Art Basel Miami: Jesse Draxler‘s ‘Machine of Loving Grace’

January 23, 2026

At Art Basel Miami, Jesse Draxler presented C280: MACHINE OF LOVING GRACE, a hybrid installation that reads less like an exhibition and more like a threshold. Developed with The Patina Collective, the project centers on a 1997 Mercedes C280, not as an object of automotive fetish, but as a witness: a utilitarian machine charged with memory, duration, and psychic residue. Placed among immaculate, one-of-one vehicles from the Collective’s archive, Draxler’s car becomes a site of tension: authenticity against perfection, patina against performance.

Draxler’s practice moves fluidly across sound, image, installation, and infrastructure, consistently treating machines and environments as extensions of the human body rather than neutral tools. C280 continues this inquiry, elevating the act of transit into a durational performance, a sustained negotiation between human attention and mechanical logic.

Interview by Andrei Zozulya
Photography by Steve Yancar

Running parallel is Reigning Cement 1.4, the latest evolution of Draxler’s long-running sonic and curatorial project. Built from 34 identical sound sources recorded around his Los Angeles studio - demolition, rail lines, alarms, heavy machinery - the compilation invites 24 artists (Trentemøller, TR/ST, Chelsea Wolfe, Portrayal of Guilt and more) to reinterpret the same material into radically different worlds. First released in 2020 and later removed from the internet, Reigning Cement has always functioned as an experiment in distributed authorship and controlled circulation. Version 1.4 expands that logic: released exclusively via Draxler’s RIP ID app and accompanied by a reworked photographic book, it operates less as an archive than as a recalibration of form, intent, and encounter.

Both projects sit within Radical Iconography Productions (RIP), Draxler’s self-built platform spanning music, books, installations, and curated distribution. Rather than outsourcing context to institutions or platforms, RIP functions as an authored container, one that insists meaning doesn’t emerge from systems or narratives alone, but from how we choose to engage with them.

What follows is a conversation about machines as anatomy, fragmentation as material, authorship without ownership myths, and why culture, not technology, should always set the tempo.

Jesse, both C280 and Reigning Cement 1.4 orbit around systems, mechanical, psychic, infrastructural. What draws you to the places where human intention meets the logic of machines?

Human intention is the logic of machines. When I look at mechanical systems I mostly notice how they are replicas of the human system interpreted through different materials and constraints. The systems we create to navigate our environment mimic the systems, physical and logical, within ourselves. Machines and infrastructures are outsourced anatomy.

Reigning Cement 1.4 is built from 34 sonic elements interpreted by 24 artists, almost like a decentralized creative protocol. Did you think of it as a kind of artistic “forking” or open-source model?

Yeah, I can vibe with those ideas. Reigning Cement has always been a distributed authorship experiment, so seeing people interpret the same source material into completely different realities naturally aligns with that open and forking logic.

The new edition of Reigning Cement exists only through your RIP ID app. In a moment when ownership and access are being redefined by blockchain, what made you want to control distribution through your own ecosystem?

If ownership and access are being redefined, I would rather define them myself. The RIP ID ecosystem lets me control context, circulation, and the conditions of encounter. It is not about withholding but rather building a framework that reflects the work instead of relying on platforms designed with their own purposes and motivations.

The original Reigning Cement was released in 2020 and later removed from the internet. What does erasure or controlled disappearance mean to you in an era obsessed with permanence and immutability?

Not everything should be universally available at all times. Permanence is not inherently valuable. Most meaningful things are fleeting, and that is what makes them meaningful.

I enjoyed music more when I had to seek it out or when it reached me in ways beyond an algorithm deciding to play it next. Because of that, I almost completely stopped using streaming platforms and moved back to physical media. Records in the studio, CDs in the car. That shift renewed my passion for music. It adds a dimension to the experience that current streaming platforms simply cannot provide.

Your practice often deals with fragmentation, audio, imagery, memory, infrastructure. If culture is increasingly atomized across platforms and chains, how does fragmentation become a creative method rather than a crisis?

Fragmentation is simply the reality we are living in. Culture is not atomizing because it wants to; it is responding to systems that are already fractured. For me, fragmentation is the raw material rather than viewed as a malfunction or a crisis. It is a practice of tracing the fractures rather than pretending they do not exist or trying to fix them.

You’ve spoken about the oppressive yet magnetic quality of industrial LA sounds. By turning noise into structure, are you suggesting that meaning emerges from systems rather than narrative?

Meaning does not emerge from either narrative or systems. Those are just frameworks. Meaning happens in the encounter.

The car in C280 sits among The Patina Collective’s rare Mercedes archive, your machine versus immaculate machines. What happens when authenticity and patina enter a world obsessed with perfect digital replication?

That world is afraid of it. Posers do not like being near anything authentic, no matter what that authenticity is. A fake punk is intimidated by a real Amish farmer. Authenticity exposes the lived reality underneath the performance and interrupts the illusion.

The phrase “Machine of Loving Grace” hints at intimacy with technology, a kind of reciprocal dreaming. How do you personally negotiate tenderness with tools, whether mechanical, digital, or algorithmic?

