Lexus and MSCHF have wrapped up one of the stranger automotive installations to appear in New York this year. Staged at Chelsea Industrial from 24 to 26 September, Motormorphosis took two familiar electrified Lexus models and pushed them far beyond the usual boundaries of concept-car design, turning them into full-scale sculptures built around distortion and movement.

The Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF calls the pair “Form Cars”, and neither is intended as a preview of a future production model. Instead, the project explores what happens when the logic of digital animation is applied to real automotive forms, using familiar bodywork as raw material.

According to Lexus, MSCHF draws on the exaggerated geometry of 3D animation, where objects can squash, stretch and deform in response to movement. Displayed alongside standard production cars, the sculptures are intended to question how much of a car’s identity comes from its shape, and how much comes from the expectation that it should move.

Circle Car begins life as a Lexus RZ 450e. MSCHF effectively bends the battery-electric crossover back on itself, looping the body from nose to tail into a continuous circular form. The lighting signatures, glazing and recognisable Lexus surfacing are still there, but the car’s usual relationship with the road has been completely removed, and it looks more like a frozen animation frame than a vehicle.

Twisted Car takes a different route with the RX 450h+ plug-in hybrid. The body appears to have been pulled into a heavy torsional twist, with its panels and lines spiralling around the centre of the SUV. The familiar proportions are still visible beneath the deformation, which is what makes the effect work.

Of course, these sculptures are not for road use or production, but they do offer a fun and interesting perspective on how cars can be part of our lives even when they are not being used as originally intended.