In May 2018, a groundbreaking exhibition heralded as “the biggest graffiti and streetart show ever” opened in Los Angeles, entitled Beyond The Streets. This 40,000-ft² multimedia showcase came with bold ambitions: to portray graffiti’s 50-year evolution and “celebrate the soaring heights to which the world’s most recognizable modern art movement has risen.” That entailed assembling scores of works by 100 legends of graffiti and street art, living and deceased, from Cornbread, TAKI 183 and Jean-Michel Basquiat, to FUTURA 2000, Vhils and Shepard Fairey. Yet, one of the event’s largest installations wasn’t created by any of those icons, but rather by a star whose own meteoric, peripatetic career personifies just how far graffiti has come globally and where it looks to be headed next: fine artist Felipe Pantone.
Felipe Pantone is the latest top-tier artist to collaborate with Hennessy. Following up Hennessy’s Summer 2019 collaboration with Pantone for its Very Special Limited Edition bottle, Hennessy and Felipe Pantone have once again broke new ground with the Hennessy Very Special Collector’s Edition. Drawing on Pantone’s signature configurable art series, which allows customers to create custom artwork using Pantone’s templates, the Collector’s Edition configurable art lends itself to multiple optics, that invites viewers to transform its graphics at leisure. The carafe stands dressed in white at the center of the artwork, with multi-colored rods surrounding the piece, that can be interchanged to the observer’s desire.
As a piece of configurable art, it reflects the continuous movement of the world around us, inviting people to participate in shaping its form. Like street art and graffiti, it expresses a sense of freedom, embracing the artist’s sensibility while allowing art lovers to be part of the process. More on Pantone’s prior work with Hennessy can be read via my 2019 interview with him for The Hype Magazine.
