MAKE IT TIL U MAKE IT
Running and branding night clubs like Pink Elephant led Shawn Kolodny to making fine art and immersive installations.
MIAMI, FL
Here’s how I met Shawn Kolodny. So I’m parked with the Mobile Incubator at Collins Park on Miami Beach, right next to the Bass Museum. And across the street is this curious storefront outside the Boulan Hotel… and in the window is a neon sign that says “Fake Fulfillment Center”.
So I pop over to see what’s going on and behind rows and rows of prescription bottles the receptionist welcomes me and invites me to put on a lab coat. Hmmmm… then I walk down a long hallway. And there’s a enormous syringe, and I squirt it onto a blank canvas and the canvas flashes with color! Then I go in the next room and there’s a huge rock garden - you know those zen gardens - except instead of rocks it’s thousands of pills and you comb the pills with a rake. And around the corner I can climb inside a giant pill bottle!
And I share his penchant for the business side of art, he and I both have a BFA and an MBA. Which unlocked a new level of thinking to our creations. Shawn’s a visual artist but he’s also been a partner in many nightclub ventures like Pink Elephant, Go, and many other clubs.
In his art, Shawn draws from his life spent amongst substance, addiction and materialism, of which he says he’s “been both the observer and the subject”, and that “addiction is a pathological relationship in which things replace self”.
“If I did art full time, not as a side hustle, could I fill my days? Would I like it? After three weeks of doing just this and nothing else would I go insane? Would I be all alone? How would it work? Would I need a team? What’s involved?”
Shawn talked about the difference between a job, a career, and a calling. For him, his early employment as bartender was just a job, but as part owner of that bar he had some skin in a real career. Now as an artist, he’s following his calling, to reveal the superficiality of drugs, brands and ego, through his art.
SHORT VID
PODCAST
DISCUSSION
Many businesses - especially artistic or cultural - are often driven by the “fear of missing out” (FOMO). In the high-end nightlife world, Shawn admits that he himself wanted “fancy things, fancy cars, fancy clothes, fancy boats… because I thought people would like me better.” Noticing that both he and his audience could become addicted to brands and status, Shawn was inspired to create his current series of art.
“If you just change the Apple store for one of those shady Miami fake doctor things, it looks the same. People are waiting outside… kind of jittering… to buy this thing because it’ll make them feel so good for a little bit. And I started playing around with some imagery and some ideas, which turned into the Fake Fulfillment Center.”
Q: What is your audience’s fear?
Business models get creative with different audience segments. Not everyone can pay (or should pay) the same price. Different audience segments can be discounted, comped or might even become paid to be involved.
“We ran a theater, of which you are the actor and the alcohol is merely the transactional currency of that business. We put on a show. If you wanted to participate in that show, you can pay the cover, or if you wanna sit down and get a seat then it costs X number of thousands of dollars. What most people don’t realize… fifty percent of the room is being paid to be there, or someone is been paid to make those people be there. As well it should be, it’s theater.” (14:00)
Q: Do your different audience segments receive different benefits?