Mercedes-Benz is demonstrating their new Mercedes-Maybach SL with a diverse brand experience at Pebble Beach Automotive Week 2024

LUX travelled to Monterey and Pebble Beach, to join Mercedes-Benz for the worldwide launch of the new Mercedes-Maybach SL 680, a super-luxe open-topped touring car aimed at bringing 1960s St Tropez glamour to a new generation of wealthy consumers. Fabienne Amez-Droz joined them in her best Hermès headscarf and Ray-Bans

The annual Monterey Car Week and the famous Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance attracts many car enthusiasts and some of the biggest automotive brands of the world. On the western edge of California, lounges from the most renowned car brands were set up and displayed some of their best and newest car models.

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Among them was the Mercedes-Benz Star Lounge, where visitors could admire various historic Mercedes-Benz cars. But it didn’t stop at just looking at cars – you could even borrow a vintage Mercedes and test it along Highway 1 towards Carmel Valley.

Sunny California seems like a good place to launch the V8 convertible Maybach car. The Monogram Series is launched in either White Ambience or Red Ambience specification

Driving the 1971 Mercedes 280 SL convertible, surrounded by California’s scenery and the not-so-well-functioning radio music, it felt like a little time travel, making me feel like I was in an old school music video – so much I had almost lost track of time.

Read more: Electric dream: Mercedes-Benz EQS 450 review

After all the impressions of the Mercedes Benz star lounge, the highly anticipated evening launch event took place. Mercedes-Maybach introduced its SL 680 Monogram Series, a luxurious two-seater convertible defined by intricate patterning and striking two-tone finishes.

The Mercedes team notes that driving the SL Monogram Series is as smooth and quiet as can be expected from a Maybach. A noise-optimized exhaust system and top-notch insulation make sure of that

The spectacle was held in an ultra-modern private house in the middle of Pebble Beach. What immediately caught my eye was the huge “car runway” in the garden of the house. At the start of the runway was a car, covered with a giant cloth.

Read more: Mercedes-Benz On The Art Of Creating Desire

After a few glasses of champagne and canapés, all the guests were called to the runway, where Daniel Lesco (Head of Mercedes-Maybach) and Michael Schiebe (Mercedes‑AMG ) heightened our anticipation for the car’s unveiling. They shared their vision for the new design and explained “what makes a Maybach a Maybach.”

Inside the car, drivers can expect a luxurious interior – It is covered in crystal white nappa leather. Other unique touches include a Maybach-branded steering wheel, stainless-steel pedals, and custom door sill trims

Finally, the new Mercedes-Maybach SL was revealed, driving down the runway. Its two design concepts, “Red Ambience” and “White Ambience,” set the tone for Mercedes Maybachs new level of luxury. While many Maybach owners favor classic designs, others prefer a more flamboyant display of their wealth, as Daniel Lescow says, “Customers who buy this car know that it is a statement car and they want that. We wanted to combine top technology, comfort and luxury”.

The car’s designs took inspiration from high-end, logo-covered handbags. The goal was to achieve a similar aesthetic by offering an optional hand-painted logo pattern on the hood and rear of the Monogram Series.

The hood, featuring the Mercedes star, also comes with an optional hand painted Maybach pattern in graphite grey and the headlights are covered with rose gold accents

The car comes with a special illuminated Maybach grille, headlights with rose gold details and 21-inch wheels. Even though the Maybach is a sports car, it is quite comfortable and drives quietly. With the push of a button you can drive more dynamically up to 260 km/h.

The interior of the car is trimmed in Crystal White Nappa leather. It has a Maybach-specific 3-spoke steering wheel, stainless steel door sills and pedal set. The dashboard is dominated by a massive OLED touchscreen, blending luxury with futuristic digital control, which can seem complicated in the beginning but once you have figured it out, it can do nearly anything you want. The MBUX system allows for voice commands and some of the advanced driver-assistance tools make long roadtrip drives more relaxing.

