Exhibition: CREDIT TO THE EDIT

Exhibition: CREDIT TO THE EDIT

SuperRare May 12, 2021 Artist Profiles / Artist Statements

Exhibition: CREDIT TO THE EDIT

SuperRare
3 years ago

MAY 12 – 31 2021

The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.

STANLEY KUBRIK

Credit to the Edit, curated by Visual Fodder founder Dan Mauger, is a collection of the very best, experimental work from ten of today’s leading video based artists – Cache Bunny, Dirk Koy, Erik Winkowski, Fernando Livschitz, Francois Vogel, Gerhard Koenderink, Joe Pease, Jules Langeard, Stephen McMennamy and Nicolas Vuignier.

All works from the exhibition will be available to collectors worldwide May 12 – May 31, 2021 via auction as unique NFT artworks on SuperRare, a platform built on the Ethereum blockchain.

As technology has advanced over the years, artists have been quick to adopt new techniques. 

In 1857, Oscar Rejlander created the world’s first “special effects” image by combining different sections of 32 negatives into a single image, making a montaged combination print.

After a curator visited David Hockney’s house in the Hollywood Hills and left his Polaroid camera behind, Hockney started to experiment with it, trying to capture the three dimensions of surrounding reality, ultimately resulting in the his seminal Polaroid works from the early 1980’s

Technology is nothing without creativity – and it’s this combination of left brain/ right brain thinking that cultivates the diverse styles showcased by the artists featured in Credit to the Edit.

Powerful and complex video editing tools such Adobe After Effects, combined with creative flair, allow the everyday to be remixed and surreal narratives to be formed. Video becomes collage, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, reality elegantly twists.

To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large – this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Credit to the Edit celebrates and underlines the importance of reframing the everyday, offering an alternative perspective of the world through a beautifully distorted lens.

The exhibition will be verified carbon neutral via @offsetra.official

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Dan Mauger is a London based curator, art director and founder of the art platform Visual Fodder. He has been a part of the international contemporary art scene for over a decade, co-founding London contemporary art gallery Mauger Modern Art in 2008 and exhibiting a roster of artists in major art fairs across the globe, including multiple presentations during Art Basel Miami/Switzerland.

Work from the gallery’s artists has been acquired by some of the world’s leading art collectors and is held in collections which include:  Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK Getty Museum and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

LINKS

Exhibition : https://superrare.com/features/credit-to-the-edit

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/visual.fodder/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/Visual_Fodder

SuperRare : https://superrare.com/visualfodder
Web : https://www.visualfodder.net

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SuperRare

SuperRare is a marketplace to collect and trade unique, single-edition digital artworks.

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Negative Space

Weekly Top 10

The Ironic Beauty of AES+F

The Ironic Beauty of AES+F

SuperRare May 11, 2021 New SuperRare Artists

The Ironic Beauty of AES+F

SuperRare
3 years ago

Brooke Lynn McGowan,
New York, May 2021

Challenging ideas of beauty and the ideology of advertisements, the Russian Collective bridges the divide between art and fashion, releasing an NFT, Circle of Life, first created to be a campaign for Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster. See the work here.

AES+F, Circle of Life, still from video-art campaign in collaboration with Gentle Monster, unique NFT

Beauty too often contains a betrayal. Even beneath the modest nudity and dismissive gaze of Botticelli’s Venus or behind the sinewy struggle of Laocoön, a morally instructive aesthetic is singularly triumphant; where—even in excess or seduction—the beautiful equates the virtuous and calls the onlooker into a punishing relationship with any and all difference, divergence, or discord. The old, the sick, and otherwise Other are rendered—especially at the later crossroads of the state apparatus and the aesthetic—monstrous, grotesque, deformed—in short, a threat to all that is beautiful and good. At few junctions of ideology and state power has the felt effects of iconological regime in the modern era been more acute than the interpolating force of Soviet Realism; forcefully erasing the avant-garde hard edges of Kazimir Malevich or monumental urges of Vladimir Tatlin, this state-sanctioned artistic production—with its earnest, buxom bodies, blessed with the bounty of beautiful children; with its virile, soldierly physiques, merrily engaging in the comradery of an arms race—not only sought to erase alterity, but to make it unseeable, unsayable, unthinkable: to place it beyond the realm of representation and thus imagination. Likewise, in the land of Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mantle and Marilyn Monroe, the rise of advertising in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, could be seen as no less culpable of attempting to capture the authority of desire as a desire for authority: the urge towards ideal form as ideological and capitalist command. Even racism here is a product (read: commodity) of seduction. We are too often our worst enemies.

