Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
Nikolas Bentel
Italian-American artist and designer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
Nikolas Gregory Bentel (born 1993) is an artist and designer based in New York.[1] He is the founder of Nik Bentel Studio.
.jpg)
Remove ads
Early life and education
Bentel was born in 1993 to architects Carol Bentel and Paul Bentel.[2] He was raised in Queens and Long Island, New York.[2]
Bentel attended Montessori and Waldorf schools before enrolling in a dual-degree program at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).[2][3] In 2017, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Modern Culture and Media from Brown and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design from RISD. He later received a Master of Architecture from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in 2022.[4]
Remove ads
Career
Summarize
Perspective
Bentel founded Nik Bentel Studio in 2017 to design limited-edition objects.[5]
In 2018, Bentel launched The Erased Rauschenberg. For the project, he purchased a 1973 print by Robert Rauschenberg and sold one-inch squares of its surface as advertisement space, using the funds to acquire the artwork.[6][7] The final piece was auctioned in March 2018.[8][9] That same year, he produced a project titled All Purpose Nik, in which he created a series of patented poses to function as human furniture.[10] This "Corpus Collection" was exhibited at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York.[10]
In 2021, Bentel released the Pasta Bag, a leather handbag designed to replicate a blue box of Barilla penne pasta.[11] It was done for trompe-l’oeill purposes and later he received a cease-and-desist letter regarding the purposeful unauthorized use of its branding.[4][12] In 2022, he released a handbag fashioned to look like a generic brown shipping box covered in mailing labels.[13] Later that year, he collaborated with Absolut Vodka on a set of Espresso Martini-themed handbags.[14]
In 2024, Bentel designed the Orb Bag, a spherical, mirrored handbag modeled on a Dupin cyclide geometric form.[13] In September 2024, Bentel collaborated with the retailer Lidl and released the Croissant Bag during London Fashion Week, with proceeds from the sale donated to charity.[15][16]
In 2025, Bentel released the Mixer and speaker handbag, acrylic handbags with an integrated Bluetooth speaker and four-channel DJ mixer, and the RC Car Bag, a leather purse mounted on a remote-controlled chassis capable of speeds up to nine mph.[17][18]
His other work includes the Loopy Chair, a sculptural aluminum piece constructed from modular industrial parts[19], a handbag based on an electrical extension cord[14], and work with Areaware on a set of whimsically shaped Doodle Crayons.[20]
Remove ads
References
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads