Hospitality Design - September 2018 - 45

perspectives project breakdown
By Melinda Sheckells
Photography by Clint Jenkins and Brandon Barré

ART AND SOUL

The Palms reinvents itself as Sin City's
trendiest gallery

Being touted as the grandest renovation project
in Las Vegas history, the $620 million redo of the
roughly 1,400-room Palms Casino Resort touches
every inch of the pop culture-driven, multi-tower
property, which has been regularly depicted in
film and TV for nearly two decades. Despite its
notoriety, it's no easy feat to stand out on the Las
Vegas Strip, something Palms creative director
Tal Cooperman knew all too well when curating
the property's enviable art collection, many
pieces of which are on loan from owners, avid
art collectors, and brothers Frank and Lorenzo
Fertitta of Station Casinos (now part of Red Rock
Resorts). "The artwork that Frank and Lorenzo
own people only dream to see, and they want
people to see it," Cooperman says. "That's what's
so cool about it-this resort is like a museum."
The gallery-like experience starts at
reception, where a playful neon sign saying

"Wish You Were Here" from light artist Olivia
Steele greets guests with its vibrant pink
lettering set against a whimsical skyscape by
photographer Keegan Gibbs. From that moment,
guests know they're in for a trippy adventure that
celebrates prominent street artists and venerated
contemporary ones, most notably Damien Hirst.
In fact, the British provocateur is behind the
Unknown Bar, his first hospitality project since
Pharmacy 2 restaurant at his Newport Street
Gallery in 2016. Sitting menacingly above the bar
is his famous 13-foot-long tiger shark piece The
Unknown (Explored, Explained, Exploded), which
is sliced in three parts and preserved in glass
and formaldehyde, a stark contrast to the marble
bar below. Hirst's spot painting series flanks the
bar and his work covers napkins, matchbooks,
coasters, and swizzle sticks-turning his muchlauded pieces into collectible items. "We've made
sure people know we're more than just art in a
restaurant," Cooperman explains.
That goes for what he calls "the crown jewel
of the property," Scotch 80 Prime steakhouse,
courtesy of local firm Friedmutter Group
and Station Casinos' in-house team. Here,
Jean-Michel Basquiat's tryptich Speaks For

1. Apex takes on a
moody-meets-macabre
atmosphere thanks
to Dustin Yellin's
Psychogeographies series
of humanoid sculptures.

Itself mingles with screen prints from Andy
Warhol, while the life-size Small Lie cartoon-like
sculpture by KAWS stands outside and greets
guests. Further into the sprawling casino, the
cashier's cage is adorned with artist Timothy
Curtis' irreverent I Wear My Money on My
Face-the 20-foot-long red and pink painting is
a composition of faces made of global currency
symbols. Meanwhile, famed TaiwaneseAmerican artist James Jean's Alimental Thread
mural in Asian-fusion restaurant Send Noodles is
"a beautifully elegant masterpiece," Cooperman
says, wrapped in free-flowing shapes and
exaggerated water and flower elements, a nod to
his genre-bending
style.
"It's unexpected and only
1. Polizzi stands
in front
upon closer
inspection
do you realize the level of
of a fireplace
in the
Kipling
suite at Brown's
detail and
thoughtfulness
that went into creating
Hotel in London.
the mural," Cooperman explains.
Art also comes into play for Clique

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Hospitality Design - September 2018

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