About AIRBOAT
Airboat is the multidisciplinary design studio founded by artist Ivan Toth Depeña and Teela Depeña. It's establishment stemmed from a desire to to expand outside the realm of Ivan's art studio practice and bridge the divide between the fields of art and design.
Airboat has over 20 years of experience in the fields of design, interior design, and architecture. We maintain a small, diverse and mobile unit of individuals poised to handle projects of varying scale, assembling unique project teams based on the needs of the design problem to be solved. Participation on any given project ranges from designers, architects, programmers, photographers, copywriters and illustrators. We pursue an all encompassing approach to a wide variety design problems ranging from graphic and architectural design to installations.
In addition, to the wide range of creative projects the studio develops, we are able to fill the need of a complete creative services department for our clients. We can develop, design and implement anything your company may need to promote itself in this ever sophisticated brand-conscious corporate landscape.
Our process is iterative and our approach, scientific. The studio enjoys exploring various solutions to one problem, therefore avoiding the entrapment of a particular style whenever possible. We strive to work with like-minded clients to achieve innovative and genre busting solutions.
ABOUT IVAN TOTH DEPEñA
Ivan Toth Depeña is an artist currently based in Charlotte, NC, after having lived and worked in Miami, FL and New York, NY. Ivan's commercial design studio is known as Airboat, Inc. With a Masters Degree in Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Depeña’s artistic production is informed by his experience in art, architecture, technology and design, and encompasses a range of media. Depeña pursues the intersection between different disciplines with the aim of choreographing the moment when these aspects come together seamlessly. Using traditional avenues such as drawing, painting and sculpture then interweaving interactivity/responsiveness, video, light and high-tech methods of fabrication, Depeña explores the fine line between chance and intention.
Depeña has been working increasingly in the public realm and maintains a rigorous and experimental, self directed studio practice. He has exhibited extensively, nationally and internationally, in both solo and group exhibitions, including at the McColl Center, NC; Praxis NY, NYC; New Britain Museum of American Art, CT; Miami Art Museum, Frost Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. Depeña has recently completed large-scale public commissions in New York, NY; Denver, CO; Albuquerque, NM; Gainesville, and Miami, FL. His work is held in numerous public and private collections.
In early 2014, he was awarded a prestigious Knight Arts Challenge Miami Grant for his proposal for a first of it’s kind series of augmented reality public art projects throughout South Florida called “Lapse”. Depeña was also a finalist for the renowned Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) Grants & Commissions program for Hispanic artists for 2017-2018. In addition, he received a nominated for the prestigious United States Artist grant in 2017.
To learn more, visit ivandepena.com.
