COME SAY HI TO THE BLOCKCHAIN ARTISTS
THESE ARTISTS ARE DIPPING THEIR PAINT IN THE BUCKET OF BLOCKCHAIN.
Don't miss this interesting article from Soha Ali where artists Ed Fornieles, Rob Myers and Sarah Friend are featured in!
Soha brings the irony out of the crypto world by contributing to the Unfiltered section of BlockPublisher.
ARTEEZ | L’ART DU BLOCKCHAIN À LA GALERIE KATE VASS, ZÜRICH
Les monnaies cryptées sont à l’honneur à la galerie Kate Vass de Zurich jusqu’au 11 janvier 2019.
L’exposition {Perfect & Priceless} – Value Systems on the Blockchain présente pour la première fois en Suisse une série d’œuvres inspirées par l’univers des monnaies virtuelles et la façon dont la technologie blockchain influence non seulement la création, mais aussi l’achat et la vente d’œuvres d’art.
En effet, la transparence des systèmes basés sur le blockchain peut garantir la traçabilité des œuvres par l’enregistrement de chaque transaction dans un registre commun décentralisé et accessible par tout utilisateur à tout moment. L’artiste pionnier Rob Myers permet de visualiser ces transactions dans sa série Blockchain Aesthetics en représentant l’ajout d’une transaction ou « bloc » par une accumulation en temps réel de carrés ou cercles de couleurs. Ces compositions digitales traduisent de manière visuelle, dans l’esthétique de l’abstraction moderne, la succession des transactions Bitcoin, aussi appelée the blockchain.
PERFECT & PRICELESS ON KUNSTBULLETIN 12/2018
{ PERFECT & PRICELESS }
von Mathis Neuhaus
Zürich — In der Kunst wird oft gespiegelt, was in der Wirklichkeit passiert. Denn was viele Menschen bewegt, das ist zumeist auch ein fruchtbarer Nährboden für eine künstlerische Auseinandersetzung. Was in der Kunst jedoch ebenfalls häufig geschieht, ist die Auseinandersetzung mit Themen, die noch an den Rändern der Gesellschaft verhandelt werden, bevor sie die breite Masse erreicht haben. Die Kunstschaffenden sind in diesem Fall Trendforscher, Scheinwerfer oder Lobbyisten in Personalunion. Sie setzen Agenden, überprüfen Potenziale und stellen dich dem Ungewissen. Eine Technologie, die lange an den Rändern der Gesellschaft ihr Dasein fristete und dann -plötzlich mit Wucht in den Mainstream katapultiert wurde, ist die Blockchain.
KRYPTOMAGAZIN | PERFECT & PRICELESS – WERTESYSTEME AUF DER BLOCKCHAIN
Our current exhibition PERFECT & PRICELESS featured on Kryptomagazin.de
Read full article here
ZÜRITIPP | KUNST/MUSEEN PERFECT & PRICELESS
Our current show PERFECT & PRICELESS featured on Züritipp!
NEURAL #60 > BLOCKCHAIN. THE TRUST CATALYST
Some of the artists from our current exhibition PERFECT & PRICELESS - Value Systems on the Blockchain featured on the current ISSUE #60 of neural !
ARTNOME | IS ART BLOCKCHAIN’S KILLER APP?
BLOCKCHAIN, ARTISTS, AND EXHIBITIONS BY JASON BAILEY
While the Christie’s partnership signals interest among collectors for using blockchain to better catalog art, interest in and by artists has also never been greater.
{Perfect & Priceless} Value Systems on the Blockchain, a show at the Kate Vass Galerie in In Zürich , Switzerland, curated by generative art expert Georg Bak, will open on November 16th and run through January 11th, 2019.
The show features many of the most innovative artists working with blockchain today, including collaborators Kevin Abosch and Ai Wei Wei, Matt Hall and John Watkinson of CryptoPunks, and blockchain art pioneer Rob Myers.
While all of the works in the show explore “value systems” as the title implies, I find materiality as a secondary theme to be the most interesting lens through which to view the work. Or as CryptoPunks artist John Watkinson puts it, “Bridging the divide between the digital and the physical.”
