Is it a rose or an arrow? (Editor's Picks — Feb 5, 2025)
Editor's Picks (Feb 5, 2025)
Traceloops, Faceloops Flipbook Blind Boxes
As active members of the fanclub for Traceloops, the Brooklyn-based animator and visual artist who makes distinct flipbooks and stop-motion animations, we cannot begin to describe the euphoria this latest release has wrought on us. Following up on last year’s incredible Cut-out Flipbook (of which only a few editions remain), this release by Traceloop offers a single, group, or whole set of miniature flipbooks whose pages show dancing, melting, and conjoining faces rendered in beautiful, moving black-and-white ink drawings. Like all Traceloops work, the experience is very physical, as collectors rip open the small envelope containing the pieces (satisfaction level: EXTREME), then feel their faces turn to delight as they flip the pages back and forth. Can you tell we’re collectors ourselves? And that Traceloops hand-delivered our edition to us last week? And that it’s awesome? This release is so special we don’t even know what to tell you. Sets start at just $15. Not many available.
Michael J Sclafani, Arrow Sculpture
Arrow Sculpture is a series of unique sculptures by the NYC-based artist Michael J. Sclafani that pair striking colors with a distinctive shape to sculpt objects that resemble both flowers and arrows — a line the piece willingly blurs, as thorns dot the arrow/flower’s shaft. Are they a gift from the soil or a threat from afar that just missed? Depends on who you gift them to.
Reza Hosni, Cosmic Crumbs Bag
Reza Hasni is a Berlin-based, Singapore-born artist and designer whose work spans textiles, visual art, animation, and whose subjects bridge the digital, the symbolic, and the sacred. In their first release on Metalabel, Hasni releases “Cosmic Crumbs Bag,” a wearable and utilitarian piece of art in the form of a lightweight, colorful, and cleverly packable tote bag that hits all the right notes. Choice!
PRINT MEDIA
[Dis]enchantment: A zine about Esoteric AI by AIxDESIGN & internet teapot (Slow AI Series)
AI this, AI that. These days we all throw around those letters as a shorthand for a whole host of things — the marvels of technology, the potential for societal collapse, the lingering question of whether humankind is being surpassed. Ya know, normal stuff. What we love about this new print and digital zine from AIxDESIGN, a team and community of technologists and researchers, is that it thoughtfully unpacks our experiences with AI and connects them to longer traditions of how humans have sought the perspective of oracles, shamans, and other spiritual mediums. Fresh and inspired.
Anonymous Creative Futures Report
Here we go again. The Anonymous Creative Futures Report is our latest release, a deep dive into the creative ecosystem and universe as it exists now, and an unflinching look at what it may be. We’re grateful to the hundreds of collectors who have picked up a copy so far (and to the great crew who came to our space in NYC last Friday night to celebrate). Even cooler: all money raised from this release will be split among the 75 contributors, putting our money where our vision is. For those looking to go deeper into Chappell Roan’s feelings, this is a good place to start.
Collect Anonymous Creative Futures Report
DIGITAL MEDIA
⋆ ˜҈ Breathing in, Breathing out ⋆⁎⁺ Guided Meditation ✧
Super yes to cataloguing and dropping a meditation as a release. This inspired piece by Mind Meditations, a project by sound artist Aamina Simone, opens up the listener to the vast expanses and universes all around and within us. Why limit ourselves when we’re actually limitless?
A New Creative Era
Back in 2023, Metalabel released this zine in a newspaper box in New York City’s Lower East Side, laying out our vision for the future we want, and discovering a new friend — the triple-smiled happy face, or Smiley, as we later learned they were named — along the way. This text and piece came together in an instant, the words, images, and ways of seeing flowing from us without effort, as if called from Another Place. Two years later these ideas continue to inspire us. This is the future we want to build, together.
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