Friends With You
Encyclopedia
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, founded by Sam Borkson and Arturo Sandoval in 2002, that creates designer toys
Designer toys
Designer toys is a term used to describe toys and other collectibles that are produced in limited editions and created by artists and designers. Designer toys are made of variety of materials; ABS plastic and vinyl are most common, although wood, metal, and resin are occasionally used. The term...
, particularly plush and wood toys, as well as art installations
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
, playgrounds, published works, performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
, animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
and multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
projects.
Friends With You toys are given persona
Persona
A persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον...
s described in booklet-style tags included with the dolls. The toys are produced in small numbers, and are usually not re-released. FWY has participated in Art Basel
Art Basel
Art Basel is an international contemporary art fair held each June in Basel, Switzerland. Similar to the Venice Biennale, it has been called "the Olympics of the art world". Art Basel features nearly 300 leading galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa...
in Miami and Pictoplasma
Pictoplasma
Pictoplasma is an organisation dedicated to the art of character design, and are notable for bringing it into the mainstream. Since 1999, they have encouraged the international character design scene by publishing collections of characters, organising character design conferences and by maintaining...
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. FWY has also done advertising work for brands like Nike
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area...
, MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
, Red Bull
Red Bull
Red Bull is an energy drink sold by the Austrian Red Bull GmbH, created in 1987 by the Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz. In terms of market share, Red Bull is the most popular energy drink in the world, with 3 billion cans sold each year. Dietrich Mateschitz was inspired by an already...
, Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a German automobile manufacturer and is the original and biggest-selling marque of the Volkswagen Group, which now also owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Škoda marques and the truck manufacturer Scania.Volkswagen means "people's car" in German, where it is...
, and Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
.
In October 2006, the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
art press Die Gestalten Verlag published a Friends With You monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
titled Friends With You Have Powers!
Toys
Lego
Lego is a line of construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures and various other parts...
. Wish Come True is a line of roly-poly toy
Roly-poly toy
A roly-poly toy, round-bottomed doll, tilting doll, tumbler or wobbly man is a toy that rights itself when pushed over. The bottom of a roly-poly toy is round, roughly a hemisphere. Many roly-poly toys are hollow, with a weight inside the bottom. It has a center of mass below the center of the...
s sold in blind boxes. A second plush line features different types of the Malfi character. The Burger Bunch toys had the ability to have their parts moved around or shared similar to changing out the stacked ingredients in a hamburger
Hamburger
A hamburger is a sandwich consisting of a cooked patty of ground meat usually placed inside a sliced bread roll...
sandwich. At the same time The Boy toy was released. The Boy was also a featured in the installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
and performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...
of Cloud City at MOCA
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
The Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum located in the heart of downtown North Miami, Florida. The structure was designed by the internationally acclaimed architecture firm Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, New York, which worked in conjunction with the Miami firm of Gelabert-Navia to...
.
Artwork and installations
Get Lucky was an installation located in the Miami based art space The Box. It featured six different altars, with a focus on pyramidPyramid
A pyramid is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge at a single point. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilateral, or any polygon shape, meaning that a pyramid has at least three triangular surfaces...
, conical, or triangular shapes, covering different aspects of human life and death. The Fur Liaison was a furry monster character who accompanied guests around the installation.
Skywalkers Parade was commissioned by Scion and was a collaboration with other artists such as Ara Peterson
Forcefield (art collective)
Forcefield was a noise band and art collective closely associated with Fort Thunder in Providence, Rhode Island. Known for performing in colorful full-body knit-wear of their own design, the band rarely played outside of Rhode Island but did one US tour with their Fort Thunder roommates Lightning...
, Misaki Kawai, MumbleBoy
Lunatarium
The Lunatarium was an art and music space located in a warehouse loft in DUMBO, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York City. Managed by DUMBO-based art collective Dumboluna, the Lunatarium was in operation between 2001 - 2004...
, Paper Rad
Paper Rad
Paper Rad is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania/Providence, Rhode Island art collective that makes comics, zines, video art, net art, MIDI files, paintings, installations, and are in a variety of bands...
, David Choe
David Choe
David Choe is an American painter, muralist, graffiti artist and graphic novelist of Korean descent. He achieved art world success with his "dirty style" figure paintings—raw, frenetic works which combine themes of desire, degradation, and exaltation...
, and DEVILROBOTS
Designer toys
Designer toys is a term used to describe toys and other collectibles that are produced in limited editions and created by artists and designers. Designer toys are made of variety of materials; ABS plastic and vinyl are most common, although wood, metal, and resin are occasionally used. The term...