MEDIUM | CULTBYTES / { PERFECT & PRICELESS } — VALUE SYSTEMS ON THE BLOCKCHAIN
Press release from Cultbytes Curatorial & PR/Digital Agency
Don't miss their review about our current show for an exciting insider’s point of view!
THE CREATIVE CRYPTO
PERFECT & PRICELESS EXHIBITION AT THE KATE VASS GALERIE
Our current show PERFECT & PRICELESS featured on The Creative Crypto!
PERFECT & PRICELESS: VALUE SYSTEMS ON THE BLOCKCHAIN
A NEW EXHIBITION FROM 16 NOVEMBER TO 11 JANUARY
Exhibition
{ PERFECT & PRICELESS }
- Value Systems on the Blockchain
Curated by Georg Bak
November 16th, 2018 – January 11th, 2019
Kate Vass Galerie
Feldeggstrasse 88
8008 Zürich – Switzerland
“Rather than money issued by a nation and administrated by central banks, art is a networked, decentralized, widespread system of value.” (Hito Steyerl)
In January 2014, at the same time Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan bank famously stated that Bitcoin was a terrible store of value, the cryptocurrency - anonymously founded by Satoshi Nakamoto - was passing the 1000 US$ mark for the first time. This was followed by a crash - caused by the bankruptcy of the exchanger Mount Gox - until it recovered again and reached a record price at almost 20'000 USD in December of 2017. Within a short time, it was possible for brave investors to become millionaires, including the Winklevoss brothers who are now Bitcoin Billionaires. Since this moment, mainstream media has been reporting daily on crypto-currencies and the emerging revolution of blockchain technology.
The crypto-hype also left its traces in the art world. When people were willing to pay a five-digit amount for a virtual currency why wouldn't they be willing to pay the same sum for a cartoon kitten? It didn't take long for the smiling crypto kitties to conquer the hearts of speculators and blockchain enthusiasts, with some characters reaching five to six-digit price tags.
For the first time in Switzerland, Kate Vass Galerie in Zürich is presenting a comprehensive and unique exhibition on blockchain art, showcasing the most important protagonists of this movement. This art exhibition is curated by swiss digital art expert, Georg Bak.
The blockchain art pioneer Rob Myers from New York is visualizing crypto currency transactions in his continuing series Blockchain Aesthetics while referencing concept art from the 1970s. In order to transmit crypto from one wallet to another wallet (peer to peer), a hashrate is being generated and compressed through a mathematical encryption method. The hashrates are always the same length independently from the size of information they contain. The artist renders Bitcoin transactions as rows of coloured squares or circles. Each byte of the 32-byte transaction is rendered as a square or a circle of a 256-colour palette. The transactions are being displayed on a monitor as colourful abstract moving images with a narrative context. Although the imagery reminds us of 4096 Colours by Gerhard Richter or the spot paintings by Damien Hirst, they have a different connotation.
For the creation of Bitcoins and their transactions, ‘’miners’’, who provide computing power in order to calculate hashrates, are required. Artists César Escudero Andaluz & Martin Nadal have created Bittercoin which is an old calculator machine hacked to be used as a miner validating the pending bitcoin transactions in the blockchain. Bittercoin combines Internet of Things (IoT), media archeology and economics. It works as the most basic computer, increasing the time necessary to produce bitcoins to almost an eternity. The operations are displayed on the calculator screen and printed afterwards. For the duration of the exhibition period, it seeks to produce money insistently and using an economic system that is wholly different from the traditional art market. Paper accumulates around the machine making visible the amount of calculation required, as well as the natural resources expended in the process. Bittercoin is a fully functional miner that connects to the blockchain. In the event of successfully mining a block, although very unlikely, the nonce would be sent back to the server and entered into the corresponding bitcoins of the rewarded bitcoin wallet.
