In 2024, Lukas Bentel helped pull off a heist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sort of.

Bentel is a cofounder of the iconic Brooklyn-based art collective Mschf and, until recently, served as its chief creative officer. After nearly eight years with the brand, he’s parting ways with the collective to start his own design practice. He says it is still in an “exploration phase” but will include a major focus on “making things physically with my hands.”

As Bentel moves on to his next venture, he brings along a unique formula for creating products that manage to combine high art and satire with mass appeal. He was the creative mastermind behind some of Mschf’s most commercially successful launches, including its era-defining Big Red Boot, culture-war-starting Satan Shoes, and museum-worthy ATM Leaderboard.

Looking back on his time at Mschf, though, Bentel is even more proud of some of the projects that built cult followings: the time his team stole a sink from the Met a piece at a time, “Ship of Theseus-style,” he says, or the time he bought an authentic $30,000 Damian Hirst painting and cut it up into 88 resellable pieces.

In many ways, Bentel’s work defined Mschf’s knack for toeing the line between poking fun at and profiting from modern consumerism.

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