AES+F, Action Half-Life, Episode 1, #10, 2005, digital collage

Into this slipstream, between the collapse of Soviet tautologies that gave way to authoritarian capitalism, and the continued pursuit of consumer perfection in the increasingly diversified visual culture of advertising in Western capitalism, Russian artist collective AES+F was born. Founded in 1987, with at first three individuals and today composed of four members, Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky, and Vladimir Fridkes, AES+F has made a career of polyvalent critique, not only of global power and its discontents, but also of the remaining ideologies and their relations in the construction (or deconstruction) of sociological prejudices and perils. Pushing the boundaries of multi-channel video installation, the group gained international recognition for their presentation of Last Riot in the Russian Pavilion of the 2007 Venice Biennale, portraying a Baroque, apocalyptical mise-en-scene replete with nubile, physically stunning youths in a battle to the death, which nonetheless lacks blood, passion, or even heroism. Here the beautiful is not the good, but rather the agent of aggression without (even towards) virtue: an aporia of value, moral or otherwise. Staged in a deliberately virtual landscape, this bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all) presaged the violent and dystopic realities of social media and the internet over a decade later, suggesting the future as naught but an endless battle to the last man, woman, or child—nasty, brutish, and short. What is of perhaps greatest import to the development of their oeuvre is the stylistic and critical choice made by the artists in the Last Riot and elsewhere to use the aesthetic of the international fashion and advertising apparatus against itself; from an pleasing young forms to saturated realism, they use these social hieroglyphs as “‘readymade’ element[s] of the language of contemporary visual culture.” This strategy of aesthetic subversion further includes, they continue, “the combination of the formal beauty with critical content, including irony about beauty itself … [and the presentation of/use of] beauty as a kind of wrapper or capsule to deliver bitter contents.”

AES+F, Last Riot 2, The Bridge, 2006, digital collage

In The Circle of Life, a one minute and thirty-seven second video AES+F created to be a campaign for Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster and now released as an NFT, the formal beauty has not receded but rather remains in use as an aesthetic strategy in the service of alterity, in the presentation of the monstrous, grotesque, and deformed, and in the pursuit of an ultimate formal, even dramatic, even meta irony: the deliverance to the world of fashion and advertising its own auto-critical visual diegesis. A trepidatious and portending score by Dmitri Kourliandski (somewhere between the inviting overtures of Fantasia and the impending terror of The Birds) resounds throughout a surreal landscape—barren for all but a strange, floating, amorphous mass—from which a macabre, multiplicitous menagerie of phantastic hybrid animal forms swoops into the foreground: a twin headed seal born on the body of a seagull; a flying, hairless cat with four viper tails; a dog’s face carried aloft by dragonfly wings, trailing the tentacles of an octopus; something resembling a boar with a long tentacle tail and the head of a fish. Standing on this desolate plane, the old, infirm, and other—rendered in the formal beauty of rich, inviting saturation—quickly present themselves to the screen: an aged Caucasian heiress in cascading, sculpted blue velvet; a young man of Asian descent lost somewhere between 20 and 40; a Germanic gentleman of professorial, even Freudian demeanor, beside a woman equally pale and restrained; an elegant black figure garbed in brilliant pink; yet another white man of more poetic and bohemian countenance; and a white woman with ginger hair approaching middle age. Only as the shot cuts does the exclusion become obvious. There, in the foreground, in a surrealist violation of scale and perspective, a young boy stands dwarfed by the statuesque proportions of the stately matron’s azure robes; while each of the other figures are bespectacled exponents of the so-called bourgeoise, (borrowed from the artists’ previous universe of Inverso Mundus), only the helpless and hapless child seems to not need such prosthetics in order to perceive the strange and wonderful scene to which he is witness. As the work progresses, each of these well-heeled characters of advanced age begin to float, each grasping the empty air around the curious cacophony of monstrous animals drifting just out of reach. Only the young boy remains anchored, looking up.

