The Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF has once again challenged the boundaries of industrial design, consumer culture, and visual art through a radical collaboration with luxury automaker Lexus. Known for their provocative, rule-breaking projects that frequently blur the line between satire, sculpture, and commercial critique, MSCHF has taken two electrified Lexus vehicles and subjected them to extreme, screen-inspired transformations. By bending one car into a closed geometric loop and torquing another into a continuous, spiraling vortex, the collective has granted familiar production-line bodies the elastic, fluid logic native to digital 3D animation.
Commissioned directly by Lexus, the resulting exhibition—fittingly titled MOTOMORPHOSIS—is scheduled to open its doors to the public at Chelsea Industrial in New York City. Running from September 24th through September 26th, 2026, the temporary exhibition will coincide with the bustling cultural calendar of Armory Week, placing these warped automotive sculptures squarely in the crosshairs of the contemporary art world and automotive enthusiasts alike.
The underlying premise of the exhibition is immediately readable to any modern observer, primarily because its radical distortions draw directly from a visual language we encounter daily on our screens. In traditional 2D and 3D animation, artists frequently rely on techniques known as "squash-and-stretch" and "smear frames" to make velocity, momentum, and speed legible to the human eye as an object transitions rapidly from one position to the next. These exaggerated, fleeting deformations convey immense kinetic energy in a static medium. In MOTOMORPHOSIS, MSCHF has taken those temporary, digital-only distortions and rendered them permanent in physical steel and glass. Under their hands, rigid sheet metal appears to take on the soft, pliable behavior of modeling clay, while functional windows, body panels, and exterior lighting elements stretch, warp, and flow along with the chassis.
Circle Car Closes the Road Into a Loop
The first major centerpiece of the exhibition is titled the Circle Car, a project that begins with a standard, production-model Lexus RZ450e battery-electric crossover and bends its entire structural length until the front bumper meets and merges with the rear. In doing so, the vehicle is transformed into a continuous, unbroken geometric ring, appearing forever caught in an impossible, endless drive around its own absolute circumference.
Despite this extreme topological transformation, the mechanics of the vehicle remain visually anchored to reality. The wheels are still distributed along the outer edge of the loop, while the passenger cabin is forced to bend and follow the sweeping curve of the chassis. By retaining just enough of the original car’s recognizable design language, MSCHF makes the surreal transformation feel strangely plausible, almost as though it belongs in an alternate reality where urban infrastructure and vehicular design have merged entirely.
When displayed alongside a standard, unmodified production RZ450e at the MOTOMORPHOSIS exhibition, the Circle Car sculpture exposes how powerfully a modern automobile’s cultural and practical identity depends on strict proportions and an unyielding forward direction. Familiar luxury details remain precisely where a buyer would expect to find them, yet their spatial relationship to one another has been altered beyond recognition. The traditional open road has effectively been absorbed into the object itself, leaving behind a self-contained vehicle whose journey literally begins and ends at the exact same point.
Twisted Car Turns Bodywork Into Torsion
Taking a distinctly different path with the second vehicle, MSCHF’s Twisted Car reinterprets the Lexus RX450h+ plug-in hybrid SUV through structural violence and physical torsion. The large luxury family vehicle is pulled through a dramatic, sweeping longitudinal twist, with its entire bodywork rotating violently around an invisible central axis running from nose to tail.
Surface lines across the vehicle’s exterior follow the strict geometry of the spiral, while recognizable automotive features are dragged along in the wake of the torque. The overall visual effect is that of a multi-ton luxury SUV caught for a solitary fraction of a second while being violently wrung between two opposing, invisible mechanical forces.
To categorize these creations, MSCHF has introduced the term "Form Cars," positioning them as a conceptual and artistic counterpoint to the traditional automotive concept car typically produced by major manufacturers. While a conventional concept car is meticulously engineered and styled to move gracefully through physical space, MSCHF’s Circle Car and Twisted Car internalize that movement, transferring the concept of velocity directly into the static body of the vehicle itself. Neither sculpture needs to travel anywhere to convey dynamism; the speed and kinetic stress of the machine have already been permanently built directly into its distorted shape.
The juxtaposition of these two altered electrified vehicles alongside their factory-fresh counterparts provides visitors with a startling commentary on contemporary vehicle manufacturing, aerodynamic styling, and the psychological weight of industrial design. By stripping the automobile of its functional mobility and locking it into perpetual, animated motion, MSCHF continues its tradition of subverting everyday objects into profound artistic statements.