The Maybach SL680 Monogram Series will arrive in Europe first ahead of other markets. That’ll be in spring 2025, in time for next year’s car week

All quite something, and all the car you’ll need for wafting between Pampelonne Beach and Portofino, or indeed Pebble Beach and Newport Beach, next summer. Just don’t forget the Hermès headscarf and Beach Boys cassette. Wait, there’s no cassette deck? Oh well, no car can be perfect.

www.mercedes-benz.co.uk

Each issue, LUX invites an artist to take up residence and create a work exclusively for us. London-based sculptor and multimedia artist, Annie Morris takes up the challenge

“Drawing helps me explain the things in my life that I find hard to talk about” – Annie Morris

www.anniemorris.com

Daniel Arsham sitting with a bottle of Moët & Chandon before his 280th anniversary monumental relief sculpture

American artist Daniel Arsham sculpts a monumental relief in celebration of the 280^th anniversary of Moët & Chandon, aligning the present-day champagne house with a classical history of prestige and grandeur.

French champagne house Moët & Chandon unveils Collection Impériale Création No. 1 through a monumental sculptural relief created by the New York based contemporary artist Daniel Arsham. Inspired by his personal tour of the Moët & Chandon estate in Épernay, France, Arsham drew from the neoclassical architecture, busts, and faux columns to reimagine the Moët & Chandon bottle.

One of the eighty exclusive bottles that Arsham designed for Moët & Chandon, inspired by their estate

Arsham’s final creation is quite a striking, wall-mounted plaster-cast sculpture, monumental in scale. It feels as if it were recovered from the ruins of an ancient civilization, evoking a sense of mystery and history akin to ancient spolia. Yet, ‘Moët & Chandon’ appears in the place of etched Latin. Interspersed throughout the piece are clusters of grapes, a nod to the vineyards surrounding the estate; a wooden wine barrel, referencing the craft of winemaking; and images of the estate, woven into the relief.

In a rather grandiose gesture, the goddess Pheme, the personification of fame and renown, blasts her trumpet. Arsham cleverly intertwines the brand’s present-day prestige amongst fashion-house-drinkers with the grandeur of antiquity, creating an emblem of the enduring reputation of Moët & Chandon.

Cleo Scott

Douglas Abdell has emerged from obscurity in a striking exhibition at Ab-Anbar Gallery, London. In conversation with LUX, Abdell, a prominent artist of the 1970s and 80s, meditates on medium and language as he makes his comeback.

An intriguing new exhibition in London brings together two decades of work by Douglas Abdell, an American sculptor and painter with Lebanese and Italian roots. Abdell was a prominent artist in the 1970s and 80s before moving to Spain, where he continued to work in relative obscurity for the next thirty years. The Ab-Anbar Gallery in Fitzrovia weaves together his calligraphic signs, symbols, and alphabets through space and time. This interplay of sculpture and painting from the Málaga-based artist creates a mesmerising field of deconstruction and reconstruction of languages, cultures, and imagination. He speaks to LUX about his past, present and future.

View of Douglas Abdell: Intervalism and Other Mathematics
Left to right: 8 to 9 Key Interval Of Oscillation, 1986; 5 Window, 1984; Intervalists Pitch Fork, 1985

LUX: This exhibition features your work from the 1970s until today. How has your work developed thematically, visually, and intentionally over the last few decades?

Douglas Abdell: The main floor of the exhibition shows work from 1968 until 1989. This includes work from my Yad, Kryad, Phoenaes, and Intervalist painting and sculpture. You can also see a bronze sculpture from my Fourth Punic War period, and a bronze sculpture from 1968, which can be broke down to a surrealistic biomorphic with motoristic construct.

On the basement floor there is a room with an Aekyadic Wall Work, several Aekyadic Drawing works, and a fantastic collage wall made by Salman, dealing with my life from childhood to the present. The exhibition features films from different periods of my work, and in another room, there is a documentary of my work being played continually.

LUX: How does your sculptural work relate to your painting, both in this exhibition and your broader practice?

DA: The basis of my sculpture comes from drawing, and sometimes the drawing leads to a painting. The Intervalist paintings in the exhibition came before the Intervalist Sculpture. In making the paintings I realized that some of the forms and structures that I was painting would be more dynamic as sculpture.

