• Tobias Wong
• SFMOMA
• 151 3rd St.
• San Francisco
• Through June 19

Tobias Wong, the so-called “bad boy” of design, has his first solo show at SFMOMA. The honor comes posthumously, as Wong died in 2010 at the age of 35. Henry Urbach, SFMOMA’s Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design, developed the exhibit, which features over 30 works by the late artist/designer.

Wong’s designs, which he commonly referred to as “postinteresting” and “paraconceptual,” often played with the subversion of today’s consumer culture and the obsession with wealth and the toys that often accompany it, as well as post-9/11 American anxiety and its material manifestations.

Wong also took pleasure in appropriating, some would say misappropriating, the works of others, which resulted in his being labeled a provocateur, ruffling the feathers of even large corporations like McDonald’s, who wasn’t thrilled with Wong’s gold plated version of its coffee stirrer (above).