With the emergence of ICO's (Initial Coin Offerings), a new crowd funding model was launched that enables companies to raise funds publicly from investors in a more efficient and less cost-intensive way as through an IPO (Initial Public Offering). An artist's studio often functions in the same way as a small company. For example, Ed Fornieles Studio has developed the Crypto Certificate as an attempt to reimagine the economy of finance and funding in the art world by applying a model that is open, accessible, and transparent. A hybrid between a financial product and an art print, the certificate distills and formalizes the commerce of art with the relatively affordable price of 550 USD. The certificates are an easy way to participate in an artist economy that rewards belief in an artist’s practice with a share of future profits. This is made possible by the use of an Ethereum contract or ‘’smart contract’’ – a self-executing contract with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. The key to which is hidden under a scratch panel on the certificate itself. At any point, the collector can scratch the panel, damaging the art object but retrieving the key that will give them access to their percentage of a fund generated from sales of artworks and certificates. The Certificate is an investment in the artists' future work: all proceeds from the program are funneled into the development and production of new projects. In a certain way, this artistic approach reminds us of the Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp who also created certificates in the 1920s in order to let investors participate in his earnings at the casino. Nowadays these Monte Carlo Bonds are being traded at auction above one million US dollars and, for the holders, it proved to be an excellent investment.
A common appetite for an art investment among millenial art collectors and new principles in token economics have inspired world-renowned Irish artist Kevin Abosch to turn himself into crypto currency. "We come into the world like newly minted coins - perfect and priceless. Yet we are constantly being ascribed a value." Abosch explains. He created 100 physical artworks and a limited edition of 10 million virtual artworks entitled IAMA Coin. The physical works are stamped using the artist's own blood, with the contract address on the Ethereum blockchain corresponding to the creation of the 10 million virtual works. The virtual works are standard ERC-20 tokens and token owners are free to share these artworks and even divide them into smaller pieces before sharing.
In a recent collaboration, Kevin Abosch and Ai Weiwei joined forces in order to tokenize priceless shared moments such as "Sharing Tea". Each priceless moment is represented by a unique blockchain address which is "inoculated" by a small amount of a virtual artwork (crypto-token) called PRICELESS (symbol: PRCLS). Only two ERC20 tokens were created for the project, but they are divisible up to 18 decimal places. One of the two PRICELESS tokens will be unavailable at any price. The remaining token is divided into one million fractions of one token and available to collectors and institutions. Furthermore a very limited series of physical prints - signed by both artists - were made. The wallet addresses are virtually worthless as the required private keys have been thrown away by the artists.
With the emergence of countless virtual crypto currencies, these recurring questions exist: How can consensus and a monetary union be built? Which currencies will effectively be suitable and accepted as a payment token or as a sustainable storage of value? How can a market mechanism develop with constant supply and demand while the stakeholders are concurrently protected by law?
This art exhibition takes place as an interdisciplinary experiment and laboratory for discussions about the digital transformation of the art market and artists' practices. Kate Vass Galerie will provide a lecture program and invite speakers to talk about different topics related to art and blockchain throughout the duration of the show until the 11th of January 2019.
Participating Artists:
Nicolas Maigret & Maria Roszkowska (Disnovation)
John Watkinson (Cryptopunks)
Grayson Earle
Rob Myers
Kevin Abosch & Ai Weiwei
Terra 0
Cullen Miller & Gabriel Dunne
César Escudero Andaluz & Martin Nadal
Ed Fornieles
Harm van den Dorpel
Distributed Gallery
Sarah Friend
For further info and images, please do not hesitate to contact us at: info@katevassgalerie.com
KATE VASS GALERIE IS PART OF OPEN HOUSE ZÜRICH 2018
We are excited to be included in the third Open House Zürich "Architecture for All" city-wide weekend tour!
On Saturday the 29th and Sunday the 30th of September, over 80 historical and contemporary spaces will be visited. The free and guided tours illustrate how architecture and urban development contribute to quality of life. Guests customize their own tour in advance by choosing the buildings they wish to visit - don't forget to select "Wohnatelier Feldeggstrasse" to visit our space and learn more about the walls behind the art!
