MSCHF gives the automobile a smear frame
Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF has taken two Lexus electrified vehicles and pushed them through radical transformations that feel native to a screen. The team bends one car into a closed ring and torques the other into a long spiral, which gives familiar production bodies the elastic logic of 3D animation. Commissioned by Lexus, MOTOMORPHOSIS opens at Chelsea Industrial in New York from September 24th through 26th, 2026, during Armory Week.
The premise is immediately readable because the distortions borrow from a visual language we already know. Animation uses squash-and-stretch and smear frames to make speed legible between one position and the next. Here, those temporary deformations have been made permanent. Sheet metal appears to behave like soft modeling clay, while windows and lights stretch along with the body.
images © MSCHF
Circle Car closes the road into a loop
MSCHF’s Circle Car begins with the Lexus RZ450e and bends its entire length until the nose meets the rear. The vehicle becomes a continuous ring, seemingly caught in an endless drive around its own circumference. Wheels remain distributed along the outside edge while the cabin follows the curve, preserving just enough of the original car to make the art collective‘s transformation feel strangely plausible.
Displayed beside a production RZ450e, the sculpture exposes how strongly a car’s identity depends on proportion and forward direction. Familiar details remain in place, yet their relationship has changed completely. The road has effectively been absorbed into the object itself, which leaves a vehicle whose route begins and ends at the same point.
Circle Car bends the Lexus RZ450e into a continuous nose-to-tail loop
Twisted Car turns bodywork into torsion
Twisted Car takes the Lexus RX450h+ in another direction. The SUV is pulled through a dramatic longitudinal twist, with its body rotating around an invisible central axis. Surface lines follow the spiral and recognizable features are dragged along with them, as though the entire vehicle has been caught for a fraction of a second while being wrung between opposing forces.
MSCHF calls the sculptures ‘Form Cars,’ a counterpoint to the automotive concept car and a useful description of what is happening here. A production vehicle is engineered to move through space. Circle Car and Twisted Car transfer that movement into the body itself. Neither needs to travel anywhere. Speed has already been built into the shape.
Twisted Car pulls the Lexus RX450h+ through a dramatic longitudinal spiral
The RZ450e will appear beside its distorted sculptural double at MOTOMORPHOSIS
MSCHF borrows the elastic geometry of 3D animation for its full-scale automotive sculptures
Estudio EA