A WELL-TIMED SPLASH: Almost four years into their collaboration, Swiss watchmaker Hublot and American artist Daniel Arsham are finally unveiling a wristwatch.

Dubbed the MP-17 Meca-10 Arsham Splash Titanium Sapphire, the curvaceous 42-mm timepiece emerged from a glowing frosted cylinder at Singapore’s 72-13 cultural and creative center on Thursday.

“The watch’s transparent structure is meant to capture the clarity and motion of water, suspended, precise, and always in flux,” said the artist, whose practice centers on “creating a sense where people are dislocated in time.”

Visible through the dial opening and sapphire case back is a new, smaller and partly skeletonized version of its in-house Meca10 manual-wind movement with a power reserve of 240 hours.

This second creation was about pushing further his exploration of sapphire initiated with last year’s Droplet pocket watch-cum-desk clock.

“As with every project that I do with a larger company, I like to use their material science and possibilities present within their company to create something new that hasn’t existed before in their work or in my own,” Arsham said.

With its irregular face and peat-blasted frosty matte sapphire bezel, it bears little resemblance to a Hublot watch and that’s how both collaboration partners intended it.

“The matte quality that’s used on the sapphire bezel is indeed new and something that hasn’t been used before,” said Arsham. He felt that the use of frosted and clear sapphire was “pushing the potential of that material to give new feelings and new qualities, which is something I’m always interested as an artist.”

Plus, the face “immediately says that it’s something different, that it’s something experimental,” the artist added.

Breaking away from known signatures is part and parcel of the brand’s MP line, according to Hublot’s chief executive officer Julien Tornare, who deemed working with Arsham “a discovery of new design and perception.

“We want to leave a territory of expression,” the executive told WWD. “We have two iconic designs which are the Classic Fusion and the Big Bang, which remain our fundamentals, but when we do collaborations such as these, we enjoy going beyond these designs towards completely new things.”

The Arsham Splash dovetails into Hublot’s longstanding maverick approach but also into a growing watchmaking trend of offering pieces that break away from traditional high-end watchmaking.

“It builds a notion of collector’s collection, particularly as [such items] are limited pieces as they are in our case,” Tornare said. “It reaches a category of people who want to collect a beautiful object beyond a watch, reaching new types of collectors.”

The executive hinted that the collaboration with Arsham, who marked his appointment as Hublot ambassador by carving a large-scale sundial in ice, could continue to evolve further.

Priced at $69,000, the MP-17 Meca-10 Arsham Splash Titanium Sapphire is available in a limited edition of 99 pieces and will be available from selected Hublot boutiques and retailers.