NFT
Curated NFT marketplace SuperRare is taking over New York’s 0x.17 gallery for a two-month exhibition, highlighting the importance of bringing non-fungible token (NFT) artwork into immersive, physical spaces.
The pop-up at 0x.17, a community-focused NFT gallery in the historic South Street Seaport neighborhood, features a curated program of works from more than 20 SuperRare artists. The gallery will open June 1 with a solo show by AI artist Claire Silver titled “Artifacts.”
“The exhibition showcases seven artworks based on different philosophies and questions about our future with AI in the form of seven different media: video, generative, still image, poetry, music, 3D and an avatar with an AI voice,” said SuperRare in a press. Edition.
Silver told CoinDesk that AI art is carving out its own space in the evolving world of NFT art.
“There are whole movements happening in this space and within crypto art,” she explained. “They have their own formative artists and they live in the digital world. And we’re just going to spend more time in the digital world, in our lives and in generations to come, and AI will accelerate that.”
Restore human connection
SuperRare debuted its first pop-up gallery in New York’s SoHo neighborhood in May 2022. Founder John Crain told CoinDesk that bringing NFT art into shared physical spaces helps to “humanize” the experience.
“As exciting as digital art is — and NFTs have enabled this kind of revolution and resurgence in art — art is ultimately about human connection and storytelling,” he said. “You just can’t replicate that in a digital environment yet.”
The upcoming exhibition will be an evolution of last year’s more traditional minimalist gallery event and will be designed to encourage conversation and interaction between attendees.
“This time we thought more about ‘where are we going to facilitate conversations?’ and ‘what will people do?’ and just make it a little bit more of a comfortable place to hang out,” he said. “A gallery or museum can feel a little academic and sterile, and that’s not necessarily where you’re having a deep conversation.”
Crain emphasized the importance of bringing digital art from the confines of a computer into physical spaces, where people from the traditional and crypto spaces can come together.
“We’re still teaching people why this is an interesting and legitimate medium for art,” he said. “These are people in real life, and the context for art is super important.”
Since Silver started working with AI, she has often combined physical art with digital media. Some of her previous work involved creating abstract acrylic paintings and collecting the “skins,” or dried paint that wasn’t on a canvas, and merging them onto AI portraits. A piece titled “A Feeling I Can’t Put My Finger On,” minted on request for the pseudonymous art collector Cozomo de’ Medici, was created this way and was recently donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) .
“Art is an emotional experience, but it’s also a sensory experience, right? And so many people struggle with the concept of digital art without a physical counterpart,” she said.
Silver’s work, along with the work of many other NFT artists, has been brought to life through museum exhibitions, gallery displays and live multimedia experiences. And as NFT art continues to make its way into more traditional spaces, Silver hopes the dismissive attitude toward crypto art will continue to change.
“I hope that the traditional collectors in the traditional art world might not see that value proposition in digital art and NFTs — I hope they see them as artifacts, or as cave paintings of a digital age that we’re about to enter,” she said. “And they can consider themselves collectors of both history and art history.”
Read more: Beyond the JPEG: Web3 expands the artist’s canvas through immersive IRL experiences