WEB 3.0 AESTHETICS: IN THE FUTURE POST—HYPE OF THE NFTS

7 MAY — 31 DECEMBER 2022

OPENING RECEPTION

FRIDAY, 6 MAY, 6–8PM

LaTurbo Avedon, Jeremy Bailey, Kate Bickmore and Sian Fan, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Stine Deja, Chris Dorland, Andreas Gysin, Claudia Hart,Rachel de Joode, Baron Lanteigne, Olga Mikh Fedorova, Lauren Moffatt, Marjan Moghaddam, Yves Peitzner and  Jelena Gregov, Signe Pierce, Anna Ridler,Aaron Scheer,  Ada Sokół, Alida Sun, Addie Wagenknecht and Aiala Hernando, Jennifer West, and Ziyang Wu

LaTurbo Avedon

LaTurbo Avedon was created in 1988.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

My first consideration of NFTs goes all the way back to 2013, when I had my first solo exhibition with TRANSFER Gallery in New York. NFTs didn’t exist yet, but I was very interested in the “deep web” nature of buying and selling using blockchain. Most public understanding of Bitcoin at that time was limited to the Silk Road and virtual black market, but I wanted to create some new conversations about how my files could be authenticated using this technology. All of the pieces in the show were priced in BTC, and the buyer would receive a physical COA as well as a TIF file of the work. It wasn’t possible for me at the time to do everything “on chain”, but these early works were structured many years before the first art NFTs.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

I was among the first artists invited to mint NFTs on Foundation, though I took some time to think carefully and critically about how I wanted to engage the format. I minted my first NFT in February 2021.

Jeremy Bailey

Jeremy Bailey was born in 1979 in Toronto, where he lives and works.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

In 2019 Casey Reas, who also founded Feral File, invited me to participate in an NFT trading experiment called a2p++, the marketplace was closed to the public but exhibiting artists could trade editions of their work. 

When was your first drop of NFTs? 

In April 2021 I dropped my first NFTs on Foundation and Hic et Nunc. The works were versions of AR editions I had created for a platform as an artwork I launched in 2020 called YOUar which poked fun at art becoming ecommerce prior to the explosion of NFT interest.

Kate Bickmore & Sian Fan

Kate Bickmore was born in 1993 in Albany. Sian Fan was born in Chelmsford. They both live and work in London.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

Sian:
I just remember suddenly being immersed in NFTs. Maybe it’s just the digital art spaces that I exist in and the people and projects that I follow, but it felt like they were everywhere in an instant. I genuinely couldn’t pinpoint a first encounter. A lot the big players in the space now are creatives that I’ve been following for years, Fvckrender being a particular example of someone whose work I was obsessed with before he moved into NFTs.

Kate:
My first encounter with the NFT space was through my partner Acacia Mei, who spearheaded a collaboration with ES Magazine and Phillips Auction to release a one of a kind NFT featuring Kai Isaiah Jamal created by Warren du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones. The NFT launch serendipitously happened at Annka Kultys Gallery — paving the way for future NFT collaborations. 

When was your first drop of NFTs?

Sian:
My first NFT drop was 2021.

Kate:
This will be my first NFT drop!

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley was born in 1995 in London. She lives and works between London and Berlin.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

When I was invited by foundation through an NFT exhibition to mint.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

2021 December.

Rachel de Joode

Rachel de Joode was born in 1979 in Amersfoort. She lives and works in Berlin.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

The Decentraland show that Anika curated for/with König Gallery in 2021.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

I was part of this show and this was also my first drop.

Stine Deja

Stine Deja was born in 1986 in Træden, Denmark. She lives and works in Copenhagen. 

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

I’m not exactly sure, maybe 2 years ago.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

My first NFT drop was for Institut followed by MisaArt.

Chris Dorland

Chris Dorland was born in 1978 in Montreal. He lives and works in New York.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

My first encounter with the NFT space was in September of 2020. It was before most people really knew what non-fungible tokens were other than real crypto heads. Lindsay Howard reached out about doing a crypto art project for a new website that was about to launch. I had been a big fan of Linday’s past projects and my curiosity was piqued. I had a great meeting with the small team at Foundation. I totally hit it off with the CEO Kayvon and was super excited to participate. Little did I know what this would be the beginning of!

