Partners 4Spaces and ZigZagZurich received accolades from NYCxDesign for a pair of auspicious and aptly named creations: “Mischief” and “LSD Marathon.”

Appearing within the larger Mischief exhibit, Liz Collin’s textile wallpaper is a vivid floral print that re-imagines colorful blooms as prickly, inverted entities—abstract shapes that fudge expectations about what flowers are supposed to look like, yet convey their own brand of beauty.

The sense of disconnection here (the buds seem to float unhinged from the stems) fits right in with the exhibit’s larger context, which contains a sub-exhibit of sorts entitled Queer People, Places, and Things. True to Collin’s oeuvre, the upholstery and rugs displayed throughout the space help to create dialogue and interchange within—and hopefully outside of as well—this historically marginalized community.

In addition to conjecturing about the experience of running 26.4 miles sans arms, LSD Marathon engages the phenomena of the communal athletic event. Says designer Jody Barton, “Far from being just a type of exercise, the mass sport event is a new and constantly evolving festival that encapsulates many of our society’s obsessions—it is a pageant, a festival, a party, a rite of passage… no less crazy than the old folk festivals or druids round the standing stones, it’s psychedelic!”

The arm-less, cartoonish figures Barton creates to evoke this experience are alternately happy and sad, confused and disassociated, yet also right at home. Evoking the Cubism of Picasso, the flattened forms convey the feeling of existing everywhere and nowhere, the purgatorial sense of being immersed in an all-consuming kind of pageantry that transcends time and place.