AES+F, Inverso Mundus, Still 1-20, still from 1-channel video

When asked if their work contains elements of the surreal, the artists sidestep, defining their practice as a “stylistic palimpsest”, but nonetheless conceding, “You could say that we reflect the surrealistic reality—an exalted reality of contemporary media (press, TV, film, advertising, internet, etcetera). In our projects you could find elements of surrealism, but we are … closer to symbolism.” Yet, if something is literally represented in their work, it is in fact the symbolic aim and agency of the historic avant-garde—that is, the Surrealists, or Surrealism tout court. For the efforts of those within the milieu of Surrealism include the interrupted bodies of Hans Bellmer’s dolls, George’s Bataille’s disembodied eye or the headless Acéphale, Leonore Fini’s animalistic human hybrids, or Yves Tanguy’s lumpen, abstract but strangely anthropomorphic forms stranded in a wasteland—each composed with the intention to use shocking, offensive, often grotesque, deformed, or monstrous imagery in order to violently disturb the psychological moorings and thus preconceived notions of the all too settled (presumably grounded) and sedate ruling class. In these works, like that of AES+F, though they may be formally beautiful, they are the very opposite of beauty: occupying a space of moral disruption, discord, and divergence, the place of “beauty as a kind of wrapper or capsule to deliver bitter contents.” In AES+F’s Circle of Life, as the characters representative of the bourgeois class are removed from any agency or stability through and while in the act of reaching towards this phantastic Boschian bestiary, ugliness, one might say—unseeable, unsayable, unthinkable—gains the upper hand. 

… But another layer remains of this “stylistic palimpsest,” for the Circle of Life, though borrowing from previous bodies of work, was not in the first instance composed as a standalone artistic project but rather as a globally distributed advertising campaign. After years of critical flirtations with the visual culture of “the surrealistic reality of contemporary media,” wherein fashion brands especially have often cited AES+F’s compositions in their commercial campaigns, the artists have decided to self-consciously close the loop. This ironic gesture bordering on kitsch is not without the force of criticality. Richard Prince once stated that the power of advertising lies in the fact that its “images aren’t associated with an author. It’s as if their presence were complete… They look like they have no history to them—like they showed up all at once. They look like what art always wants to look like.” If that is true, then making advertisements submit to the subjectivity of artistic authorship is to deny them their transcendent and violent ideological effect. AES+F in this way, presents and completes the paradox: returning the artist to the process of advertising, through a “formal beauty with critical content, including irony about beauty itself.” Or the irony of the ironic. The circle continues. 

Brooke Lynn McGowan is a writer and curator living in New York.  She is also a contributor to AES+F’s upcoming retrospective catalog to be published by Rizzoli, from which some of the research for this essay has been adapted.

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SuperRare is a marketplace to collect and trade unique, single-edition digital artworks.

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Curators' Choice

New Artists on SuperRare

New Artists on SuperRare

SuperRare May 10, 2021 Curators' Choice / New SuperRare Artists

Belongings

New Artists on SuperRare

SuperRare
3 years ago

Weekly introduction to new artists on SuperRare.

Creatiflux

Hardcoding
Edition 1 of 1

This project was done between 10-2017 and 07-2018 while i was still working in frustratingly undermining environment teeming with favoritism. The motivation came from a place of frustration, defiance and a desperate need for progress. More about this project here : https://www.behance.net/gallery/66050921/HardcodingRedshift-Study

Tim Saccenti

New York City
timothysaccenti.com
Tim Saccenti is a photographer and filmmaker working in experimental music and fashion worlds. His otherworldly images mix analog lighting techniques with specialised, modern mediums, including 3d, holography, lasers and generative digital art. Tim’s collaborators include Warp Records, Run the Jewels, Depeche Mode and Gucci. Tim is one-half of creative practice Setta Studio, based in New York City and Los Angeles.

Struggle Sessions 05
Edition 1 of 1

The “Struggle Sessions” series is an exploration of space and deconstruction of the human
form.The portraiture basis of the images has being evolved and devolved during multiple “Struggle Sessions” between the artists. Concepted as a manual or self-help document for people coping with
digital fatigue, the ‘Struggle Sessions ‘represent the instances of manic de-contextualization of the figure using photography, digital sculpting and design.

Gerhard Koenderink

 

Cincinnati, USA
instagram.com/design.brand.art
Gerhard Koenderink is a Dutch designer/creative director living in Cincinnati, Ohio with over 20 years of international experience. His art has been featured/reposted on arts and design sites as @Instagram, @Visual.fodder, @Artplugpowerhouse, @Divemadhousemag, @Illustarts, @Xuxoe, @Designdunker, @Motionmate, @Stefansagmeister, his design/creative have won awards that include Cannes Lions, Grand EFFIE, D&AD, CLIO, and AIGA 365 Design Effectiveness (Repository: Denver Art Museum). ✌🏻🖤

YinYang
Edition 1 of 1

Dark and stormy flows eventuality into tranquility. ✌🏻🖤 _May 2020.

