Slide tobias by 1234

complex mischievous mercurial satirical designer artist 1974 2010

THE ENFANT TERRIBLE I don’t draft or create prototypes, I don’t problem solve and I definitely don’t make things to make life easier.

TOBIAS WONG | “THE ENFANT TERRIBLE”

In a surprisingly short amount of time, Tobias Wong has made a name for himself in both the design and art worlds, though different people might argue that he operates in both, or neither. The duality is part of what makes him interesting. Wong was a soft-spoken and had a gentle presence, but his satirical and cheeky work contained an undercurrent of violence. He was complex, mercurial and mischievous. Tobias Wong was born on June 10, 1974 and died a curious death at age 35, on May 30, 2010. At times he’s described as an artist, a designer, an “enfant terrible,” and a prankster, but overall he was a critic concerned with posing questions over positing answers. Wong’s work questioned the value system of objects and pretensions of designers with humor and wit. Tobias was a disarmingly sweet and approachable designer, artist and person. His work, always drenched in

TOBIAS WONG DESIGNER&/ARTIST

irony and humour (and so often labelled provocative), was as much the result of his empathy and insight as it was his desire to provoke. Though he was often referred to as a prankster, there were no rubes in Tobi’s audience - just co-conspirators. He always discussed his work with humour and humility. There was no lack of confidence in what he had made or in his intentions. He was Canadian-born in Vancouver city and in the latter part of his

“The design world is extremely confusing, although no more confusing than the art world.” life a New York-based artist and designer in Manhattan. Wong studied in Toronto before moving to New York in 1997 to attend the Cooper Union, from which he graduated with a major in sculpture. He was allowed to explore any medium he wanted to in school. During his senior

WONG SHOPPING FOR “KILLER RING”

year, He gravitated towards using design as a medium because he felt there was a void in the process of creating design work, specifically during the conception stage. He wanted to apply his interests in conceptual art towards design and see what would happen. Tobias Wong is here to challenge the design world. “I’ve always responded to other work with my work— that’s where I fit more into the artist category,” Wong told Azure. Drawing inspiration from various anti-art practices, Wong probed and subverted design’s complicity with the culture of late capitalism, exposing its smoke and mirrors while exercising his own sleight of hand. With a unique mix of critical intelligence, courage, sincerity, and mischief, as well as a cadre of talented collaborators, Wong steadily pursued his obsession with the interplay of anxiety and consumerism in the years following 9/11. The allure of luxury goods; the cult of the celebrity designer; the stubborn failure of objects to provide the benefits demanded of them: these are among the concerns he explored across a protean body of work that encompassed objects, furniture, lighting, jewelry, installation, and performance. He was influenced by Dada and, especially,

Fluxus, he questioned authorship through appropriation; held a mirror to our desires and absurdities; upended the hierarchy between design and art, and the precious and the banal; and helped redefine collaboration and curation as creative practices. Wong prompted a reevaluation of everything we thought we knew about design: its production, its psychological resonance, its aesthetic criteria, its means of distribution, its attachment to provenance, its contextualization and its manner of presentation. Wong was a keen observer, an original mind, a brilliant prankster, and an unerring friend. He made his reputation by critiquing the urge to consume. When he moved from Canada to New York, he was fascinated by how obsessed Americans were with material goods. He felt that it was crazy how luxury and any sort of goods were so disposable. He wanted to explore and expose the madness behind it all. He does not specifically make work for a gallery, or try to make life for end users easier by designing a phone that works better. If he can influence other artists and designers, that’s where he can make the larger change. Maybe it creates a chain reaction— like one simple urinal-turned-fountain. Duchamp, who transformed the urinal into a cultural artifact insisted that art is no longer about beauty or skill, but ideas. He noted that clean lines lend themselves well to conceptual expression. He considered it a good way to prime the design world to new ideas.

DIE A PORTRAIT OF WONG USING DICE

THE APPROP WORK Famously, he was the target of ceaseand-desist actions by several companies whose work he cheekily appropriated and subverted. This is the reason why larger corporations were hesitant about commissioning Tobias Wong. They were worried that he might poke fun at them, or maybe they were just concerned with the “rascal, bad boy” image. Over the years, he thought that his work had matured, and people understood that he was trying to say more, do more than just pulling pranks. When he did pull a prank, it was his means of sending out a conceptual idea. He was not simply laughing at them. Recognized as the cleverest irony monger of his generation, Wong was best known for pranks such as his gold-plated

“Design as a kind of mirror that both reflects social conditions and [sic] propose[s] new ones.” McDonald’s spoon, his peel-off pad of dollar bills and a high-end design shop, the Wrong Store, whose doors never opened. “I think Tobi understood design as a kind of mirror that both reflects social conditions and can be used to propose new ones,” Henry Urbach says.

