New York City’s Lower East Side hotel Sixty LES celebrated the start of Frieze in New York with the summer re-opening of its rooftop bar – the island-themed Tiki Tabu, featuring an immersive installation by Brooklyn artist Misha Kahn.
‘We immediately thought of Misha as an artist who would embrace the whimsical, retro tiki vibe, not change or fight with it,’ says Artsy curator Elena Soboleva.
Kahn dug into the tropical Americana aesthetic whole-heartedly, creating hand-painted wallpaper replete with fuzzy, crushed velvet peaches and painting resin floor tiles embedded with sand and glitter. ‘The bars I like going to are a little gritty and casual,’ says Kahn. ‘I didn’t want anything to feel too precious – people are meant to touch the walls and scuff up the floors.’
The warm, sunset-hued space is also outfitted with Kahn’s coil pot planters resembling hot dogs, colorful tentacular mirrors and primitive, totem pole-esque planters that the artist carved using a chainsaw. Oversize, hand-blown lava lamps were tucked into nooks and corners throughout. With their organic globular glass lamps and metal bases, the softly glowing sculptures are at once nostalgically familiar and space-age avant garde.
‘I love tiki bars, so this was a good opportunity to try out all these ideas I had,’ says Kahn.
At the renamed Tiki Tabu, Kahn dug into the tropical Americana-aesthetic whole-heartedly, creating hand-painted wallpaper replete with fuzzy, crushed velvet peaches
Kahn's eccentric aesthetic also came to life as primitive, totem pole-esque planters (pictured left) that the artist carved using a chainsaw, oversize, hand-blown lava lamps (right) standing on top of metal bases...
... and colorful tentacular mirrors hung throughout the space
The artist, pictured on the painted resin floor tiles, embedded with sand and glitter
INFORMATION
‘Artsy Projects: Tiki’ will be open until the end of September. For more information, visit the Sixty LES website
ADDRESS
Sixty LES
190 Allen Street
New York, NY 10002
-
Gallic automotive luxury and craft come to the fore in the unique Presidential DS N°8DS Automobiles has created a new conveyance for President Macron. This one-off DS N°8 continues a long tradition of supplying cars to the presidency
-
Book a brutalist one-room wonder Down Under, the Vipp Tunnel in TasmaniaThe Danish design brand's bookable showcases arrive in the southern hemisphere, thanks to the vision of Tasmanian architectural firm Room 11
-
From 3D printed mud homes to portable kitchens, in Venice, we explore new ways to co-exist with our planetAt Palazzo Diedo a new exhibition by MIT Architecture and Antikythera questions how construction is currently understood in order to ‘rebuild’ our world, for 19th Venice Architecture Biennale
-
Ai Weiwei’s new public installation is coming soon to Four Freedoms State Park‘Camouflage’ by Ai Weiwei will launch the inaugural Art X Freedom project in September 2025, a new programme to investigate social justice and freedom
-
Leonard Baby's paintings reflect on his fundamentalist upbringing, a decade after he left the churchThe American artist considers depression and the suppressed queerness of his childhood in a series of intensely personal paintings, on show at Half Gallery, New York
-
Desert X 2025 review: a new American dream grows in the Coachella ValleyWill Jennings reports from the epic California art festival. Here are the highlights
-
This rainbow-coloured flower show was inspired by Luis Barragán's architectureModernism shows off its flowery side at the New York Botanical Garden's annual orchid show.
-
‘Psychedelic art palace’ Meow Wolf is coming to New YorkThe ultimate immersive exhibition, which combines art and theatre in its surreal shows, is opening a seventh outpost in The Seaport neighbourhood
-
Wim Wenders’ photographs of moody Americana capture the themes in the director’s iconic films'Driving without a destination is my greatest passion,' says Wenders. whose new exhibition has opened in New York’s Howard Greenberg Gallery
-
20 years on, ‘The Gates’ makes a digital return to Central ParkThe 2005 installation ‘The Gates’ by Christo and Jeanne-Claude marks its 20th anniversary with a digital comeback, relived through the lens of your phone
-
In ‘The Last Showgirl’, nostalgia is a drug like any otherGia Coppola takes us to Las Vegas after the party has ended in new film starring Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl
