Another Artist With The Same POV: BCXSY's Golden Glory

above: detail from BCXSY's Golden Glory project

This is the third post about a group of artists to make a point about mass consumerism by gold-plating mundane objects.

How long is an eternity?
How does one quantify the unquantifiable?
What is the span of one day compared with endless time and space?

BCXSY is pleased to present FOREVER! - a collection of uniquely individual and materially rich products that explores how the function, aesthetics, and emotions of design can help to define the indefinable.

In an era of mass production and haste, BCXSY slows down and takes a closer look at what it means to last FOREVER!

Above is how artists Cohen and Yamamoto describe their work titled Forever!

"Golden Glory" Materials: mass-produced plastic toys and everyday objects - hand gilded with 23.75k gold-leaf, acrylic-glass plate.








As described by the artists:

"The exclusive one-offs that comprise GOLDEN GLORY explore the necessity of cherishing meaningful objects. Through the laborious art of hand-gilding, common plastic novelties and generic trinkets transcend the realm of the mass produced and meaningless and become truly remarkable modern day keepsakes."

Consisting of several subsets, Golden Glory is only a small part of the Forever! project. But it's the part that echoes other art works and limited produced pieces, specifically those of Tobias Wong and Big Game.


Above: Tobias Wong's gold McDonald's coffee stirrer from his "Indulgences" collection.


Above: Big Game's New Rich Gold Bic Pen Cap

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pointing this out to imply that their work is not entirely original or worth exploring, on the contrary. I just think it's interesting how many artists have gilded mundane and mass produced objects as either a way to mock or reflect society or- as in this case- to illustrate the transformation of a common object to a treasured one. When considered, what makes an item 'treasured' has really been defined by that which society considers valuable, in this case the luxe of gold. Hence, the artists are all basically saying the same thing.

Tobias Wong's Little Indulgences and Big Game's New Rich projects both gilded mass produced items. Read and see all about them here.


about BCXSY

(photograph: Sheri Avraham)

BCXSY is a cooperative between designers Boaz Cohen and Sayaka Yamamoto. BCXSY has several other wonderful projects and pieces worth seeing, be sure to check them out here.

Product Pick Of The Week: The Miles Rug By Big Game

The perfect compliment to yesterday's post about the artful appeal of freeways, would be this fun and fabulous wool hand tufted rug by the creative minds at Big Game.

Called "Miles', this rug of infinite freeway interchanges was inspired by children's games which is the reason it comes complete with three wooden cars!



Plus is More by Big Game

For their 2007 exhibition at the Milan Swiss cultural centre, the three designers from Big-game, Grégoire Jeanmonod (CH), Elric Petit (B) and Augustin Scott de Martinville (F), create the “plus is more” collection. Taking basic elements as starting points, such as a material, a principle or an archetype, Big-game transforms them in a simple way to design functional objects.

The stake of this transformation is to bring a “plus”, while keeping the integrity of the original element. The praise of less is therefore diverted. “Less is more” is still a fundamental principle, but with a slight and unexpected contribution. In a sense, Big-game plays with the cliché attached to Swiss design, and its profoundly functionalist image.