Shrigley’s got grape expectations
A party celebrating the UK artist David Shrigley’s collaboration with the French champagne house Ruinart drew a star-studded crowd earlier this week at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden. After visiting Ruinart’s vineyard in Reims, Shrigley was commissioned to create 36 drawings and gouache paintings, as well as three neon installations. Model and actor Hari Nef, Jemima Kirke from the hit TV series Girls, Jurassic World actor Justice Smith and the Canadian artist Chloe Wise rocked up to the suitably bubbly-fuelled bash to help smash some grapes. The fashion designer Timo Weiland spun tunes in a specially painted booth covered in one of Shrigley’s typically deadpan comments: “The grapes must be protected from the frost.” Vintage advice.
Top up: grab a (pricey) cup of joe at Ur Special Coffee in Wynwood Photo courtesy Danny Casale
One café grand(e), please
The price of a cup of coffee these days has got ridiculous. For proof, head down to the Bagel Club in Wynwood where the “viral animator” Danny Casale, AKA Coolman Coffeedan, has set up a pop-up coffee shop called Ur Special Coffee with the help of art collective The Art Plug (until 5 December). But forget about getting a $4 flat white. Each cup features an original work of art created by Coolman Coffeedan, hence the hefty price tag of $1,000. “While being a young college kid, alone in a big city, I always thought how cool it would be to open a coffee shop of my very own. Now I’m finally doing it, thanks to the help of Superlost Coffee and The Art Plug, and I couldn’t be more stoked,” says the well-caffeinated artist.
Stadnic applies a custom paint job to her portrait of a Porsche 911 Photo: courtesy Tanja Stadnic
The car’s the star
Tanja Stadnic is, according to her marketing blurb, “considered the #1 Porsche Artist worldwide”. (What’s the competition like, though?) Yesterday, at the Gabriel Miami Downtown hotel, guests could paint their own Porsches alongside Stadnic as part of an “interactive painting demo”, accompanied by top-notch cocktails and canapés. According to her website, Stadnic was born in the Moldovan city of Beltsy and was “never happier than when drawing”. She stumbled across a painting of a Porsche 911 during one of her visits to art galleries and was “instantly dazzled by the beauty of it. From that moment everything changed. Porsche Acrylic Art was born.” Lucky for us!
Drones spell out a tribute to Abloh at the Louis Vuitton fashion show Photo: via Twitter
To Virgil, with love
A sea of drones formed the initials of Virgil Abloh in the night sky above Miami earlier this week, in homage to the late designer and artist who died on Sunday, aged 41. Abloh’s final Spring-Summer 2022 menswear collection for the French luxury brand Louis Vuitton was presented in a special catwalk show attended by superstar guests such as Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, who were ferried on monogrammed speedboats to a secluded island off the port of Miami. A voiceover from Abloh rang out—”Life is so short that you can’t waste even a day subscribing to what someone thinks you can do versus knowing what you can do”—as another drone display spelled out in red: “Virgil was here.”