From engaging in virtual spray-painting sessions during quarantine to creating digitized artworks that change in real time, It makes sense for Felipe Pantone to foray into the world of crypto art. The Spanish artist recently launched his first-ever series of non-fungible tokens on Nifty Gateway, but the art isn’t what you’d expect. Instead of reimagining his well-known works featuring computer glitches and gradients, the artist opted to spotlight his prolific graffiti background on the blockchain.
Better known as PANT1 in the graffiti and street art world, Pantone has released a series called the GRAFFITI COLLECTION that pays homage to the underground art form while subverting the existence of analog art making by memorializing it in the crypto art realm. “I created ‘THE GRAFFITI COLLECTION’ as my very first NFT release as a way to best utilize this innovative medium and technology. Understanding graffiti’s fleeting and ephemeral nature, only through block-chain technology do these pieces permanently establish ownership and remain in existence forever unlike many of the graffiti pieces I have created,” said Pantone in a statement.
The artist’s manager and BEYOND THE STREETS founder, Roger Gastman, echoed the sentiment in a statement, having expressed: “Graffiti is impermanent, it is constantly being challenged. As a graffiti artist your ownership of the artwork on the wall only exist for a finite amount of time before its buffed and gone forever. This perspective is being challenged with the rise of a new digital age upon us.”
Head to Nifty Gateway’s website to view Felipe Pantone’s GRAFFITI COLLECTIONwhich features three unique compositions: T1: Rome, M1: Monterrey and G3: Valencia. The first edition is limited to 200 tokens while the other two are standalone works up for grabs at silent auctions on the platform.
Elsewhere in art, the world’s largest canvas painting was purchased by a crypto businessman for $62 million USD.
An artwork from a canvas crowned the largest in the world has sold for $62 million USD in Dubai.
British artist Sacha Jafri created the painting, which won a Guinness World Record last year, in the ballroom of the Atlantis hotel in Dubai. The 17,000 square foot artwork titled The Journey of Humanity was created over a period of 28 weeks using over 6,300 liters of paint.
The painting was split into 70 lots and was bought as a whole by French cryptocurrency businessman Andre Abdoune for $62 million USD, Reuters reports, making Jafri one of the most expensive living artists.
Jafri had intended to auction off the artwork for charity and hoped to raise $30 million USD from the sales. Proceeds were set to benefit several charitable organizations, including UNESCO, UNICEF, Dubai Cares, and the Global Gift Foundation.
Humanity Inspired said the project would help communities impacted by COVID-19. “The project will set up progressive and more affective sustainable education & health hubs, equipped with the internet for online learning, medical supplies, health care, inoculations, vaccines, and sanitation, within the poorest and most desperate communities of the world, aiming to save 10 million child lives globally.”
On Tuesday, Warrior by Jean-Michel Basquiat became the most expensive Western artwork to be sold at auction in Asia. The 1982 painting by the late artist is said to symbolize racial inequality and sold for $41.9 million USD with fees.
Superchief Gallery is opening a new location in New York this week, pegging itself as the “world’s first physical exhibition space dedicated solely to NFT artwork.”
Partnering with digital art platform Blackdove, Superchief’s new Union Square gallery will showcase NFT works from over 300 artists, including iconic street artist Swoon. The pieces will be displayed on high resolution 4k commercial grade screens.
Superchief co-founder Ed Zipco said in a press release that NFTs represent a major progression for digital artists and the wider art world.
“This is a watershed moment for the art world at large because NFTs created a system of royalties for digital artists,” he explained. “It’s the beginning of a sustainable model in which creators can profit when their investors profit.”
Superchief says that the gallery will also operate as a “carbon negative” space, with carbon credit purchases offsetting the environmental impacts of minting NFTs.
The gallery will open on March 25 with its inaugural exhibition of NFT work called Season One Starter Pack. The space will also host a daily rotation of art instillations through May 25.
NFTs have been completely dominating the digital art space in recent weeks. Musician Mike Shinoda shared with HYPEBEAST his thoughts on the new blockchain collectible and how it’s shaping the future of creative ownership.
Superchief Gallery NFT
56 East 11th Street (between Broadway & University)
New York, NY 10003
In 2018, famed auction house Christie’s held its first annual Art+Tech Summit to discuss the intersection of emerging technologies and art. For the London event, SuperRare — a popular digital art marketplace — gifted each attendee with a unique tokenized frame of a digital artwork created by artist and programmer Robbie Barrat.
According to SuperRare, digital art tokenized on blockchain was a relatively new concept at the time, and NFTs — or non-fungible tokens — were not nearly as widespread as they are now. Barrat’s digital piece for the event, called AI Generated Nude Portrait #7, was split into 300 distinct layers and attendees were told they could claim the art online using a special gift card.
“The team put the cards into the gift bags and explained the story around them to as many people as possible, but the concept of cryptoart was still so early, weird and new to the folks in the room that many of the attendees had no idea how special the gift would end up being down the line,” SuperRare’s Zack Yanger wrote in a blog post in September. “They literally had nuggets of digital gold in their gift bags.”
Last year, one of the NFTs resold online for over $13,000 USD as online collectors became intrigued by the rare works. Another resold for $4,396 USD. Barrat’s other works listed as NFTs have recently fetched over $100,000 USD at online auction.
It’s likely that those who attended the 2018 conference did not realize how valuable NFTs would become. In an op-ed penned by Elliot Safra, one of the creators behind the Art+Tech Summit, in ArtNet on Monday, he explained that only 12 out of 300 people claimed Barrat’s NFTs gifted to them at the summit.
Safra said that unless the other gift cards are found, ownership over the other 288 artworks can never be claimed. “They are lost in an ‘internet museum’ — accessible for all to view, but for no one to own.”
This example highlights the complexity of selling art as NFTs and the recent boom in value attributed to the rare collectibles. Several artists, musicians, and tech billionaires have digitized their works and have offered them up for sale at hefty prices as NFTs.
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