Designer Nik Bentel Embraces the Absurdity of the Everyday

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On a side street in Greenpoint, Nik Bentel’s studio is quietly nestled among a string of auto body shops. The studio itself is a high-ceilinged garage, converted into a hybrid workspace and showroom for Bentel and his team. A cinderblock wall lined with shelves showcases the product designer’s creations over the years: a knife with a MetroCard for the blade, a 16-wheel skateboard, an “I <3 NY” t-shirt so massive that it doubles as a picnic blanket. Flanking another wall is a table scattered with handbag sketches, along with an early prototype constructed out of cardboard. Bentel – a product designer known for his witty, absurdist and often internet-viral works, AKA “performative art objects” – moved into the space a few months ago to accommodate his team of five and an expanding rolodex of projects.

In August 2021, Bentel released the Pasta Bag, a true-to-size leather recreation of the Barilla penne box, UV-printed with the box’s iconography and adorned with a gold chain shoulder strap. Encapsulating the quarantine-era trend of stockpiling non-perishable foods, Bentel himself came up with the concept as he was making what felt like his 100th pasta dinner.

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While it arrived as the third installment in his “Storytelling” series after a year-long development process – preceded by a chair made out of bike racks and a flowered dress taken from a Botticelli painting – the bag marked Bentel’s foray into accessory design. It also served as a breakthrough for Bentel, who was working solo out of his apartment while pursuing a graduate degree in architecture. An initial drop of 100 units of the $200 USD Pasta Bag sold out instantly upon launch. Bentel restocked, and the bag sold out again.

“Every project was started from a point of selling an object trying to make money just to create the next one,” the 30-year-old Bentel says, recalling that the Pasta Bag was his first commercially successful release – although with such limited drops, fans of the viral bag largely outnumbered those who actually own it, simultaneously granting it cult status in the fashion sphere. One reseller is even asking for $2,000 USD for the limited edition purse. “Um is it the penne or farfalle,” one commenter wrote, referencing another iteration of the bag Bentel released before Barilla issued a “very sincere” cease and desist.

After the success of the Pasta Bag, companies began reaching out to the designer to create one-of-a kind products for them. Officially titled Nik Bentel Studio, about half of the studio’s revenue today come from brand collaborations, while the other half is derived from the in-house product releases for which the practice is best known.

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When it comes to original creations bearing the Nik Bentel label, “there are two categories of things that we make,” Bentel explains. “One category is a surreal, really thoughtful, designed object and the other one is slightly more tongue-in-cheek, dare I say gimmicky of an object.”

The Pasta Bag falls into the latter category, though he notes he didn’t quite realize at first how well that type of object would perform online. Bentel is essentially memeing everyday items, manipulating proportions to imbue the seemingly mundane object with a new story. What’s impressive is his ability to create products that wind up being destined for internet virality without falling prey to simply designing driven by the idea of feeding the algorithm.

As for the more thoughtful (and time consuming) creations coming out of Nik Bentel Studio, the designer laughs when he says they’re comparably underappreciated. “The Pasta Bag was a very quick design thing, where it’s like, “oh, this is hilarious. I’m going to mock this up and try to make this thing.””

“Whereas, when I’ve launched furniture and different toys and objects that I’ve spent so much time thinking about and critically examining, they often don’t do as well. It’s just one of those funny things.”

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Handbags perform well overall and make up about a third of the studio’s output. People naturally want to show off what they’ve bought and a quirky bag makes for a good conversation starter at a dinner party. The studio has even noticed several repeat customers-turned-Bentel original collectors. Since the beginning of the year, the studio has put out six bags. Among the lineup is the Time Traveler Watch, a small leather briefcase embedded with a functioning timepiece, and the Bentel Box Bag, a reimagination of the pink Mendel cake box Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

Bentel, however, says the studio’s main goal is to continuously “think of novel ways to consider objects.” While bags are a “great vehicle” for storytelling, he wants to avoid falling into a pattern of putting out too many bags just because they’re appealing to a commercial audience.

Last year’s Tattoo Chef Knife, with a stainless steel blade decorated with cooking-inspired doodles, is a play on the patchwork tattoo sleeves all too common in kitchens. The Capitalism Knife, meanwhile, affixes a sharpened American Express card to a handle. A second iteration of the Capitalism Knife swaps out the credit card with Bentel’s business card and a third version with the iconic yellow MTA MetroCard. New York City is frequently mined for inspiration, as all of the team is either native to the city or has lived their “for a really long time.” Earlier this year, Bentel and his girlfriend Kort put out a four-item collection paying homage to the city, which in addition to the aforementioned “I <3 New York tee, also included a play on the traditional hot dog stand umbrella and a series of ceramic plates featuring the NY State Health Department grades that appear in restaurant windows.

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Bentel himself grew up between Queens and Long Island. Born to two architects, he and his siblings were exposed to art early on and have never stopped since. (Brother Lukas Bentel is a co-creative director of the art collective MSCHF.) Having attended a dual-bachelors program through Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, Bentel received a degree in modern culture at the former and a degree in industrial design at the latter. After graduating, Bentel says he worked a series of odd jobs in the creative space while working on his own projects out of his apartment. It wasn’t until post-Pasta Bag acclaim that he made his first hire to work under the Nik Bentel Studio banner.

Bentel returned to school during hte pandemic to earn an MFA in architecture from Columbia University, even though hedoesn’t plan to practice the field, at least not in the traditional sense.

“Architecture is very slow in its own way,” Bentel says. “Like, I think my goal for the studio is to tell stories. It takes 20 years to build a building, where, through an object, you get to tell stories a little bit faster.”

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Still, the influence of his newly minted degree is apparent as recent objects have gotten more ambitious, architecturally speaking. With last month’s Orb Bag, Bentel set out to create a work that reflects light from every angle. The mirrored hard shell purse contains no angles and is aesthetically based on a mathematical concept called the Dupin cyclide, in which a geometric inversion is formed by rotating a shape around an axis.

Coming up with the idea is easy relative to actually enacting it. Beyond mere creativity, the products require ingenuity and the team can just as well be described as engineers as they are designers and artists. The development process often relies on concepts taken straight out of physics textbooks, particularly for objects that have a mechanical or technological function or are simply hard to nail, such as the Ball Harp, a brass “deconstructed harmonica” that’s pitched in C and can play an octave of notes. With virtually every object though, multiple prototypes are created and receive several rounds of revisions before Bentel settles on a version to release to the public. The studio unveils two new products each month. To maintain that rhythm, the release calendar is confirmed for the next eight months, meaning Bentel already knows what they’ll be dropping in March 2025.

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Built into the calendar is a small margin for products that never see the light of day. On the showroom’s shelves are a handful of products that were quite literally shelved. Resigned to the studio graveyard is the reservedly titled Elf Bar Holder: a pair of metal knuckles permanently clasping a blue mint Elf Bar. The studio made the prototype before realizing that brass knuckles are illegal to possess in New York, let alone sell. Some projects may wind up being too costly to produce; others are blocked by the legal powers that be. Bentel says that the few cease and desists he’s received from attorneys representing the brands he’s spoofed have been surprisingly appreciative of his witty takes on company product, albeit still firm that he stop selling his stock.

Would Bentel ever transform his cease and desists into a performative art object of their own?

“These letters have been so thoughtful in a weird way, obviously lawyers aren’t writing thoughtful letters, but they’re curated letters that are like, “please, we appreciate this but stop selling it. Like, do not do this ever again,”” Bentel says. “The play on corporate graphical language is perhaps another fun story to be told…”

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