Victor Fota

 

Bucharest
victorfota.com
Victor Fota, b.1989. Visual artist/Oil Painter/Digital Enhancer BA and MFA in Visual Arts-Art History My NFTs are based on my oil paintings, which are augmented by retouch and animation.

Overdose
Edition 1 of 1

“I hate getting wet but I forced myself to go to the comfortable golden platform where I can feel exposed but safe. In this realm, glass and silk are enough for this purpose. I strapped 4 cans of candy drink and went for it. Swam through the metallic lake and reached it. My stomach imploded when I almost bent one of the intake pipes of the VR system. Bad design, in my opinion, the mayor is at fault here, I’m sure! Anyway, climbed safely, I put on my cosy silk blanket whilst drinking the juice. This time I tried all 4 of them, a bit risky but I wanted the full-body experience of this virtual reality and chemical “J” enhancement combo. I managed to write about this experience while waiting for the load time to finish… Talk to you later… Overdose…” /// This NFT is a jpg, 5928×3920 px. It is based on my “Overdose” oil painting which was painted on an aluminium panel of 33×50 cm. The painting is part of the “Hedonism Now” series which illustrates the seven deadly sins and their contemporary manifestations. I used photography, Blender and Photoshop to create the reference for the painting, jumping from digital to analogue and back to digital to create this NFT.

Donglu

Montreal, Canada
instagram.com/donglulittlefish
Senior Concept Artist for the Entertainment Industry for +12 years. Video Games: Assassin’s Creed Bortherhood/III/ Black Flag/Valhalla; Farcry 4, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Film: Lion King ( 2019).

Cyberpunk Street
Edition 1 of 1

This digital painting has set the artistic milestone for my Cyberpunk universe. Imagine a future world where AI is so powerful, and the giant holograms and billboards are displaying images and messages triggered by your preferences and interests in the language of your choice. We will live in the same physical world, but we will experience totally different realms of a virtual reality. Welcome to my Cyberpunk universe.

Noxx

Berlin, Germany
noxx-art.com
Hi I’m Nick, 3D artist and designer from Germany. I love that 3D enables me to bring things to life that could not be possible otherwise. I can mimic and twist reality. For me 3D is the ultimate freedom.

Punk
Edition 1 of 1

Like what you like. Be yourself. Speak your mind. // 4000x5000px 1/1

Salavat Fidai

tiktok.com/@salavat.fidai
salavatfidai.com
“Everyone uses a pencil as a tool. But I made a pencil a rare piece of art! “- says the world famous Russian artist and sculptor Salavat Fidai. His unique art at the tip of a pencil is unmatched. He has successfully collaborated with many well-known brands and labels. His works are in museums and private collections around the world.

FLOWERS
Edition 1 of 1

You can see the process of creating a micro-sculpture on the tip of an ordinary pencil by Salavat Fidai in 2020 . Due to a known crazy situation, all my exhibitions around the world in 2020 and 2011 were canceled! This is terrible! But I decided that there was an opportunity to show my work through a virtual show. The proceeds will help me create my first virtual exhibition, and all my 13 million subscribers will be able to see my art for what it really is! This NFT is Collaboration Between Artists Salavat Fidai and NickKaverin.

Iness Rychlik

London, UK
inessrychlik.com
Iness Rychlik is a renowned self-portrait photographer. Since she suffers from a chronic skin condition, Iness often uses her own body as a canvas for artistic expression. The subtle elegance of Rychlik’s compositions contrasts with an underlying aura of brutality. Her conceptual photographs provoke the viewer’s imagination, rather than satisfy it. Featured by ‘The British Journal of Photography’, ‘Cultura Inquieta’, ‘Beautiful Bizarre Magazine’, ‘L’Officiel Italia’, BBC Scotland. @inessrychlik

Innocence Lost
Edition 1 of 1

The first artwork minted by the self-portrait photographer Iness Rychlik. ♦ ♦ ♦ ‘I suffer from a hyper-sensitive skin condition. As a teenager, I would often attempt to cover it up; I resented being asked if I had accidentally burnt myself. Throughout the years, I have learnt to see my skin as a canvas for artistic expression, rather than an ugly inconvenience that should be kept hidden. The crimson patterns come from a meticulous combination of me drawing and pressing everyday objects onto my skin. My process involves multiple test shoots over several days to determine the right pressure and timing for each photograph.’

PaulB

Paris
polpics.cargo.site
Pol is an independent artist, focused on illustration and animation, based in Paris for the past 10 years. After ending his studies in 2009 at the National Decorative Arts School (ENSAD), he started producing and directing animated content for TV covers, kids TV shows, corporate movies and animated documentaries. Aside of his direction job, Pol is constantly experimenting new shapes of animation, illustrations and paintings.

