of Design Miami boasts 17 galleries from New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Geneva, Seoul, and other cultural capitals in a dynamic, ziggurat structure designed by Aranda\Lasch. Dutch contemporary design is omnipresent, with Geneva’s Mitterrand+Cramer and Rotterdam’s VIVID Gallery offering new work by the talented Studio Job; Amsterdam, New York, and Tokyo-based Droog bringing Pieke Bergmans’ Crystal Virus Massive Infection table, permanently burned by freshly blown glass vases, and Tejo Remy’s strapped together drawers that create a dresser; and New York’s Moss presenting the new Casablanca cabinet by rising star Maarten Baas, who is featured throughout the fair as the designer of the year.

New York’s Paul Kasmin Gallery makes its first appearance at a design fair with surreal work by seasoned Swiss designer Mattia Bonetti, who just joined the gallery and is slated for a solo show there in February, and Seoul’s Seomi & Tuus treats the audience to a rare view of finely crafted contemporary Korean ceramics. Meanwhile, classic modernist furniture is on view at New York’s R 20th Century, which presents Joaquim Tenreiro’s 1969 Loose Mantle Armchair and Jose Zanine’ s Solid Wood Dining Table from 1970, and New York’s Sebastian + Barquet displays Don Shoemaker’s stylish 1965 wood chair, which resembles a minimal art sculpture.

Design Performances premieres the collaboration between fashion house Fendi, techno-design pioneer Moritz Waldemeyer, and rock band OK Go. Waldemeyer has tricked-out the band’s guitars with laser lights, LEDs, and fragments of Fendi fashions, and worked with digital artist Memo Akten to make the instruments visually act like paintbrushes constructing abstract marks. Other extravaganzas in the main building include Arik Levy’s newly commissioned pieces for HSBC Private Bank’s Designer Lounge and Swarovski Crystal Palace’s massive installation by architect Greg Lynn that utilizes thousands of crystals to construct an imaginary room.

Nearby, two high-profile design companies, Bisazza and Cappellini, make presentations in satellite spaces, and there are three nights of design talks in the Media Lounge designed by students of the New York School of Interior Design and furnished by Cappellini and Poltrona Frau. And, if that’s not enough, pop-up shops and existing design showrooms surrounding the fair site are staging special events throughout the week, with FriendsWithYou, Maison Martin Margiela, and Gucci throwing their own brands of creativity into the mix.

Design Miami is on view from December 2-5. Watch for next week’s Artkrush report on Art Basel Miami Beach and blog dispatches from Miami on Flavorwire.