When Phillip Toledano was faced with what he refers to as ‘baby rage’, he decided to create a series of crockery proudly bearing photographs of the myriad crying faces of his months-old daughter. After his parents sadly died and the topic of his own eventual fate began to preoccupy his mind, Toledano didn’t dwell – he instead confronted his fears and envisioned over 20 alternative futures of his life. This profound and deeply personal conceptual work has earned the London-born, New York-based artist worldwide acclaim. Once described by his former boss as a ‘pathological contrarian’, Toledano is driven by his inherent curiosity and craves surprise like a long-time smoker craves nicotine.
And if you follow him on Instagram, where he goes by the alias Mister Enthusiast and often uses his audience as a sounding board for his left-field ideas, you’ll know that this intrigue extends to his collecting, be it cars, watches or other objects – Apollo-era spacesuits or the helmets of Vietnamese fighter pilots, for example. Driven by design, Toledano loves unusually shaped 1970s Pateks and boxy 1980s Group B rally cars. His daily driver, a Lancia Delta Integrale he bought unseen from Japan, repainted in battleship grey and nicknamed La Bastarda because of its hooligan character, is especially well received by his Instagram followers, us included! Toledano will be joining our host JP Rathgen for the next instalment of Classic Driver Live. You can catch what promises to be a fascinating chat live on our Instagram channel from 1900 CET/1800 BST on 9 June. Missed it? Catch it afterwards on our IGTV channel or right here on this page.