When we apply meaning to a tool, using it becomes an intimate exchange. A tool is neutral until you project intention onto it. That is where tenderness appears. Not in the machine, but in your engagement with it.

If Reigning Cement 1.4 represents a recalibration of form and intent, what does “evolution” look like for you in an environment where tech shifts faster than culture can metabolize it?

Why the fuck should culture care how fast tech shifts? Tech should follow culture, not the other way around. I know that’s not the way it actually functions at the moment, but that’s also why almost everything feels homogenized and phoned in, its tech driving culture rather than culture driving tech. Tech itself is dead, how you use tech is the only thing that gives it any value or meaning.

As platforms fragment and creators seek sovereignty, how do you imagine your own infrastructure, RIP & the RIP app, evolving as a self-contained creative universe?

We are already opening RIP to others, much in the same way that Reigning Cement operates as both a personal project and a curatorial one. RIP is evolving into a curated mode of distribution, whether that is digital releases, physical media, or clothing and merchandise. The key is selectivity. Anyone we bring in will be chosen with intention and actually supported within the ecosystem, so the experience remains coherent rather than becoming another open platform with no center.

Art

Paul McCarthy: Power in the Provocative

I do what I want—what I believe in. We’re living in a pretty extreme time, and when people say my work is getting more extreme, I think that just reflects the world around us. I’m simply moving with the current.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, McCarthy’s beginning in the art world stems from proximal radicalization. After moving from Salt Lake City to study in San Francisco, McCarthy's work as an artist has always embodied this radicalization. Street-wise, known for being one of the most

“dangerous” artists in Los Angeles, this exhibit encapsulates that at its forefront. The artworks present provocative, scattered drawings and paintings that promote freedom from systematic censorship in the exchange between creator and receiver. His art style is distinctive in its intention of visibility over technicality, as seen in his limited color palette and intentionally imperfect techniques, but radical imagery.

McCarthy speaks about his artistic process as though the outcomes are inevitable and incredibly natural to him, given the current state of the world. Living in times of constant uncertainty has blurred the lines of media censorship; almost everything we consume is shaped by it, raising questions such as: Why was this said? Why was this created? Who is this for? Paul McCarthy’s work deconstructs this. His drive to create authentically and follow what feels natural to him results in art that inhabits the visual extremes of human experience, with the spirit of contestation serving as an added layer to the experience.

Art

The Wedding Written In Stone

April 27, 2026

Sten Studio walks down the aisle to couple with Alcova for Milan Design Week. Set within an abandoned cathedral where vows once echoed, The Wedding is a sculptural installation hosting a symbolic marriage between feminine and masculine, soft and stone, fluidity and structure. Rocks are fossilized fusions of their own ancient surroundings, built from eons of crashing waves or explosive magma. Love is based on divine circumstances, built through trials and tribulations. Love is much like stone in the way it takes form through time and pressure, relying on the invisible higher powers forcing the gravity of unity. The Wedding reflects on this permanence. The space materializes elements that are usually fleeting - light, flowers, ceremonies, romance. Registry gifts include a custom carpet courtesy of Verdi, floral arrangements from Hamish Powell, and scents brewed by Penhaligon’s, all coming together to build the intimate world.

Photos Courtesy of Ramona Balaban

Sten Studio specializes in stones and crystals as decorative interiors, expanding on natural, Earthly beauty in man-made environments. Alcova temporarily transforms raw, abandoned, and unique urban spaces into immersive hubs of design, innovation, and heritage. The featured collection revitalizes the cathedral for a final reception celebrating life and all its momentary yet abundant bursts of joy.

Art

All Silk Roads Lead to Gucci

April 23, 2026

The silk road once dominated the Asia-pacific and cultivated economical prosperity with the purest textiles, a contrast to the modern, oversaturated market of cheap goods. Gucci has never been a cheap name, and their craftsmanship could be mistaken for that of another century. The Art of Silk, curated by Demna from the Gucci Archive in Florence, pays homage to the house’s journey with silk. Ten scarves reimagine archival designs of flora, animalia, and nautical prints - motifs of the primordial garden of Gucci. These limited-edition pieces were birthed in Calabria in collaboration with Nido di Seta and Ongetta. The fine Italian silk encapsulates more than Gucci’s reputation, but the tradition of mulberry cultivation. The project revives a once-thriving silk supply chain, recovering abandoned land, fostering employment in communities, supporting small farmers, and powered by renewable energy. It’s a production that innovates how tradition, community, and sustainability can stay preserved in the contemporary world.

In addition to this heritage preservation, the campaign represents Gucci’s contribution to the world of art and education. Two exclusive flora scarves were created for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, celebrating its opening of the new David Geffen Galleries. Available exclusively at the LACMA Store and the Gucci Beverly Hills flagship store, the designs pull inspiration from Vittorio Accornero’s 1966 illustrations. In partnership with the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Firenze, selected student paintings of each scarf will be displayed at the Gucci Rodeo Drive store in LA. Gucci supports these participating students through scholarships, reinforcing the house’s commitment to nurturing the next generation of creative talent. The Art of Silk bridges the old and new world, breathing life into past traditions and future endeavors.