Nuclear Monkey
Edition 1 of 1

A gigantic incarnation of freedom is showing you the way. A bridge between movement and motionless through anonymous pictures and 19th-century E.Muybrige photographs. A hypnotic and absurd scene where your mind is projected into an endless story. Beware, you can fall deep into the picture.

Federicosolmi

NewYork
twitter.com/FedericoSolmiNY

The Great Discoverers
Edition 1 of 1

An ecstatic cast of decorated explorers, generals, and conquistadors gather at the bow of a pirate ship, exuberantly dancing at the sight of new land.

Mattdangler

instagram.com/mattdangler
Freelance Artist primarily focusing on gallery exhibitions (including museum shows and 8 solo shows), book illustration and private commissions for the last 17 years. Dangler’s artwork can be found in private collections throughout the world.

The Light
Edition 1 of 1

A collaboration between artist: Matt Dangler, animator: Geoffrey Palmer, and musician: “Frown” – All sharing a similar aesthetic and goal; bringing the traditional artwork into a richer and more believable narrative, for the viewer to experience.

Bryn Jones

London UK
instagram.com/artwithbryn
Concept artist in film and media, starting his career as a board game illustrator. Bryn loves to drink coffee and illustrate all day.

Meta Moo
Edition 1 of 1

Moo is one of my most popular characters. Most of my following on social media was built on the Moo. This is my first piece of NFT art.

Scottcarr

Poughkeepsie, NY
instagram.com/scottcarr
Scott Carr is a cartoonist and illustrator based in New York. He received his BA in Art/Illustration in 2011 from Central Connecticut State University. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Vice and Smoke Signal.

Infinite Scroll
Edition 1 of 1

I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.

Artur Gadzhiev

Moscow
instagram.com/art.gadzhiev
Digital designer

SUPERNOVA REMNANT
Edition 1 of 1

Echoes of eternal space find their way into our world through the energy of light. An endless cycle that generates
understanding and creation of space.

Jerry Garcia

San Francisco
jerrygarciamusicarts.com
Artistic pioneer Jerry Garcia, well-known as the legendary guitarist, vocalist, and interstellar improviser of the Grateful Dead, was one of the first musicians from his era to create digital art. Jerry Garcia considered himself “an artist who played music.” As a youth, he attended the San Francisco Art Institute and, throughout his lifetime, produced various original works, including some rare early digital art. All art release projects include environmental and charitable components.

Gift
Edition 1 of 1

Meeting “Gift,” he greets us just landing, coming into our view from blue sky-walking and fluffy cloud-surfing. We see the congenial face of “Gift,” a smiling forward-thinking interstellar being. He plays a musical staff. We experience his colorful epiphany of giving and receiving in a range of rainbow hues- purples, reds, oranges, yellows, greens, and blues. We experience “Gift” as a realization of gratitude, an uplifting vision perceived through tangible abstractions. Familiar forms and geometric shapes adorn his garment. “Gift” plays by ear.

Martin Salfity

 

London, UK
instagram.com/martin_salfity
Martin Salfity is a digital artist born in Salta, Argentina. Using 3D as a main tool, the focus of his work is on the intersection between the unseen and the tangible. On the edges of that blurry line is where he captures and brings to light extraordinary creatures and impossible scenarios. Currently lives and works in London, UK.

Hardcore Squidgy
Edition 1 of 1

3D artist and animation director Martin Salfity, together with sound designer Nico Warschauer, present Hardcore Squidgy, a fantastically strange film that sees squidgy creatures interact with hard surfaces. They embarked themselves on a journey through abstract CGI and digital sound FX and music that resulted in this mixture of colors, shapes and textures that create contrasting impressions as they move around somewhat familiar territories.

Michael Joo

go.verisart.com/verisart-x-superrare
A key figure in second-generation conceptual art, Michael Joo explores concepts of identity and knowledge in our hybrid world. His works blend disparate elements such as science and religion or fact and fiction. With an emphasis on process, Joo juxtaposes humanity’s states of knowledge and culture. His works have been shown around the world including the Smithsonian Institution, Whitney Museum and Serpentine Gallery. His works are in the collections of MoMA, LACMA and Hirshhorn, among others.

