5G CACTUS® | MSCHF

MSCHF is a collective operating in the field of conceptual art, founded in New York in 2019.
MSCHF’s artistic interventions take the form of targeted actions designed to draw attention to and challenge the economic, political, and cultural system of contemporary society.

5G Cactus®, a 2024 artwork, is nothing more than a reinterpretation of CACTUS®, a product marketed by Gufram—an Italian company renowned for producing design seating and home accessories.
An object that is typically practical and often concealed—the coat rack—has become one of the most iconic pieces in the history of Italian radical design.
Designed by Guido Drocco and Franco Mello in 1972, CACTUS® is a coat stand made of soft polyurethane, featuring four cantilevered arms and 2,165 bosses, hand-finished with Guflac®, a special trademarked paint by Gufram.
5G Cactus® closely resembles Drocco and Mello’s original design, maintaining its formal characteristics, materials, and dimensions. However, the collective has added a bulky 5G antenna to the original design—an element that is decidedly unattractive from an aesthetic point of view and clashes with the ironic and colorful presence of the original piece.
This intervention humorously interprets today’s tendency to hide antennas, utility poles, and similar structures with local vegetation. In an era where technology infiltrates every aspect of daily life, the practice of disguising infrastructure with lush greenery appears as a clumsy attempt to harmonize the artificial with the natural. This seemingly aesthetic strategy conceals a more complex reality: the indiscriminate expansion of technological networks, often justified by policies of progress and modernization, has profound and harmful consequences for the environment.
Rural areas are undergoing an unstoppable transformation. Although built infrastructures may blend visually into the landscape, they continue to disrupt ecological balances, recklessly consuming resources. This approach, intended to reduce visual impact, cannot, however, mask the paradox of a progress that sacrifices the well-being of the planet.
An object made useful and elevated by a designer’s intervention—thus with a clearly positive contribution—unintentionally becomes a mask, an embellishment of an exponential growth process that serves as the foundation of an economic system. This system seeks greenwashing solutions to construct a superficially ‘sustainable’ appearance, only seemingly mitigating the profound and tangible impact of an innovation that has lost touch with the human element that created and continues to drive it.

MSCHF
5G Cactus®, 2024
Coat stand of soft polyurethane, four cantilever arms and 2165 bosses, finished by hand with Guflac®. Antenna of MDF, with aluminum bar structure. 169,9 × 70,1 × 70,1 cm (66 7/8 x 27.6 x 27.6 inch).
Photographer: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

15/02/25