From left to right: Bitia vs. Pergamon, Hannibal, 1987; Beirut Phoenaes, 1985

LUX: Why was it important for you to exhibit within Ab-Anbar Gallery?

DA: Ab-Anbar presented me with a concept of an exhibit which showed a profound study of different periods of my work and that impressed me.

LUX: Does your work relate to your American, Lebanese, and Italian identity?

DA: Growing up in a family with ancestors from Lebanon and Italy has had a substantial influence on my person. Both families were proud of their heritage and would teach me about their histories. Italian, Arabic and English were being continually spoken in our household.

Douglas Abdell, Phoenaes Drawings PHRAENN-FHRAEN-FRAE, 1981

LUX: What is the relationship of language to the social and political issues that you explore in your work?

DA: I would say that growing up in a family with different languages spoken has automatically put me in a linguistic position which has transformed into what I best know, and what I feel compelled to do: my natural calling as a Sculptor. This is sometimes manifested in a conscious activity to analyse and reconstruct a political reality.

LUX: Why do you choose visual media to explore language? Why do you prefer it over, say, spoken word?

DA: I would say that I have a profound need to visually realise my thinking. It’s like I have a tremendous need to fill a profound void – a type of black space which haunts me. I must activate structures, phonetic activities manifested, for example, in my Phoenaes Paintings and Intervalist sculptures. I am now consumed and totally dominated with my Aekyadic work, which can be seen a bit in the basement room. Aekyadism is a Language, read it…

Cleo Scott 

View of recreated Douglas Abdell studio, with collage by Salman Matinfar

Under the theme of “Conversations With Nature,” this year, six artists from five continents have traveled to Reims and created works of art based on their personal impressions of the landscape they encountered there

Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira is creating a scuptural installation for Ruinart, preferred champagne house of every self-respecting next gen oligarch, at Frieze London this year. Cleo Scott investigates

Henrique Oliveira’s forms spring out of the ground like inverted roots. A Brazilian-born painter and sculptor who works between his São Paolo and London studios, his large-scale sculptural installations are known as ‘tapumes’, or ‘fencing’ in Portuguese, which reference the wooden construction fences seen throughout São Paolo.

Oliveira is known for his works exploring the tension between nature and urban life

Oliveira uses lengths of stapled wooden tubing to create organic forms, which are then covered in layers of thinly applied wood, which he selects for their weathered and knotted surfaces. This results in bark-like forms that are at once natural and supernatural.

Oliveira’s project for ‘Conversations with Nature’, part of the Carte Blanche 2024 artists’ initiative from chi-chi Champagne house Ruinart, draws inspiration from the underground world of the Champagne region.

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From a network of chalk pits that provide the ideal environment for vines to grow, to the wine cellars of Ruinart, there seems to be as much life beneath the soil as above. Oliveira unearths this subterranean realm. His forms are roots of vines climbing above ground, seemingly alive in their writhing and twisted compositions.

While Oliveiras paintings evoke an organic proliferation of colors, his sculptures create the illusion of vegetal roots emerging in the urban environment

Forms are taken directly from nature and created using its very materials. However, the impossible distortion and scale of the work introduces an element of the supernatural – something beyond nature – only possible with the hand of man.

Ruinart’s Carte Blanche – not to be confused with Ruinart Blanc de Blancs, the maison’s all-Chardonnay champagne which is the daily pick-me-up of the ultra high net worth party set – this year brings together an international group of artists who centre their work around their connection and commitment to the natural world

Read more: Joel Mesler’s Californian Art at Château La Coste

Six artists travelled to the Champagne region, invited by Ruinart to use their diversity of mediums and practices to ‘converse’ with the landscape of the Maison Ruinart vineyards. Of this collective, the work of Henrique Oliveira and Marcus Coates will be exhibited within the Ruinart Art Bar at Frieze London, amid a backdrop of much Blanc de Blancs imbibing, from October 9th to 13th.

