ART: Mr. Arrives at Galerie Perrotin Paris With Latest Exhibition / Parisian Street Artist Pascal Boyart Hid $1000 of Bitcoin in His Latest Fresco

Japanese artist and self-proclaimed otaku Mr. is set to showcase his latest exhibition at Galerie Perrotin Paris this month.

The exhibition, “Mr.’s Melancholy Walk Around the Town,” is the creative’s take on his city of Tokyo, the visuals found within, the voices and sounds heard, and the overall atmosphere of the locales to which he visits. According to the press release, the city’s display is explained as “transgressive” and “invasive;”

This is a land of the acerbically saccharine and the bitterly sweet, a land of rupture and flow, exuberance and estrangement. This is a terrain in which the cute and the terrifying, the kawaii and kowai, are as interchangeable as they are indeterminate, in which remedy and poison are always already interlinked.

“Melancholy Walk” will feature Mr.’s latest Untitled works along with insightful additions from his previous years. The exhibition will run from January 19 – March 9 at Galerie Perrotin Paris. Mr.’s last solo show was in Hong Kong, also at the Perrotin.

Galerie Perrotin Paris
76 Rue de Turenne
75003 Paris
France

On January 6, Parisian artist and cryptocurrency activist Pascal Boyart unveiled his latest fresco painted somewhere on the streets of Paris. Interestingly, the work of art also features a special puzzle containing 0.26 BTC (approximately $1,000 USD).

The mural was said to be in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Bitcoin Genesis block, and simultaneously honored the revolutionary Yellow Vest protestors that have currently taken over the French capital. Just last week, the protestors announced they would be attempting a bank run in order to destabilize the local financial system.

The project titled La Liberté Guidant le Peuple (Liberty Guiding the People) resembles Eugène Delacroix’s famous piece of the same name, was sponsored by Bitcoin “evangelist” Alistair Milne, and included an active QR code by which viewers could donate directly to the artist.

Antoine Giver took to Twitter on January 13 to announce that he had solved Boyart’s puzzle, winning the 0.26 BTC grand prize. The artist later posted via his website a detailed look at how to solve the puzzle, which required a black light to uncover hidden messages on the mural as well as some rather quirky Bitcoin key coding.