NFT Exhibition curated by Jan Robert Leegte
NFT Exhibition curated by Jan Robert Leegte
Art and the Blockchain, a new temporary exhibition in Amsterdam that is open between the 21st and 23rd of April, seeks to expose some of the myths surrounding the subject and show the complexity of the new cultural phenomenon of NFTs. The exhibition is curated by artist Jan Robert Leegte and curator Stina Gustafsson, and features work from, among others: Rafaël Rozendaal, Harm van den Dorpel, Constant Dullaart, Jan Robert Leegte and Joan Heemskerk. The exhibition is kindly supported by Ethblock.art and the Ethereum Foundation, and realised in collaboration with Upstream Gallery. Production by Filip Mertens.
Though the conversation around NFTs in popular media and on social media has mainly been about the astronomical sale sums and how the technology might upend the art world, the idea and practice behind it are much more complex than NFTs as simple facilitators and sale mechanisms. Likewise, the aesthetics that we are commonly presented with are not representative of NFT space and the ecosystem, there is a lot more depth and width to the practice. Art and the Blockchain takes a step away from these preconceptions and aims to present a new way of seeing NFTs and blockchain art, as something with deep roots in the tradition of digital art.
Combining digital native NFTs with more commonly known physical art formats, all carefully selected by the curators, Art and the Blockchain looks at the wider practice of the artists, drawing direct correlations to the history and methods of digital art. Furthermore, the combination of the two, the physical and the digital, in the exhibition highlights the interdependence of both in the practices of all of the exhibited artists - how the physical informs the digital and vice versa.
By selecting a number of artworks from the plethora of NFT and blockchain art, the exhibition opens up for a discussion around NFTs and the medium’s broadness. The included artworks reflect upon the medium, bringing us generative, instructional, self-destroying and mutating works, showing AR virtual installations, GIFs, web and movies, from abstraction, through conceptualism to hyperrealism. Participating artists are (in alphabetic order) Adrian Le Bas, Auriea Harvey, Constant Dullaart, Harm van den Dorpel, Jan Robert Leegte, Joan Heemskerk, Jonas Lund, Kim Asendorf, Lorna Mills, Manuel Rossner, Rafaël Rozendaal, Sabrina Ratté, Sarah Friend, and Wyne Veen.
The exhibition will open on Thursday the 21st of April at Rozenstraat 59 in Amsterdam. Opening hours are 13:00 to 21:00 every day. Daily tours at 15:00. Upstream Gallery will provide an art collector tour at April 22.
21 Apr - 23 Apr 2022
Opening Hours 13.00 - 21.00
Rozenstraat 59, Amsterdam
For more information and free tickets click here
Image: Diagram, Rafaël Rozendaal, 2022