His art is sensitive to sustainable development issues and draws inspiration from the parasitic dimension of these structures, while also highlighting the importance of a mindful use of natural resources

Oliveira’s work embodies the relationship between man and nature at the heart of Ruinart and its Carte Blanche. In observation, understanding, and conversation with his subject, Oliveira breaks down the vine and reconstructs it, rather like the journey of the grape from a vineyard to the bottling of champagne – and onwards to the upper pool deck of that yacht moored off Pampelonne beach.

Find out more: runairt.com

Gerard and Kelly: “E for Eileen”

The Engadine, the high valley in Switzerland that is home to St. Moritz, also houses the literary village of Sils, some of the world’s most interesting small museums and art initiatives, and some of its biggest art collectors. In this ecosystem, a relative newcomer, the St. Moritz Art Film Festival, is taking root, supported by some high-level collectors. The festival opens after Venice’s spectacular film festival, with a different brief, and in what has traditionally been a quiet month in St Moritz where wealthy residents have taken flight and when many of the luxury hotels are closed: a time when it is difficult to achieve traction. LUX Editor-in-Chief, Darius Sanai asks the Festival’s director, Stefano Rabolli Pansera, formerly the director of Hauser & Wirth in St Moritz, about what he hopes to achieve with this bijou concept.

LUX: Why is this different to any other film festival, and how?

Stafano Rabolli Pansera: The St. Moritz Art Film Festival is defined by the following four distinctive elements:

1. The festival takes place in the newly reopened Cinema Scala in the centre of St. Moritz, surrounded by the nature of the Engadine Valley. The Engadine marks the hinge between North and South of Europe: it is located at the centre of the continent, yet it feels detached from it, thus providing a critical distance to our timely issues.

2. As the name of the Art Film Festival highlights, the programme connects tradition and innovation as it lies at the intersection of arthouse cinema, video art and commercial cinematographic productions. Therefore, the scale of the festival remains intimate and exclusive, but also invites a broader audience to attend and participate in the different offerings.

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3. A cultural event with a significant territorial impact. The festival is a spatial happening: it is an event that attracts new audiences to the Engadine, it extends the tourist season by operating as some sort of territorial catalyst. St. Moritz Art Film Festival wants to be a one-of-a-kind festival, leading the path to sustainable cultural tourism in one of the most beautiful valleys, the Engadine. The festival’s unique landscape and surroundings invite to a responsible and sustainable use of the Valley’s resources and facilities.

4. The festival is curated as an exhibition of video art. A yearly curatorial theme is carefully chosen as the common thread of the programme of screenings, conversations, and collateral events during the year. The outcome is a coherent development of a strong annual theme, that triggers factual, philosophical and cultural debates, leaving a strong impression on the audience. The life of festival unravels throughout the years with a coherent development of different themes that are related to each other and create some sort of narrative.

Amshu Chukki: “Different Danny”

LUX: How has the art scene in St Moritz developed recently?

SRP: The Engadine has always been a source of inspiration for artists and thinkers: from Nietzsche to Gerhard Richter, from Alfred Hitchcock to Claudio Abbado. In recent years, thanks to extraordinary gallerists such as Bruno Bischofberger, Carsten Greeve and Hauser & Wirth, amongst many others, and thanks to enlightened collectors, the Engadine has become a unique context for exhibiting and divulging art.

Initiatives such as Muzeum Susch, Proyectoamil, and Engadine Art Talk, the Engadin has been transformed into an active centre of artistic production and a laboratory of ideas. The main differences with the past are the expansion of the cultural scene beyond St. Moritz into the entire Engadine valley and the emergence of an organised network of institutions that provide a constant cultural programme beyond the seasonal affluence of tourists.

Robert Cahen: “Juste le temps”

LUX: What is your main aim for the festival?

SRP: The aim of the St. Moritz Art Film festival is to reinforce its position as a leading cultural force in the international landscape of cinema and video art by offering a platform for sophisticated films and unique videos and for developing a consistent curatorial and philosophical discourse.

The St. Moritz Art Film Festival will always be an exclusive Festival: it is going to find a position in the circles of Video art and films d’essai. Yet, we aim to enlarge the audience and to attract famous and inspiring personalities from the world of Cinema and Video Art.

