Satan shoes, microscopic bags and big red boots: How MSCHF conquered the art world

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN

(CNN) — MSCHF has been called many things — performers, designers, even internet trolls — but for co-chief creative officer Kevin Wiesner, the title “artists” works just fine. It’s an ambiguous enough term to cover all the hats its members wear, he told CNN over a Zoom call. Besides, Wiesner added: “Nobody really knows what that means” — which aligns with the art collective’s typically elusive nature.

Since its founding in 2016, the 25-member Brooklyn-based group has made headlines with provocative “drops,” like the cartoonish big red boots inspired by the Japanese manga character Astro Boy; the infamous “Satan Shoes,” containing a drop of human blood; and a microscopic Louis Vuitton-style bag, barely visible to the human eye, that sold for over $63,000.

In the past, MSCHF would take a back seat after releasing its creations, preferring to watch the internet and media attempt to make sense of them with little or no information.

“We were trying to maintain a black box as much as possible,” Wiesner explained. “We were really avoiding any kind of personal outward association with the group in a lot of ways, because we had this idea that we wanted these projects to show up from nothing — to seem like they just sprung, fully formed, from the head of Zeus.”

Lukas Bentel, MSCHF’s other co-chief creative officer, agreed, telling CNN that “a lot of the projects are us setting up a scenario, and then we’re kind of watching (it) play out from everybody that’s interacting with it.” He added: “We really don’t give any behind-the-scenes look at any of the projects.”

That’s about to change with the group’s first book “Made by MSCHF,” which offers a rare glimpse into some of the most successful drops of the past nine years. The book also addresses the highs and lows of being art-world outsiders and MSCHF’s approach to both leveraging and satirizing what it dubs “modern internet capitalism” — in other words, the internet’s role in consumerism.

With riskier projects, MSCHF has pushed the boundaries of copyright law: After the 2021 release of its Satan Shoes, modified Nike Air Max 97 sneakers that sold out in under a minute, Nike filed a lawsuit against the group. (The sportswear giant claimed trademark infringement and asked the court to stop MSCHF from selling the shoes and prevent the collective from using its famous Swoosh logo. A settlement was ultimately reached and MSCHF issued a voluntary recall on the shoes and offered a buy-back program.)

It became MSCHF’s “most dramatic production story” to date, according to Wiesner. The group first learned of Nike’s lawsuit through a small newspaper that had emailed asking for comment and members scrambled to produce exactly 666 pairs of shoes before officially receiving a temporary restraining order.

To produce the Satan Shoes, MSCHF snuck into a factory in Maspeth, Queens, to form an assembly line into the early hours of the morning. “It was one of the best bonding moments — you feel sort of like Indiana Jones getting in the door before the rock tumbles on you,” Bentel said.

It wasn’t MSCHF’s first run-in with Nike, either: In 2019, the group made waves with its “Jesus Shoes” — customized Nike Air Max 97 sneakers filled with holy water from the Jordan River — which became one of the most Googled shoes of the year.

While the numbers speak for their footwear (MSCHF sold over 20,000 pairs of its big red boots, priced at $350 each), the collective is adamant about not being perceived as another streetwear brand.

Wiesner and Bentel said that their favorite project took place in 2022, when MSCHF sold 1,000 duplicate car keys that unlocked the same one car, a 2004 Chrysler PT Cruiser parked in an unidentified location in New York City (buyers were required to follow clues to track down the vehicle). In a matter of days, the car had already made its way through all five boroughs as well as several states. MSCHF watched on as the car was broken, then repaired, customized and more.

“I think a lot of people, especially in more professional contexts, assume that we have marketing KPIs (key performance indicators) where we’re like, ‘Oh, well, we got 10 million impressions,’ or whatever that nonsense is, and use that as a metric of success. We very much don’t,” Wiesner said. He explained the collective chooses projects based on personal interest and “the degree to which that concept validates itself (as it) takes on new life or evolves over the course of the project.”

MSCHF is often surprised by the public response to its drops. The original 200 pairs of big red boots sold out instantly. The “Jesus Shoes” began as a limited collection of a dozen pairs, according to MSCHF’s new book. Each pair was priced at $1,425, but in less than a month, the group managed to produce and sell more than 700 pairs, its value on resale platform StockX rising to as much as $3,000.

“We never expected people to want this, but oh my god, they did,” Wiesner said.

MSCHF’s audience is something of an enigma — from an ATM installation, where users’ bank account balances were shown on a public leaderboard screen, to the series of locked iPhones with celebrities’ phone numbers on them, MSCHF’s projects have interacted with people from many different communities, demographics and ages, said Bentel.

RJ Rushmore, an art enthusiast from Philadelphia, began closely following MSCHF’s work following the Satan Shoes controversy in 2021 and, soon after, started collecting pieces from its drops. Today, he owns several of the group’s shoe styles, including a pair from the “Super Normal” line, as well as a piece of the $30,000 Damien Hirst artwork that MSCHF cut into 88 parts and sold individually.

While Rushmore acknowledges that some of MSCHF’s drops can be viewed as “silly,” they also serve as fascinating commentary on the best and worst of internet culture — and on broader social and economic matters, like American tax law (MSCHF’s “Tax Heaven 3000,” launched in 2023, combined a functional tax filing software with an online dating simulator). That, he said, is what makes MSCHF so appealing to its fans: “If a decade from now, MSCHF is just another streetwear brand, I’ll feel disappointed. But if, a decade from now, MSCHF is still poking fun … even at my expense, I think I’ll feel good,” Rushmore said.

Wiesner and Bentel are secretive about what MSCHF is working on next, but said the collective is in a transformational period as its members reflect on past projects and their place online, where it has become increasingly difficult to decipher what is real.

As to why MSCHF decided to now publish a book revealing some of its inner-most thoughts, Wiesner and Bentel said they hope to inspire others. Within the book, Wiesner and Bentel give explicit permission for readers to do what they like with MSCHF’s artwork — as long as it’s not boring, or else the group will send out IP lawyers to shut it down, the book cheekily states.

“It’s so exciting when you see somebody make something new, because it’s so much harder to make things than to just sit there and consume everything coming at you,” Bentel said. “If anything, I hope the whole practice (of MSCHF) is sort of an education that (gives permission to) play with all this stuff and culture, and not just watch it go over your head.”

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