“Sit On My Big Lamp”: A Nine-Minute Spliff With Designer Rich Aybar

THURSDAY 8:45 PM SEPT 4, 2024 TRIBECA

Last Thursday, a slew of sexy New Yorkers descended on Tiwa for the opening of Rich Aybar’s latest show. Rubberworks builds on the artist’s previous offerings, imbuing a sensual spirituality into functional design objects that evoke playfulness and familiarity. “There’s not this remove that you can’t touch the art,” Aybar tells me over a cheeky spliff break. In his world, nothing is off limits. 

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TAYLORE SCARABELLI: What are you smoking?

RICH AYBAR: A spliff that Alex [Tieghi-Walker, the owner of TIWA gallery] gave me. It’s rose gold.

SCARABELLI: It’s beautiful.

AYBAR: “Pesticide-free.”

SCARABELLI: So I just picked up this rubber egg downstairs. I think you’re missing a performance art element where somebody pops a bunch of these out of their [REDACTED].

AYBAR: I mean, I had this idea that somebody would sit on my big lamp. There’s some people in the fisting community who told me that they would do it. I also have the rimming chairs downstairs, and I think that a demo is overdue.

SCARABELLI: Way overdue. I have to say the obvious, the lighting downstairs is gorgeous. 

AYBAR: I wanted to make a warm, moon-like hug of a room. My dad was just here and he called me right after and was like, “Rich, it felt like being inside of a cool club.” I was like, “Thank you dad. That’s the point.” 

SCARABELLI: [Laughs] I love that he called with the review right after. So did you make a lot of these works in the Rockaways this summer?

AYBAR: I’ve finished everything in the Rockaway, but a lot of this work, I started in residency in Palm Beach when I was at New Wave. So I’ve been traveling with this stuff for almost a year now. 

SCARABELLI: How did you link with Tiwa?

AYBAR: I’ve been friends with Alex for a while. I really like what he shows, and I like his format, the casual aspect. One time he came to my studio at WSA and he immediately was like, “I love this world. I want to do something with you.” 

SCARABELLI: I feel like you’re offering something different for collectors in this space. They come in here and they’re like, “I know what this is going to look like in my home.”

AYBAR: I mean, it’s dialed into my specification. And I hope that collectors or buyers, decorators can find something unique here. But I want people to be able to project themselves into this world.

SCARABELLI: Do you ever worry that your work’s going to end up in the wrong space?

AYBAR: The wrong space is in storage. If anybody is enjoying it, whether it’s in their dusty basement, or their light-filled apartment, then it’s in the right place.

SCARABELLI: Can you tell me why rubber?

AYBAR: Rubber always fascinated me because it has a very unique ability to match our haptic needs. The way that we are soft and kind of squishy. Rubber also is soft and squishy. So it can serve as a material of creation, but it also allows light to pass through, which in some spiritual way, allows a passage of divinity through it. We’ve achieved that historically with glass and more recently with resin, but I noticed that there was not a lot of use of rubber in design. I thought it was so bizarre because it’s playful, and it’s beautiful. And I thought that maybe it’s because of its really deep and long colonial history, and this sense of dissonance created around it. 

SCARABELLI: Right.

AYBAR: We use rubber in so many different aspects of our lives. Like there’s tires, and sneakers, and in hospital settings, and sex toys. But we don’t acknowledge how ripe the material is. So many times people ask me, “Is this safe for this?” Or, “Is it okay to use in that context?” People forget how often rubber is used to keep things safe from us, and us from them, in a way.

SCARABELLI:  But also working with rubber is challenging because it can be very toxic.

AYBAR: Yeah, you have to protect yourself. There is that human sacrifice cost. And that for me plays into its potential luxury realm. It has a very high extractive price, so to speak.

SCARABELLI: And then you have people here just grabbing your artworks and just squeezing them.

AYBAR: Yeah, playfulness and familiarity, there’s not this remove that you can’t touch the art, or that you can’t engage with it. 

SCARABELLI: You know, someone just gave me a delicious Jello shot that looked a lot like your rubber works. It had turmeric and pepper, did you make those?

AYBAR: I used the mold that I used to make my eggs, and I provided it to the catering. It was their idea to do jello shots that looked like the shape of my furniture.

SCARABELLI: So chic. It’s funny, there’s a million things happening tonight, but everyone’s just chilling here. 

AYBAR: Because it’s a really nice hang. There’s really good lighting. It’s a good environment. It’s like, “Stick around, maybe buy something.”

SCARABELLI: Don’t tempt me.