Model Cars, Model Art. Marc Kokopeli’s Pampertaarten

In 2025, a Milanese car collector invited Marc Kokopeli to paint his Rolls-Royce Phantom by hand. The New York-based artist had caught the collector’s attention through a series of sculptures presented at his 2022 solo exhibition die Pampertaarten at Reena Spaulings: miniature vehicles assembled from diapers, pacifiers, baby bottles, ribbons, socks, and other nursery items. Pampertaarten, or “diaper cakes,” are handmade Dutch maternity gifts, usually composed of rolled diapers stacked into the form of a tiered cake and decorated with baby products. Kokopeli’s versions abandoned the cake form for the automobile. More than fifty lined the gallery floor on plinths, each resembling a custom model car, rendered in infantile materials. Evidently, Kokopeli’s mock showroom was convincing. The collector asked that his Phantom be painted “diaper colour.”