Designer and conceptual artist Tobias Wong was recently found dead in his Manhattan home at the age of 35 in an apparent suicide. He first attracted attention with his 2001 public debut of converting a Philippe Starck chair into a lamp (This Is A Lamp) for Kartell and continued to surprise with a range of provocative projects like his Killer Ring, with the stone set outwards primarily used to scratch graffiti; the Money Pad, a stack of 100-dollar bills bound with notepad glue; Karim Rashid's book I Want To Change The World cut into a gun shape presented as a critique of designer's pretensions on the post 9/11 world; gold-plated versions of McDonald's coffee stirrer as part of the Indulgence series. One of his most elaborate productions was The Wrong Store, in New York's Chelsea neighborhood. Wong organized a hoax-like exhibition (shop as gallery, gallery as shop) in 2007, stocked with an amazing array of products by artists and designers from the United States and Europe with a sign in the window that read, "Come In, We're Closed" when in fact, the store had never opened.
"As time went on his work became more and more ironic, sarcastic and pointed," said Paola Antonelli, senior curator in the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Architecture and Design. "He had an enfant terrible style of design that was very fresh in New York. Today you see all sorts of people doing conceptual design, but he was one of the first."
RIP Tobias.