. It consisted of a number of balloons sizing from 5' to 60' and premiered on December 7, 2006 during Art Basel
Art Basel
Art Basel is an international contemporary art fair held each June in Basel, Switzerland. Similar to the Venice Biennale, it has been called "the Olympics of the art world". Art Basel features nearly 300 leading galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa...
Miami.
Cloud City opened in 2005 at the MOCA
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
The Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum located in the heart of downtown North Miami, Florida. The structure was designed by the internationally acclaimed architecture firm Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, New York, which worked in conjunction with the Miami firm of Gelabert-Navia to...
warehouse
Warehouse
A warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial areas of cities and towns. They usually have loading docks to load and unload...
during the annual Art Basel
Art Basel
Art Basel is an international contemporary art fair held each June in Basel, Switzerland. Similar to the Venice Biennale, it has been called "the Olympics of the art world". Art Basel features nearly 300 leading galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa...
in Miami. It was set up as an interactive playground composed of geometric shapes such inflatable
Inflatable
An inflatable is an object that can be inflated with a gas, usually with air, but hydrogen, helium and nitrogen are also used. One of several advantages of an inflatable is that it can be stored in a small space when not inflated, since inflatables depend on the presence of a gas to maintain their...
spheres, padded 10 foot cones on caster
Caster
A caster is an undriven, single, double, or compound wheel that is designed to be mounted to the bottom of a larger object so as to enable that object to be easily moved...
s, and pillow
Pillow
A pillow is a large cushion support for the head, usually used while sleeping in a bed, or for the body as used on a couch or chair. There are also throw pillows , which are pillows that are purely decorative and not designed for support or comfort...
ed cylinders. Several of the objects replicated the facial design of The Boy. With the start of Cloud City Friends With You also released a CD music album of the same name featuring music artists such as PonPoko, Phoenicia, Otto VaN Shirach the Magnifient, and Sam.
Aventura Mall
The Aventura Mall is an upscale super-regional shopping mall in Aventura, Florida, a northern suburb of Miami. It is the largest conventional shopping mall in Florida, having a gross leasable area of , and is the fifth largest shopping center in the United States. The mall has three floors of...
in Miami. It opened on December 21, 2006 and was their first permanent installation. The playground has rainbow
Rainbow
A rainbow is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines on to droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere. It takes the form of a multicoloured arc...
bridges, slides, a control center, crawl-in mountains in bright colors and the entire area is foam
Foam
-Definition:A foam is a substance that is formed by trapping gas in a liquid or solid in a divided form, i.e. by forming gas regions inside liquid regions, leading to different kinds of dispersed media...
-covered. Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
described it as "a warped Mario Bros. level".
Dream Maker was an installation of rotating spherical objects with faces, similar to a miniature solar system
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
. It was up at the Indianapolis Museum of Art
Indianapolis Museum of Art
The Indianapolis Museum of Art is an encyclopedic art museum located in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The museum, which underwent a $74 million expansion in 2005, is located on a campus on the near northwest area outside downtown Indianapolis, northwest of Crown Hill Cemetery.The...
from May 2, 2008 to November 9, 2008. As a part of Art Basel Miami
Art Basel
Art Basel is an international contemporary art fair held each June in Basel, Switzerland. Similar to the Venice Biennale, it has been called "the Olympics of the art world". Art Basel features nearly 300 leading galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa...
2008 Friends With You was the main featured artist at the Scope Art Fair
Scope art fair
SCOPE Art Show is one of several global contemporary art fairs. The first fair featured 28 booths of galleries representing emerging artists. The art fairs are now held annually in New York, Miami, East Hampton, London, and Basel, each presenting between 60 and 100 exhibitors...
. Their Fun House installation featured a large bounce house with a smiling face design, filled with inflatable balls.
"Rainbow City" was an interactive installation containing inflatables form 8' top 50'. Originally commisioned by the Luminato Arts Foundation in Toronto, Canada, Rainbow City was then exhibited ar Art Basel Miami 2010 presented with Paper Magazine, Pharrell Williams
Pharrell Williams
Pharrell Williams , commonly known simply as Pharrell, is an American rapper, singer, record producer, composer, and fashion designer. Williams and Chad Hugo make up the record production duo The Neptunes, producing hip hop and R&B music...
, and Aol
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
. Then in June 6th, 2010 to open section 2 of the High Line in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.