When was your first drop of NFTs?

My first drop was in October of 2020 with Foundation as part of their V1 launch. It’s kind of amazing to look back at the list of artists who participated in those super early days at Foundation. My piece untitled (global entry) ended up being collected by Kayvon. That cemented a genuine bond between the two of us.

Andreas Gysin

Andreas Gysin was born in 1975 in Zürich. He lives and works in Lugano.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

I was always sceptical about crypto (still am), but I was attracted to what I started to see in 2019… It took me some time but eventually I had to try it myself!

When was your first drop of NFTs?

23/10/2020, 13:09.

Claudia Hart

Claudia Hart was born in 1955 in New York, where she lives and works.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

I first became acquainted with NFT when Kevin McCoy started Monograph in 2014.  At that time, my bitforms gallerist Steve Sacks, was a supporter of the project, and invited me to participate.  I turned it down, as I felt that in the end, the focus on market and selling would ultimately be harmful to artists!  I was re acquainted in 2018, when Snark Art opened, with the atomization of Eve Sussman’s famous 89 Seconds at Alcatraz piece!  It fascinated me, but again, I was put off by the emphasis on the art market, so again, turned down the opportunity.   Finally, in 2020, I dived in!  I was interested in the idea of NFT as an extreme form of copyright.  At that point, I was making a work where I imagined myself to be an art forger and loved the idea that I could declare my forgeries unique by minting them.  

When was your first drop of NFTs?

I minted my first work for the Christies auction, Proof of Sovereignty, Curated by Lady Phe0nix, Christies, NY, 5/25/21 – 6/3/21.

Baron Lanteigne

Baron Lanteigne was born in 1987 in Montréal. He lives and works in Québec City.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

My first encounter with NFTs was back in 2019 when I was invited by SuperRare to join the platform. Back then, nobody supported video files, and this is my preferred format for online diffusion, so I had to wait for them to support video files before getting started.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

My first project was minted back in 2020 on SuperRare. Tangible Data. I then used my project to document my first impressions with the NFT communities and direct relations with collectors. Back then I created a bunch of different virtual museums and prototypes for IRL exhibitions. ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY presented one of those too. I ended up creating an IRL sculpture that hosts and documents interactions with my NFTs.

Olga Mikh Fedorova

Olga Mikh Fedorova was born in 1980 in Moscow. She lives and works in Brussels.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

2019.

When was you first drop of NFTs?

2021.

Lauren Moffatt

Lauren Moffatt was born in 1982 in Armidale. She lives and works between Valencia and Berlin. 

When was you first encounter with the NFT space?

I’m not sure exactly when. The concept of non fungible tokens as a method for sharing and collecting art was familiar to me since around 2018 or 2019, but I didn’t start noticing it in practice until sometime in late 2020 or early 2021 when it began really blowing up.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

In November 2021, it was for a charity auction organized by fisheye as part of the parcours privé of the FIAC.

Marjan Moghaddam

Marjan Moghaddam was born in 1961 in Tehran. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

2020.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

September 2020 on Superrare (piece sold already into third market and exhibited in Proof of Art A Brief history of Digital Art to NFTs museum exhibition in Linz Austria).

Yves Peitner & Jelena Gregov

Yves Peitzner was born in 1976 in Munich. Jelena Gregov was born in 1982 in Zadar. They both live and work in Munich.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

Our first encounter the NFT space was in early 2020. We have sarted exploring the NFT space since then.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

The first NFT drop was in April 2021 with our first NFT series Timeless Spaces.

Signe Pierce

Signe Pierce was born in 1988 in Arizona. She lives and works between New York and Los Angeles.

When was you first encounter with the NFT space?

I am proud to say that I was the inaugural artist in the launch of Foundation platform in 2020, which made me the first artist to ever mint an NFT on their app.  You can listen to the interview I did with a16z about the experience here.

When was your first drop of NFTs?  

Fall of 2020 on Foundation.

Anna Ridler

Anna Ridler was born in 1985 in London, where she lives and works.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

My first encounter with crypto was in 2017 when I was researching for Mosaic Virus project. In this piece I was comparing the speculation that was going on around bitcoin to the speculation around tulips. 

