Selfridges’ London display windows by Kyle Bean

Kyle Bean was commissioned by Selfridges to create a series of sculptural installations to fill the western “wonder room” windows of their flagship London store.

Each of the five installations presents alternate incarnations of the same materials, suspended in a state of perfect equilibrium on an oversized set of hanging scales.

Inspired by scientific theory, Kyle Bean’s window displays for department store Selfridges demonstrate balancing acts. Here is a short film showing how Kyle Bean installed his sculptural artwork in the shop windows of London’s Selfridges. Inspired by the theory that ‘matter can not be created or destroyed, only transformed’, Bean juxtaposes alternate incarnations of the same materials, hanging them side by side on a pair of scales.

The works include a wedding cake hanging next to a mobile made of its ingredients, a mythical castle made from fairytale books, and a Honda Fireblade motorcycle hanging next to all its individual components.

Kyle Bean

He is a a Brighton based designer specialising in hand crafted models, prop styling and art direction.

Graduated from the University of Brighton in 2009.

Currently working freelance.

He has been involved in projects for a variety of clients including a viral animation for the BBC, editorial illustrations for the New York Times Magazine and shop window displays for Selfridges, Liberty and Hermes.

“Craft has always been a big passion of mine, from a young age,” says Kyle Bean, the Brighton, England-based artist who, at the age of just 23, is still pretty young. All the better that he’s thinking about the future: Bean’s work, he says, fuses “our human relationship with science and technology” and “the everyday materials that are around us.”

Of his recent installation in the window of London department store Selfridges, he explained: “The great thing… is that they actively encourage artists to treat their windows as though its an exhibition space,” he says. He used that freedom to take cardboard and books as his mediums, and deconstruct mechanical objects to spectacular effect.

The Devon-born artist’s fascination with “discovering how things work, whether its in technology or indeed in nature” matches the shop’s theme, which involved minimalism and “pairing things down to a single ‘object of desire.” Drawing inspiration from the law of conservation of mass (“Matter cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed”), Bean’s installation involves five distinct objects, taken apart and re-assembled like “giant scales” to create the effect of dreamlike equilibrium.

His motorbike, stripped to its gears and bolts and suspended as if by Magneto, the artist chose for its masculine features. By contrast, his disassembling of a wedding cake is meant to take apart its charming, delicate, even humorous features. “The aluminum cans are a great symbol of mass production and consumerism,” he says, to create contrast with his selection of vintage fairytale books, “transformed into a castle to show their preciousness, due to their age and rarity.”

Kyle’s site-specific designs also had to grab the attention of a fickle, window-shopping public: “I think for a window display to grab attention it either needs to be technically very impressive and bold or have a clear enough concept so that passers by can understand it by the time they have walked from one side of the window to the other.”

Design Education

2006 – 2009 University of Brighton, England

BA (hons) Illustration – First Class Honours Degree

2005 – 2006 University of Portsmouth, England

Art and Design Art Foundation – Grade/Mark: ‘Distinction’

Exhibitions

July 2009 Mobile Evolution project on public display, Young Creative Network (YCN), London

July 2009 Graphic Design & Illustration Show, The Rag Factory, Brick Lane, London

June 2009 University of Brighton Undergraduate Degree Show, Brighton

Events/Awards

Sept 2009 Work showcased at the BFI as part of the onedotzero festival.

June 2009 Shortlisted for the 2009 Penguin Design Awards for a book jacket design