Future Imperfect
Edition 1 of 1

Michael Joo’s NFT is based on Future Imperfect, a 2009 installation of the same name. “For the sculpture, made after a crippling accident in 2008, I acquired actress Sharon Park’s third flight-suit from the series Battlestar Galactica and ran it through the CT scanning and x-ray equipment used to image my healing injury. The work was installed with a geodesic helmet of live feed cameras examining and broadcasting the space of the absent identity and presented alongside oil paintings of the scans. The original image was taken by Thomas Muller and video compositing for this NFT done in collaboration with Eric Kim. My work always combines the very real with the speculative to attempt to bring us closer to inaccessible things or places and invite questions about our contemporary identities and place in larger ecologies and systems.” The NFT carries a Verisart Fair Trade Art Certificate as Joo will be donating 10% of proceeds to Red Canary Song in support of their advocacy and community building for migrant massage workers and sex workers. The release will include exclusive access to an authentic digital image and signed digital diptych. A key figure in second-generation conceptual art, Michael Joo’s works are in the collections of MoMA, LACMA and Hirshhorn, among others. Verisart Certified: https://verisart.com/works/michael-joo-66300e74-fd87-401c-9fed-b7928df93445

28

SuperRare

SuperRare is a marketplace to collect and trade unique, single-edition digital artworks.

Hash Recipes

Negative Space

Weekly Top 10

200 hours in research and 4000 hours in design and development to create a single fine art piece

200 hours in research and 4000 hours in design and development to create a single fine art piece

SuperRare May 7, 2021 Artist Profiles / Artist Statements

200 hours in research and 4000 hours in design and development to create a single fine art piece

SuperRare
3 years ago

Editorial is open for submissions: https://bit.ly/3aCuaEE

SuperRare welcomes Automobilist, a European collective passionate about re-creating moments from modern and historic motorsport, developing artworks in officially licensed partnerships with Mercedes, Ferrari, Aston Martin, McLaren, Maserati, Porsche; along with motorsport brands Formula 1, World Rally Championship, ACO 24h Le Mans; and has created key moments’ artworks featuring Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher, Jody Scheckter, David Coulthard, Sir Jackie Stewart to name only a few.

Through a complex process of 3D modelling and CGI imagery, all cars are re-created in 3D, modern ones through the availability of blueprints and older ones often through a myriad of images and spoken/written records – spare 4 minutes to watch their ‘Silver Arrows’ reel, it’s guaranteed to exceed your expectations.

For their genesis NFT,  we explore why Automobilist has chosen ‘A Swede swerves through Sicilians’, featuring the highly sought after classic Ferrari 250 GTO competing in the 1964 edition of Targa Florio.

The Fine Art came together through a 5-stage design and development process which typically begins with researching the moment to be depicted. In choosing the specific Ferrari 250 GTO, the pale blue with a yellow stripe edition, atypical of the Ferrari paint scheme, but reflecting Swedish racer Ulf Norinder’s national colours was the chosen car. Navigating through hundreds of hours of research and the Targa Florio of 1964, a moment was identified to be re-created – when Ulf drove the Ferrari through the narrow streets of Sicily, with locals watching on dangerously close to the scene of action.

Whilst one set of 3D developers began work on modelling the car down to every nut, bolt and final coat of paint, the creative team then packed their bags and headed to Sicily for an extensive shoot of the location to perfectly capture the architecture and the season. Back at the studios, a 70-member cast and crew underwent an extensive photoshoot indoors, the greatest challenge being creating the right summer light and heat in an indoor setting. 

A 72-hour auction will take place starting at 13:00PST (or 22:00 CEST) on Friday, 7th May – the first of 6 confirmed NFT releases via SuperRare. Automobilist is all set to enter the metaverse, offering unprecedented utility to their collectors. Stay tuned!

28

SuperRare

SuperRare is a marketplace to collect and trade unique, single-edition digital artworks.

Hash Recipes

Negative Space

Weekly Top 10

Quayola: Gazing Machines

Quayola: Gazing Machines

SuperRare May 7, 2021 Artist Statements

Skino Ricci

Quayola: Gazing Machines

SuperRare
3 years ago

Bidding for Quayola’s inaugural NFT, PP_F_018_1, closes at 12pm EDT on May 13.

Quayola’s artistic practice revolves around technology and presents itself, on a general level, as a study on its role in the relational dynamics of man with his surroundings. His art stems from the equation man-machine, wherein the anthropic agency is no longer the only protagonist in the exploration of reality. Belonging to a generation that forged artistic production in the digital world, his works merges classical iconographic legacy and contemporary digital language. An increasing number of artists are using new technologies as mediums, however, for Quayola technology manifests as an intelligent colleague to collaborate with, rather than simply a tool to use and control. This is the starting point of his investigation, in which the machine’s logic is no longer subjected to the human one. In this sense, Quayola’s process could be referred to as reverse machine learning. 

