Last year Kanye West gave an interview to Style.com that was both characteristically outrageous and refreshingly humble. “The people are with me. Now it’s up to you to choose whether or not I’m chic enough to sit at your dinner table,” he told Dirk Standen while discussing the popularity and price points of his Adidas Originals collection. “And I could give a fuck about your dinner table, by the way. I’ve got my own petrified Rick Owens table in my house. Is that chic enough?” There will likely also be a Rick Owens vibe to Yeezy’s highly anticipated collaboration with IKEA. “I love Rick Owens’ bed design but the back is too high for the beams and angle of the ceiling,” Kanye wrote on Twitter soon after visiting the brand’s Swedish headquarters in March, adding that “when you sit on the platform your calf is sort of half on and half off.”
It’s not altogether shocking then that Kanye has been spotted checking out the “Rick Owens: Furniture” exhibition at the MOCA Design Center in Los Angeles. A photo of the newly bleach blonde rapper/designer was first shared on Instagram by Italian artist Giovanni Leonardo Bassan, an employee of Rick Owens and protégé of his equally brilliant wife Michele Lamy. “Since 2007 Owens has applied a punk and anarchist sensibility to furniture design as well [as fashion design],” says the MOCA’s website, “creating brutal and elegant forms out of marble, alabaster, bronze, ox bone, leather, concrete, and plywood. In addition to showcasing works in Owens’s signature materials, this exhibition marks the artist’s foray into foam and rock crystal.” The show doesn’t officially open until December 17, so it appears that this was a private preview.
This is the first public sighting of Kanye since he was discharged from UCLA’s Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, where he spent nine days being treated for extreme exhaustion and sleep deprivation. It’s a relief to see he’s finally feeling like his furniture-obsessed self again. Hopefully IKEA is taking note.
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Text Hannah Ongley
Image via Instagram