Art is no longer confined to a little showroom or preserved in the walls of an esteemed museum. It has made its way into internet discourse, our screens, and the streets. If you have seen a comically large pair of red boots being worn around the city, or heard about the infamous Lil Nas X Satan Shoes, you’ve seen MSCHF’s provocative work. Breaking boundaries in the art world, this collective uses promotional stunts to launch their name into the conversation, often through unconventional means.

Presented by The New Museum, NEW INC, Phaidon Press Inc, and Parsons School of Design, MSCHF hosted an event in celebration of their new book release titled Made By MSCHF on March 13 at Tishman Auditorium. The book contains insight into how the collective operates. The panel hosted co-founders Lukas Bentel and Kevin Wiesner in conversation with New Museum Artistic Director Massimiliano Gioni, followed by a book signing.

The first-ever physical drop by MSCHF was the Jesus Shoes. “Jesus Shoes were Air Maxes 97s with holy water injected into the air bubble sole of the shoe, so that every step you take, you are walking on water, much like Jesus,” Wiesner explained. Initially, there were only supposed to be 12 pairs of the shoe — one for each apostle. Bentel stated that they did not expect the frenzy the shoe would cause, partially due to their art-object price of $1,425 per pair, an ode to the Bible verse Matthew 14:25 wherein Jesus walks on water. Not only did the public embrace the product – that was a dig at the obsessive nature of the sneakerhead community – it sold out at an alarming rate.

In 2022, they released the ATM leaderboard for Art Basel Miami, an installation inspired by the obsession with financial status. The interactive ATM ranked people based on the amount of money they had in their bank accounts and took a picture of them the moment their card was inserted into the machine. This piece rapidly turned into a sort of performance art, as people gathered around to see where others would place on the leaderboard, much like an arcade game. The higher you were on the leaderboard, though, the more the piece poked fun at you. Wiesner and Bentel shared that the current top two spots on the leaderboard are occupied by a couple from Miami, who returned a second time with more money, because they did not like the first picture that was taken of them. This couple had dethroned world-renowned DJ and music producer Diplo. 

“We saw some very sad sights of other people trying to show that they had more money in their debit account than Diplo, which felt very odd,” Bentel shared.

That same year, they sold 1,000 car keys that unlocked the same car. The gag was that no one knew where the car was. If you found it, you could simply unlock it, drive it around, and leave it wherever your heart desired. This piece, titled Key4all, was meant to simulate the video game Grand Theft Auto, and did have a cheat code of sorts. You could call a hotline to receive hints about the car’s whereabouts, or you could simply walk around New York City to find it. According to Bentel, the car ran for nine months before MSCHF took it off the roads to display at museums. 

Two years after the Jesus Shoes, the Satan Shoes were released. “If you’re going to do the holy version of this, you have to do the counterpart at some point. They only exist in opposition to each other,” Wiesner said. This drop was in collaboration with pop singer Lil Nas X, who had already been receiving his own share of criticism on the internet for his use of devil imagery in the music video of his song,“Montero (Call Me by Your Name).” Each pair had the words Luke 10:18 written on the side, referencing Satan’s fall from heaven. While the Jesus Shoe had holy water injected into its air bubble, the Satan Shoe had real blood. The brand made headlines again following a lawsuit from Nike for trademark infringement.

To make matters both better and worse, Wiesner and Bentel shared that they had planned on using goat’s blood for the shoe, but after receiving harsh criticism from their peers,  resorted to their own blood mixed with ink. 

Audience member Sophia Nothing asked the pair whose blood was in the shoe, whether a phlebotomist was involved, and whether they mixed their blood together, to which Wiesner responded, “It’s a little bit of blood from a lot of people, and then a lot of blood from a couple of people who accidentally cut themselves.” 

She then asked about the lack of female employees at MSCHF. Bentel replied that — despite having had an entirely male team since they were founded in 2016 — they were looking to work with more diverse perspectives, eliciting cheers from the audience. Nothing ended their turn by stating, “I love MSCHF as an entity, I think seeing it grow is very special, and I am curious to see what will happen when you add more women into this witchcraft.”

The New School Free Press spoke to Nothing after the panel. When asked about MSCHF’s lack of female representation, Nothing stated that it had an effect on the art. “They are god complex-ing hard and it’s so cool, and their ideas will be cooler when they relinquish some of their male control and prioritize adding women to their team,” they said.

With a collective as provocative as MSCHF, it is crucial to examine their timely work in relation to consumerism and socioeconomic status, rather than stopping at surface-level sensationalism and controversy. It plays on the merit that comes with causing controversy, pairing it with product scarcity to keep the gimmicks coming.