Quayola, Iconographies – Process, courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery. 

His point of departure is the symbiotic relationship of man with technology: on the one hand, the machine has capabilities that are beyond our abilities and understanding; on the other hand, the machine does not have the aesthetic sensibility of a human being. Men operate machines, but in turn machines force men to adapt to its logic. Quayola’s work delves into these two opposite, but complementary, ways of deciphering the world and the new visual codes and hybrid aesthetics arising from the encounter between these two perspectives.

Quayola, Iconographies #20: Tiger Hunt after Rubens
Installation view at BOZAR Museum, Brussels, courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery

Quayola’s inaugural NFT: PP_F_018_1

Quayola, PP_F_018_1

Quayola’s inaugural NFT, PP_F_018_1, was minted on May 10 in exclusive partnership with Verisart and SuperRare as part of 8×8: 8 genesis NFTs by 8 major artists working with AI, code and digital technologies. Bidding closes around 12pm EDT May 13. This work is presented in collaboration with bitforms gallery. 

PP_F_018_1 is part of an ongoing series started in 2015 focusing on the heritage of landscape painting, and more broadly a reflection on man’s tradition of representing nature. Drawing from Impressionism, Quayola pursues a methodic observation of natural patterns using advanced technological apparatuses.

Quayola, PP_F_018_1, NFT, 2021, courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery.

The results of his research are ephemeral algorithmic compositions blending opposite realms: nature and technology, representation and abstraction, and ultimately human and machine. Quayola suggests a new understanding of the natural world, achieved through the collaboration with technology.

For PP_F_018_1, inspired by the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Quayola has returned to the same countryside of Provence some 130 years later to capture some of the same iconic natural compositions.

The resulting computational paintings are generated by the analysis of ultra-high-definition videos. Employing custom software, the source videos are transformed into algorithmic animations resembling real paint, while simultaneously exploring new digital aesthetics.

Quayola, PP_F_018_1, Verisart Certificate of Authenticity, courtesy of Verisart.

Quayola’s inaugural NFT is certified by Verisart, an award-winning blockchain certification platform. Designed to empower artists to tell the story of their work, the digital certificates include additional images, videos and documents. For collectors, Verisart’s patent-pending Certificates of Authenticity (COA) form an integral part of collecting NFTs. They provide confidence in the identity of the artist and the verified history of the artwork.

The algorithmic palette: landscape painting through computer vision

Over the years, Quayola has been exploring natural elements and landscapes by means of advanced technological apparatuses, this research resulting in a series of works in which digital simulations recall modern paintings. This part of his research could be considered as an attempt to see nature through the eyes of the machine and, at the same time, through the eyes and with the methodology of a traditional painter. For this reason, his work bridges the gap between past and future, tradition and innovation. The real time observation of changing landscapes and natural elements places Quayola’s work within the classical painting legacy, more precisely modern landscape tradition. In fact, just like for the painters of the past, nature is not treated as a subject, but rather a space to explore new methods of observing the world: process is the real subject. By simulating brushstrokes, the digital paintings clearly recalls traditional techniques, however, what Quayola ultimately addresses is the array of different representations emerging from the observation made in collaboration with technology.

Quayola, Pleasant Places, public outdoor installation in Eindhoven, Holland, courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery.

The digital brushstrokes are created by algorithms processed by a custom software. The referent is ultra-high-definition video footage serving not as a subject, but as a data-set for the extraction of information, such as colors and movements. For instance, the fluctuations in the final simulation in Jardin d’été or in PP_F_018_1 are extracted from the original movements of the trees. The digital simulations are not a means, but rather the very subject of the investigation: the algorithm is handled as pictorial matter, rather than a tool, thus revealing its aesthetic value. These video works alternate phases of brushstroke simulations and traces of the digital process: it is precisely by highlighting the stages of the work that Quayola manages to unveil how he is operating with the computer. This technique combines traditional aesthetics with languages belonging to the digital world: both resonate with our sensibility while also igniting a renegotiation of our role with respect to technology in the observation of reality.

Quayola, Jardins d’Ete, immersive installation at Milan Design Week, courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery.

Towards hybrid perfection: 3D-scanning and autonomous vehicles 

The nature represented by Quayola appears slightly different from the one we are familiar with: it combines familiar forms with codes belonging to the digital world. The most advanced tools in 3D-scanning present a potential not only for technical purposes but also for the disclosure of new cognitive logics and visual languages. 