“THE APPROPRIATED WORK” | TOBIAS WONG

COKESPOON NO.2 STIRRER DIPPED IN GOLD

PRIATED Cokespoon No.2 (2005)

Unauthorized Burberry Buttons (1999)

The majority of his designs are even harder to appreciate at face value without knowing the context in which they were created. For instance, Wong’s gold-plated McDonald’s beverage stirrer, named “Cokespoon No. 2” is, on the surface, visually amusing at best. But if you’re unaware that the original plastic coffee stirrers were taken out of production when the fast food company learned they were consistently being used for drug purposes—you’re completely left out of the artist’s mocking message about pop-cultural indulgences gone astray. Reproducing a McDonald’s coffee spoon in gold, Wong exposed the banality of the object while playing with the notion that it was much sought after by cocaine users. The spoon has since been discontinued, but thanks to Wong, if not McDonald’s, it will live on. McDonald’s asked him very politely if he would stop. He noted that it took so long for their cease-and-desist.

Burberry took to Wong’s shenanigans and used the pins in one of their advertising campaigns. And he was ecstatic when the clothing and accessories design house Burberry copied his own ripoff of the company’s tartan. Because Burberry was notorious for rabidly defending its exclusive ownership of the telltale plaid, Wong decided to confuse matters by buying a Burberry shirt, cutting it up, and making his own pin-back buttons with the material (and later, with photocopies of the material). Who owned the tartan then? Hipsters in New York went crazy for them, and the buttons were soon being paraded through city streets affixed to hundreds of bags and jean jackets. But rather than suing Wong, Burberry stole the idea back and put the buttons in its ads.

I Want to Change the World (2002) The designer Karim Rashid was not amused when his book, “I Want to Change the World” was cut by Mr. Wong into the shape of a gun and presented as a critique of designers’ pretensions and a comment on the post-9/11 world. He left viewers to decode whether the piece was a call to arms or a tool for suicide. Wong’s ability to find his way to the intersection of absurdity and playfulness.

I WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD BY KARIM RASHID

TOBIAS WONG | “THE APPROPRIATED WORK”

THE PARACO WORK Much of Tobi Wong’s work plays between concept and beauty, exposing the similarities between art and design rather than blurring their boundaries. Unlike purely conceptual work-which often lacks a real appreciation for beauty, aesthetics, and a desire for

“A lot of the pieces I make that look like design objects need to be out in the retail market where they belong and not brought into a white gallery and put up on a pedestal.” consumption-his work often finds expression in real objects. He has coined the term Paraconceptual to describe it, “Of, relating to, or being conceptual.” “He used the term paraconceptual to describe his work, but in a way, I think he was para-design, making jokes about design history, designers’ pretensions and form and process,” said Ellen Lupton, the curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt. The sign of recognition of a Wong creation is the excellence of the finish, immediately evident. Artworks often need open light-filled galleries that allow them to breathe, but sometimes they need intimate spaces to help them foster one-on-one connections with viewers. In the second camp lies the work of Tobias Wong, often in small stores.

ONCEPTUAL G

THIS IS A LAMP CHAIR BY PHILIPPE STARCK

Money Pad (2000)

This is a Lamp (2001)

Artist Tobias Wong asks, “What is a hundred dollars worth as an art piece?” Money Pad gives you one hundred real US dollar bills bound with peel-able notepad glue and backed with cardboard. A single dollar bill of Tobias Wong’s Money Pad are worth two of your own, but convenience and coolness have their price. A provocateur by nature, Mr. Wong operated at the fringes of the traditional design world, creating objects like a stack of 100 $1 bills, bound in peelable glue like a notepad; a gold-plated McDonalds coffee stirrer (a riff on the company’s plastic version that was apparently popular among drug users before being withdrawn); and an engagement ring with the diamond mounted upside down, so that the wearer could use it to scratch graffiti. The designer’s response to the now discontinued coffee stirrer (which was often submitted as evidence at drug trials in the 80s) reflected his signature approach to design. He was responding to obsessive consumer culture.

He created pieces that could be considered art, but just as easily could be marketed as straight-up consumer goods. His Philippe Starck lamp is a good example. The piece was intended not only as a tribute to Marcel Duchamp, who famously called a urinal Fountain and deemed it a work of art, but also as a proposal to reset the clock on conceptualism. The piece is also

“I thought if I could start at the beginning of conceptual art and turn a chair into a lamp by saying that this is a lamp, then we could start the dialogue all over again.” one of his “readydesigned,” which is a design object he has reinterpreted for his own purposes, and an idea obviously borrowed from Duchamp’s readymades. His debut design project consisted of converting a Philippe Starck chair for Kartell into a lamp, and claiming it as a brand new object and design (and exhibiting one night before the debut of the actual Starck chair). It involves a plastic Bubble Club chair by the French designer that Wong reconfigured with a light bulb and pull cord and then premiered one day before the release.