Read more: Art collector Andrea Morante talks on artist Sassan Behnam-Bakhtiar

Furthermore, we are building a year-long programme of events, in order to maintain the interest for experimental films alive. We are aware of the impact of the Festival in the local scene and we hope to be able to generate a robust economy by attracting international audiences and by employing a larger number of people for different programmes and for a longer period.

Ila Beka Lemoine: “The Sense of Tuning Stills”

LUX: What are the most interesting elements in this year’s festival?

SRP: The annual theme of the third year is “Meanwhile Histories” and it questions the notion of time which is commonly associated with history, a linear succession of one event after another. But time is an overlapping of multiple experiences that occur simultaneously. There are always multiple sides to events and occurrences.

Young jun Tak: “Love your clean feet on thursday”

However, the dominant historical perspective often cancels the multiplicity in favour of a linear understanding of events. What remains is always set by the main narrative, which can shape and control how history is remembered, what is neglected and silenced, and crucially, what history is passed to future generations.

Read more: The Richard Mille Art Prize at the Louvre Abu Dhabi

To approach minor or forgotten histories, perhaps it would be helpful to think of alternative temporalities in terms of “meanwhile”. When we read the dominant history, we must think about what else was happening “meanwhile”.

“Meanwhile Histories” challenges the dominant narratives that have shaped our understanding of history.

The collectors say:

Gerd Schepers  is a Swiss art collector and one of the supporters of the festival. “It’s brilliant that Stefano is bringing this kind of content to the Engadin and the program definitely opens up a fresh perspective in a traditional commercial space with lots of untold stories.”

Aleksandra Pusnik, collector and supporter of thefestival: “The village of St. Moritz per se has always been a special place. On the surface, it carries a connotation of a place of ultimate luxury, only reached by the rich and famous. The Art Film Festival, with its choice of films, taps into the layers below this surface, only to discover the depth of the messages which get sent to the viewers, which in return addresses the masses, all of us, the planet. As the festival closes each year, I feel enriched by these messages as well as pensive about their content.”

The festival will take place from the 12th to the 15th of September 2024.

Find out more: smaff.org

Joel Mesler: Me, you and the sunset. Photograph by Francois Deladerriere

A striking new show by Joel Mesler brings nature, light and life to Château La Coste in the south of France, a place not short of any of these qualities. “Me, you and the sunset” is quite mesmerising

You can’t walk around the grounds of Paddy McKillen‘s Château La Coste without bumping into a museum-spec artwork. A Louise Bourgeois spider here, a Damien Hirst there, site-specific works by the likes of  Tunga, Bob Dylan, Tatsuo Miyajima, or Sophie Calle there. In total, there are about 40 artworks in the grounds.

Crounching spider by Louise Bourgeois. Photograph by Andrew Pattman

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Psicopompos by Tunga. Photograph by Andrew Pattman

As if that’s not enough, the estate complex in the heart of Provence also has three exhibition pavilions or galleries that host temporary and rotating exhibitions.

This summer, Californian artist Joel Mesler is showcasing his exhibition “Me, you and the Sunset” in the gallery designed by architect Richard Rogers.

The Richard Rogers Gallery at Château La Coste

Mesler’s show is inspiring. His twelve new paintings represent a series of connections between an individual (the self) and the landscape, as well as the people within it.

Joel Mesler: Me, you and the sunset. Photograph by Francois Deladerriere

The body of work reflects Mesler’s own views during his visit to the Château the previous summer. The paintings and sculptures, reflect the luminous sunsets of Provence.

Read more: MedBodrum: A New Type of Luxury Festival

There’s hints of Van Gogh there, but also the Californian in Mesler, who seems to pick up on the refractions and shades created by the Saharan desert dust that the high atmospheric Sirocco winds carry northwards here, a link to the desert skies in the east of his home state. Mesler’s paintings tell woven, personal tales.

Joel Mesler: Me, you and the sunset. Photography by Francois Deladerriere

The colorful, almost neon-like glowing paintings feature simple words like “ME,” “YOU,” “LOVE,” and “SUNRISE,” reflecting the recurring themes in Mesler’s art.