When was your first drop of NFTs?
My first NFT drop was for a project that came out of Mosaic Virus – Bloemenveiling – which was an online online auction of short GAN generated videos of tulips on a DApp that we created ourselves (the project was in collaboration with David Pfau); it used smart contracts on the Ethereum network to sell the work and bots to help drive speculative prices – a working example of what it also exploring. We wanted to see how the use of these types of technologies, which are increasingly embedded across different types of markets, can drive human desire and economic dynamics through artificial scarcity.

Aaron Scheer

Aaron Scheer was born in 1990 in Ahlen. He lives and works in Berlin.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

Around 2018, where I had a discussion with Gordon Berger, who was already experimenting with blockchain technologies, about the distribution of digital artworks.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

My first drop was beginning of 2021 as part of the show “THE ARTIST IS ONLINE” at KÖNIG GALERIE. Since then, I’ve been dropping a few pieces here and there, occasionally.

Ada Sokół

Ada Sokół was born in 1994 in Wrocław. She lives and works in Paris.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

In 2019. I feel like I have been a little bit too late to the game, focused on different projects. But once I got into it, especially the beauty of blockchain, I felt enchanted.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

At the beginning of 2021 on Zora.

Alida Sun

Alida Sun lives and works in Berlin.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

My first encounter with the NFT space was December 2018 when I got invited to onboard some of the NFT platforms that were just launching, but my schedule couldn’t accommodate all the onboarding at that time.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

[I was] invited to onboard Art Blocks winter 2020, dropped my first NFT project glitch crystal monsters on Art Blocks Curated July 2021.

Addie Wagenknecht & Aiala Hernando

Addie Wagenknecht was born in 1981 in Portland. She lives and works between Vienna and New York.  

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

Addie:
Casey Reas and I did a project called a2p in 2018. I then started advising for Foundation in early 2019. The rest is history.

Aiala:
Besides an established contemporary artist, I am creative strategist and technologist with ten years experience in the arts and creative industries. My first encounter with the NFT space was through a relationship with Foundation, the NFT platform, where Addie and I first dropped this series egirl as part of their beta launch of smart contracts. Also, I am deeply involved in the NFT ecosystem through my work as Head of web3 at Aorist and independent strategic advisor in the space.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

Addie:
First NFT drop at Sotheby’s in ‘Natively Digital’

Jennifer West

Jennifer West was born in 1966 in Los Angeles, where she lives and works.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

A few years ago, I heard about NFTs. Since I am a video artist who sells my works in small editions with certificates of authenticity, the concept made sense – different but with similarities. I got more familiar with NFT space through friends who were involved in making, writing, and giving lectures on the subject. I was particularly interested in a model that Epoch Gallery (from LA) was using – where an entire exhibition placed within an elaborate 3d virtual space that one could navigate was sold as a shared NFT between all the artists in the Algorand currency. When Peter Wu (founder/curator of Epoch) asked me to be part of the exhibition, “Replicants” – I jumped at the opportunity. What I found interesting was the way he brought together visual artists who present their work in an art context, with artists working in other digital and virtual platforms and communities. I especially love smashing digital analogue works into that space with highly contemporary 3d modeled works – gives a great sense of mash up of technology and media archaeology within the space. So this was a great experience that connected me with a number of other artists that I may have not met before. During this time, I also began learning and experimenting with new softwares such as pj.5s and processing – which opened up the possibilities for me to experiment with transference between analog and digital media – which has been a going process now for.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

I dropped six NFTs in September of 2021 with scorpio.world. The NFTs, Painted Cat Hacker Film GIFs were a  collection of videos of 16mm clips of cats against a green screen, portrayed in a lo-fi aesthetic.  First presented across more than 75 billboards as part of Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moment series (the world’s “largest, longest-running digital art exhibition”), it “pays homage to the feline’s role across many moving image genres,” from viral videos to experimental films.    

Ziyang Wu

Ziyang Wu was born in 1990 in Xuzhou. He lives and works between New York and Shanghai.

When was your first encounter with the NFT space?

November 2020.

When was your first drop of NFTs?

May 2021.