Tobias is interested in contrast in his concepts and projects; he is engrossed with the divide beween something and nothing, function and form, art as monumental and incidental. He is uncomfortable with his place in the art and design world and says, “I don’t want to make ‘art’ or ‘design’ necessarily, it’s just stuff—extra stuff in the world—art galleries and design showrooms are places were I have been able to do what I do, but that doesn’t make what I do either.” This is the thinking behind the Philippe Starck lamp piece. Wong’s work was widely exhibited, including the lamp, which is his debut project, at different museums and design exhibitions, such as the Museum of Modern Art and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. His many projects included those for Colette and Comme des Garcons.

MONEY PAD ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS

“THE PARACONCEPTUAL WORK” | TOBIAS WONG

KILLER RING DANGEROUS ENGAGEMENT

GOLD PILLS INGESTIBLE GOLD CAPSULES

Killer ring (2001)

Perfect Lovers Forever (2002)

Gold Pill (2005)

Killer Ring, started with a conventional ring but he had the diamond put in backward; suddenly, an apparently harmless object was remade as a weapon of choice for urban guerillas, or at least graffiti scratchers. Constructed of a razor sharp diamond set backwards in a durable yet comfortable setting, Wong’s engagement ring is to die for and to kill with. Outfitted with a single-karat rock, the ring functions as a serious weapon, but, as always, size matters and the bigger the diamond,

Tobi liked to give other artists’ and designers’ work a sardonic or critical twist. But the first photo in the Times’ slideshow featured a work that was different, an idealistic, almost geekily romantic “fix” of an iconic Felix Gonzalez-Torres sculpture. Perfect Lovers by Tobias Wong is actually a remake of Felix’s Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991, a pair of identical, white wall clocks which begin in sync, but which invariably diverge over time. For his new and improved version, Tobias attached a radio receiver to each clock that syncs it with the official US Atomic Clock. They’ll stay in sync within a second over a million years. Knowing that Felix made Perfect Lover clocks for all his boyfriends throws a layer of complexity onto the clock pieces.

Wong is, quite literally, a shit disturber: he has even created ingestible capsules filled with silver leaf that are intended to make a user’s feces sparkle. This example effectively illustrates one of his favourite targets, which were

“A luxury object is turned into a weapon.” the deeper the cut. Alternately, Wong’s engagement ring could serve as a stylish and as an effective means of scratching love letters into department store display windows or carving a scathing indictment onto a cheating ex-fiance’s ride. Wong makes engagement rings that can kill you. The ring is often discussed as a comment on the battles of marriage. But the reality was, purchasers of the ring weren’t so much buying a ring, as they were on a jewellery shopping date with Tobias. The razor-sharp diamond point is set into the ring so it cannot get knocked out when you smash someone’s face in, and the edges of the ring are soft.

TOBIAS WONG | “THE PARACONCEPTUAL WORK”

PERFECT LOVERS BY FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES

“Make your shit glitter.” conventional notions of luxury. But interpreting Wong’s objects as outand-out attacks on luxury goods would be a mistake. After all, he admits to lusting after the extravagant objects himself. “We all have this desire for having the best of something,” he says. “But we’ve gotten to a point where you’re not really even appreciating the object.” Allan Chochinov, the editor in chief of Core 77.

THE WRONG STORE IN NEW YORK

THE PARASOMNIAC DIES The Wrong Store (2005) In addition to the objects he created, recreated, repurposed, rarefied and otherwise manipulated, Wong’s work included events and happenings that included the Wrong Store. The “store” was located in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. Wong and Gregory Krum (The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s Director of Retail) lined up an amazing array of product-artists for a collection that addressed the shop as gallery and the gallery as shop. Art fans and potential shoppers who turned up for the opening eventually figured out that, to top it off, the store was never going to open. The Wrong Store project was conceived as a means to address consumer culture and desires directly, without the pressure of commerce. Nothing was for sale, at least not individually, and there was no underlying pressure to buy or sell anything. That allowed him to really explore the creative side of marketing, buying, and the retail/gallery/art world. He thought it was an extremely successful project. There weren’t many surprises, good or bad, except for some unexpected customs taxes when we received pieces from Europe. The bigger success was having all these artists and designers on board willing to work with our concept. They all knew it was going to be a hoax, but loved the idea. They were on track.

Romantically-speaking, one day everyone will know how to design—but then not everyone will choose to do so. This will make us better communicators, consumers, etc. and in the end, better thinkers. But we’re very far away from that fairytale.

