Video directed by Alfred Marroquin
Complex and ASICS have recently teamed up with art collective Hfour to bring The Kenun Cloud experience to NYC. This special event lets visitors experience what it is like to walk among the clouds in an immersive, experiential art installation in celebration of the release of ASICS’ cloud-inspired Gel-Kenun shoe. Complex also created a mini-documentary to showcase the backstory behind this imaginative exhibit, in which visitors can see, touch, and interact with their surrounding cloud atmosphere.
Vancouver, Canada-based design studio Hfour, which has a history of crafting stunning activations for their brand partnerships, believes that people best engage with art when they can touch and explore it in multi-sensory, 360-degree encounters. In an Hfour exhibit, visitors literally feel the art in order to truly connect with the world around them.
The ASICS Gel-Kenun emphasizes the tactile sensation of wearing the shoes and feeling like you're walking on clouds. That’s why ASICS and Hfour are a perfect pairing for unveiling the shoe with an art display that conveys, through touch, everything the ASICS Gel-Kenun shoe represents.
One of Hfour’s goals for the ASICS Cloud Project is to “create a sense of the unperceivable or the unknowable, or something that doesn’t quite get processed in the brain in a literal way,” explains Hfour artist/founder Stuart Ward, who hopes people will feel and experience something that transcends the everyday sensations in their lives when visiting The Kenun Cloud.
Ward grew up in the prairies of Saskatchewan in Canada, where the ground was nothing but “boring” flat grassland, and the clouds in the sky were a fascinating art canvas by comparison. The clouds, always changing and always interesting, became a lifelong source of inspiration for him.
Now, Hfour’s rurally inspired concept is complete and coming to the urban environment of Lower Manhattan, where life is built upwards through towering skyscrapers. New York City is the ideal setting for Hfour’s cloud exhibit. The city is teeming with life, and Hfour is eager to tap into that energy. The Kenun Cloud experience seeks to connect each visitor through something as universally beautiful as a cloud landscape.
As Ward puts it, “When we’re creating an experience like this ASICS Cloud event, we’re looking at ways for people to share moments, and talk to each other and want to share what they’re experiencing with other people.”
Experience the cloud project for yourself at 63 Greene St. in New York City, now through Saturday, Sept. 30.
