MSCHF warps two Lexus cars into surreal sculptures that look like a video glitch

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MSCHF is known for creating things out of the ordinary that defy logic. The Hot Wheels collaboration and Mercedes-AMG furniture collection are prime examples. Now the Brooklyn-based art collective is at it again with an illusory Lexus collaboration that turns their latest production cars into something that looks like a video glitch.

The project dubbed MOTOMORPHOSIS is a part of New York’s Armory Week art show, and Lexus’ boilerplate text in the press release is as mind-bending as the creation. As they say it, the vehicles showcased are special modifications with non-Lexus parts that may void warranty, negatively impact safety, and not be street legal.”

Designer: MSCHF and Lexus

The two works start with a Lexus RZ 450e and an RX 450h+, but little remains conventional about their final forms. The RZ becomes Circle Car, with its entire body bent into a continuous loop so that the nose meets the rear. The result looks as though a car has been caught driving in a circle and had its motion permanently baked into its shape. The RX, meanwhile, becomes Twisted Car, with its body pulled into a dramatic longitudinal spiral that stretches its windows, panels, and familiar design details along the twist.

MSCHF refers to these creations as “Form Cars,” deliberately positioning them against the familiar concept car. Rather than imagining a future vehicle with new technology or a different way of moving, the collective treats the automobile itself as a material to manipulate. The inspiration comes partly from digital 3D modeling, where operations such as bending, stretching, and twisting can turn a recognizable object into an impossible one. It also draws from animation’s “smear frames,” where forms are temporarily distorted to communicate speed and movement. Here, that fleeting distortion becomes physical.

Creating something that looks digitally warped still required very real fabrication. MSCHF began with steel armatures before assembling thousands of individual pieces to create the outer skin. The finishing, paint and protective coating follow processes familiar to automotive body shops, despite the radically unconventional shapes. Some components of the sculptures are genuine Lexus parts, but MSCHF is clear that neither piece is a functioning vehicle.

That distinction is important because MOTOMORPHOSIS is all about redesigning the car’s form in a twisted universe. The unmodified RZ 450e and RX 450h+ are displayed alongside their distorted counterparts, making the transformation easier to understand. Familiar proportions, lights, glass, and body surfaces remain recognizable even after being pushed into physically impossible arrangements.

MOTOMORPHOSIS opens at Chelsea Industrial in New York from September 24 to 26, with public hours on September 25 and 26. Admission is free with an RSVP, giving visitors a chance to see what happens when the rigid geometry of a production automobile is treated more like digital clay than transportation.

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This Mirrored Steel Pavilion Multiplies One Tree Into Endless Reflections

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One tree. Two curved walls. A circular entrance that withholds as much as it reveals. That’s the complete material inventory of Infinite Grove, a traveling pop-up pavilion by Chang Hao Studio that debuted at the 2026 Shanghai International Flower Festival before relocating across the city with the seasons. The premise reads like a thought experiment: position a single tree between two inward-facing mirrored-steel surfaces and see how many times geometry can double it before the eye stops counting.

The optics deserve a brief diagram. Imagine a plan view — visitor at the entrance, tree at center, two curved walls arcing on either side. Your eye-line reaches the nearest surface and catches the tree. That surface reflects the opposing wall. The opposing wall reflects. The sequence continues until reflections soften, overlap, and blur into something the brain reads as spatial depth. Curvature is what separates this from a simple mirror corridor. Flat panels produce tidy, linear repetition; curved ones shift the angle of incidence at every height, so reflected images lean, compress at the edges, and multiply at uneven rates. Frosted panels overhead diffuse daylight into a sourceless haze, stripping away the shadow cues that would otherwise confirm which tree is real.

Designer: Chang Hao Studio

Chang Hao Studio draws the circular aperture from the framed-view tradition of Chinese garden design, and the pavilion has changed host trees with each move. A flowering azalea anchored the spring installation; later pairings introduced different species, with the studio noting that each tree reshapes the reflected landscape while the steel frame stays the same.

Several questions are worth directing to the studio before it travels again. What are the panel dimensions and wall heights? What stainless-steel finish specification does the surface carry, and who fabricated and installed the structure? As the pavilion relocates repeatedly, what does surface maintenance look like at visitor height, where fingerprints and humidity accumulate fastest? Does the circular entrance meet accessibility requirements at each host site?

Has any reflected-glare assessment been carried out for pedestrians in adjacent areas? No thermal, optical, or bird-collision data has been published, and the soil and root-protection conditions for each host tree remain undocumented. Whether the installation is temporary at each site, and what happens to the materials at end of life, is also unconfirmed.

None of that diminishes the concept. Infinite Grove pavilion is tightly reasoned spatial design, turning a familiar industrial material into a perceptual argument about scale and multiplicity. It doesn’t create a forest. It asks whether the difference between one tree and many is a matter of number, or simply of attention.

The post This Mirrored Steel Pavilion Multiplies One Tree Into Endless Reflections first appeared on Yanko Design.