Wong was not a tortured artist. Tim Dubitsky, Tobias’s partner, said in an interview at the couple’s apartment. “He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t sad, he wasn’t upset. We were always thinking about our future. We wanted kids. We wanted to find a house.” In short, those who knew him well simply couldn’t believe he wanted to take his own life on the night of May 30, 2010. For years, he had suffered from a variety of sleep disorders known as parasomnias: in layman’s terms, he was a serious, chronic sleepwalker. During episodes, Wong would rise from bed in a zombielike trance and perform elaborate tasks (bill clients, make funny outfits for his cats) that require agency and concentration, if not full consciousness. At times, his sleep problems took the form of a related disorder that researchers call sleep terrors—essentially, a half-waking nightmare state where they sleep.

There were no tearful eulogies during his funeral. Rather, it resembled a stylish store opening downtown, with people in blocky horn-rim eyeglasses and loafers without socks sipping prosecco and mingling amid displays of Mr. Wong’s work such as his mirror jigsaw puzzle and smoking mittens. Some said they half-expected Mr. Wong himself to stroll in and reveal that his death had been another high-concept put-on, perhaps a sly commentary on the primacy of the artist, in juxtaposition to the work itself. Had Wong lived, who knows to what extent he would have been coopted by the consumerist forces he mocked so effectively? The power of the industrial cowmplex should not be underestimated. Besides, this is an age in which the line between parody and parodied has all but disappeared. The proof of the spoof can be measured by the public’s hunger for both.

“THE PARASOMNIAC DIES” | TOBIAS WONG

Resources

Image Credits

Tobias Wong. Woont: The Furniture Book. http://www.woont.com/

Azure Magazine. “On exhibit: Tobias Wong’s greatest hits.” Ac cessed October 5, 2011. http://www.azuremagazine.com/news views/blog_content.php?id=1746

Wong Shopping. Irony + Funny = Surprising. http://ironyfunny.tistory.com/

Ballista Magazine. “R.I.P. Tobias Wong (New York, NY).” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://www.ballistamagazine.com/r-i-p-tobiaswong-new-york-ny/

Die. Rori DuBoff. http://www.roriduboff.com/

Cokespoon #2. PRWeb: Online Visibility from Vocus. http://www.prweb.com/

Unauthorized Burberry Buttons. Flickr by Stftrajan. http://www.flickr.com/

Money Pad. The Canadian Design Resource. http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/

This is a Lamp. T Magazine. http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/

Killer Ring. Wedding Ring. http://weddring.ru/

Perfect Lovers. Greg. http://greg.org/

Gold Pills. Citizen Online Store. http://www.citizen-citizen.com/

The Wrong Store. Item Idem. http://blogs.colette.fr/

ArtSlope: Art & Design on the Rise. “Brokenoff Brokenoff: A Tribute to Tobias Wong.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://artslope. com/2011/05/16/brokenoff-brokenoff-a-tribute-to-tobias-wong/

Change Observer: Design Observer. “Protect Me from What I Want.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://changeobserver.designobserver. com/feature/protect-me-from-what-i-want/13918/ Core77: Design Magazine & Resource. “We Will Miss You, Tobias Wong.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://core77.com/blog/ob ject_culture/we_will_miss_you_tobias_wong_16660.asp Design Life Now. “Tobias Wong.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http:// triennial.cooperhewitt.org/designers/tobias-wong Dwell: At Home in the Modern World. “The Wong Show.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://www.dwell.com/articles/the-wong-show. html Greg. “Perfect Lovers (Forever), By Tobias Wong.” Accessed October 5, 2011.http://greg.org/archive/2010/06/25/perfect_lovers_by_ tobias_wong.html Moco: Features. “Interview: Tobias Wong & Ken Courtney.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://mocoloco.com/archives/001800.php More Intelligent Life. “RIP: Tobias Wong.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://moreintelligentlife.com/blog/emily-bobrow/rip-tobiaswong Papermag. “R.I.P. Tobias Wong.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http:// www.papermag.com/2010/06/tobias_wong_rip.php SF Station. “Tobias Wong: ‘Bad Boy’ Designer at SFMOMA.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://www.sfstation.com/tobias-wong-a34751 SFMOMA. “Tobias Wong.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://www. sfmoma.org/exhib_events/exhibitions/432 The Canadian Design Resource. “Wedding Ring.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca/officialgallery/ designer/page/2/ The End of Being: An Esoteric Guide to Difficult and Unusual Art, Music, Film, People and Ideas. “TIL DEATH DO WE PART — R.I.P. Tobias Wong.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://theendofbeing. com/2010/06/04/til-death-do-we-part-r-i-p-tobias-wong/ The New York Times. “Tobias Wong, Witty Designer and Conceptual Artist, Dies at 35.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http:// www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/arts/design/03wong.html The Star. “Hume: Young designer’s ironic vision lives on.” Accessed October 5, 2011. http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/ article/821969--hume-wong-place-at-the-right-time