Check It Out

Edie Cohen -- Interior Design, 4/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

It’s not quite the Eiffel Tower. Nor the Tokyo Tower. But both were references for a sculpture of 15 shopping carts at the Comme des Garçons guerilla store in downtown Los Angeles. The installation and the temporary shop, open for a year, were the work of Tak Kato, who co-owns the (permanent) sneaker shop next door.

Besides considering landmark towers in the two cities most associated with Comme des Garçons, Kato asked himself a question about his own home: “What is L.A?” His answer focused on the seamier side of life: “I always see shopping carts on the street.” So he got a stash, cut them up, and welded the pieces together in a construction stacking all the way up to the 24-foot ceiling of the century-old bank building.

Finding the semi-clandestine entry, down a gritty back alley, required a tour de force of navigation. Inside, the 1,500-square-foot space hardly got more manicured. Kato even went to the trouble of constructing a wall and tiling it, then took a hammer, mud, coffee, and tea to the 6,500 white ceramic squares for patina. Ceiling fixtures, meanwhile, were made from pipe rail. “The materials were very everyday,” he says. How about the Comme des Garçons T-shirts, jewelry, and collector’s items that rotated on and off the carts? Anything but.

Photo by Jimmy Cohrssen.