Quayola, Remains, installation view at How Art Museum, Shanghai, courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery. 

An ongoing project focusing on nature and the tradition of landscape painting, Remains deploys high-precision laser scanners used to capture natural landscapes, resulting in complex digital renderings printed on large-format archival paper. For this series, Quayola acts like a modern artist who physically immerses himself in nature and works en plein air. The forest is represented by data collected with a 3D scanner which works with a high-resolution laser system moving through the space. The data are then returned in the form of millions of white dots. If, on the one hand, the machine’s reading system of the forest is extremely accurate, on the other hand it also shows imperfections, therefore lowering the resolution. The combination of highly detailed geometric reconstructions and the imperfections of the 3D-scanning process create hybrid formations that lie somewhere in between the real and the artificial. The level of detail is very high, despite the fact that the image accuracy appears somehow reduced. Like in the impressionist technique, the reduction of visual information paradoxically discloses a greater expressive power. 

Similarly, Promenade is a film that explores the logic and aesthetics of autonomous vehicles’ computer-vision systems. A drone flies through the secluded forests of Vallee de Joux (Switzerland), analysing the landscapes around it with meticulous precision. By contrast to the human experience of these surroundings, nature is observed and decoded with complete detachment. Contemplating natural environments through such technological apparatuses becomes an opportunity to devise new modes of visual synthesis and create new interpretations of the traditional “landscape”. 

Quayola, Remains, installation view at Paradise Art Space, Seoul, courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery.

The endless matter: sculpting with robots

Sculpture Factory is an ongoing research on classical sculpting via robotic means. Inspired by Michelangelo’s technique of “non-finito” (the “unfinished”), the installation series explores the tensions between form and matter. Like in the pictorial works, the focus doesn’t lie on the subject, but rather on the process: Quayola studies and materializes the sculpting process around a figure and the infinite possibilities of how to reach it. A large industrial robot live-sculpts endless variations of classical and baroque masterpieces, such as Laocoön and his sons, Michelangelo’s Captives or Bernini’s Pluto and Proserpina. Such traditional, almost stereotypical sources maintain the same role they had for artists of the past: they do not represent the goal of the work but rather a recognizable place to explore a new style. 

Quayola, Sculpture Factory: Pluto and Proserpina, installation view at How Art Museum, Shanghai. Courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery.

For Quayola, they represent a pretext to explore the evolutionary potential of matter. A basic model exists, but it is only handled as a target – which will never be reached. The robot is driven by software that, like a collaborator alongside the artist, proceeds by attempts. While never completing the full figure, each attempt discovers new articulations of matter.  The stages are represented by each block, which not only convey the process by which the figure emerges from the material, but also shows visible traces of the chipping. As a result, it exposes the aesthetics of the machine, as opposed to the human one. The work is the result of years of experimentation on sculpture with industrial robots and fully embodies Quayola’s process-based approach.

Quayola, Proserpina Sequence, installation view at How Art Museum, Shanghai. Courtesy of the artist and bitforms galley.

Quayola, Laocoon Sequence, installation view at Ars Electronica, Berlin. Courtesy of the artist and bitforms gallery.

About the artist

Quayola employs technology as a lens to explore the tensions and equilibriums between seemingly opposing forces: the real and artificial, figurative and abstract, old and new. Constructing immersive installations, he engages with and re-imagines canonical imagery through contemporary technology. Landscape painting, classical sculpture and iconography are some of the historical aesthetics that serve as a point of departure for Quayola’s hybrid compositions. His varied practice, all deriving from custom computer software, also includes audiovisual performance, immersive video installations, sculpture, and works on paper. 

His work has been performed and exhibited in many prestigious institutions worldwide including V&A Museum, London; Park Avenue Armory, New York; National Art Center, Tokyo; UCCA, Beijing; How Art Museum, Shanghai; SeMA, Seoul; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Ars Electronica, Linz; Sonar Festival, Barcelona and Sundance Film Festival.

In 2013, Quayola was awarded the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica.

Quayola © Skino Ricci, Courtesy of the artist.

Bidding for Quayola’s inaugural NFT, PP_F_018_1 , closes at 12pm EDT on May 13.

Join Quayola on ART TALKS WITH VERISART to hear him discuss life, art and tech with Robert Norton, CEO and co-founder of Verisart. Tuesday, May 11 at 3pm EDT/8pm BST on Clubhouse. 

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