CHANEL BOOK BY CATHLEEN NAUNDORF , RIZZOLI
AIR PRIVATE JET MAGAZINE
Cathleen Naundorf
Chanel Haute Couture
Woman of singular beauty / Rizzoli
Air Magazine Private Jet , Dubai - September 2018
Interview between Chris Ujma and Cathleen Naundorf about her Chanel book
KATE VASS GALERIE @ INTERNATIONAL ART FAIRS | AUTUMN 2018
The Gallery is glad to announce its participation at the following upcoming art fairs
Art Market Budapest, October 11-14 2018
paper positions munchen, October 18-21 2018
Kunst 18 Zürich, October 25-28 2018
fotofever Paris, November 8-11 2018
Please email us for complimentary tickets, we look forward to meeting you there!
NEWS! FROM JIMMY NELSON
DONNA KARAN, HOMAGE TO HUMANITY, EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS
"We are extremely proud to announce that the iconic designer, Donna Karan with her good friend Zainab Salbi have invited us to launch 'Homage to Humanity' in New York. Donna Karan has written the foreword for our upcoming book 'Homage to Humanity'."
"After all these years I could have never dreamed that my lifelong creative heroine Donna Karan, would eventually write the foreword of my new book. Donna in her individualistic creative vision has always been an idol for me. I am so proud that we are bringing this message to a global audience together." - Jimmy Nelson
This summer don't miss the chance to visit his amazing solo show at our gallery in Zürich!
WALL STREET INTERNATIONAL ART | JIMMY NELSON
Jimmy’s dream has always been to create awareness about our world’s indigenous cultures through his photography. He has wanted to create a visual document that shows us and future generations the beauty of how they live. Like Edward Sheriff Curtis, the famous American ethnologist and photographer, who documented the North American Indians at the beginning of last century, he wanted to create carefully orchestrated portraits of these amazing peoples, at their absolute proudest.
THE EYE OF PHOTOGRAPHY | JIMMY NELSON, HOMAGE TO HUMANITY
THIS IS THE FIRST EXHIBITION OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER IN SWITZERLAND
Before They Pass Away is the title of Jimmy Nelson’s exhibition at the Kate Vass Galerie in Zurich. This is the first exhibition of the photographer in Switzerland. Rizzoli also publishes a book called Homage to humanity.
Since his first internationally acclaimed exploration through Tibet almost 30 years ago, Jimmy Nelson has traveled to the world’s most hidden corners to photograph indigenous people. In 2013 he published his first book, Before They Pass Away—which sold over 180,000 copies worldwide—fulfilling his lifelong dream to create awareness about the world’s unimaginable diversity. With his new book, HOMAGE TO HUMANITY, Nelson presents an all-immersive experience that invites you on extraordinary journeys to India, South Sudan, China, French Polynesia, Chad, Bhutan, Mongolia, Angola, Namibia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Mexico, Siberia, Peru, and Australia, capturing an artistic record of the proud and still lasting extraordinary indigenous cultures of our planet today.
ZÜRITIPP KUNST/MUSEEN
JIMMY NELSON - DER WELTENSEHER
Ein Brite reist seit über 30 Jahren überall dort hin, wo die Zeit stehen geblieben scheint.
MONACO HEBDO
EXPOSITION | KARL LAGERFELD DANS TOUS SES ÉTATS
La Galerie Carré Doré, qui a rouvert ses portes récemment, présente Modeland & Mr Lagerfeld, une exposition réalisée par Simon Procter et mise en place par la galerie Kate Vass de Zürich (Suisse). Le photographe britannique connait bien Karl Lagerfedl pour avoir évolué à ses côtés pendant plusieurs années. Il a également collaboré avec les créateurs John Galliano et Vivienne Westwood. L'objectif de l'artiste est ici de dévoiler les coulisses de la mode. Les clichés présentés ont été réalisés entre 2010et 2017.
A' Monaco, galerie Carrè Doré
5 rue Princesse Caroline
Jusq'au vendredi 25 mai 2018
Ouvert de 12h à 17h du lundi au vendredi
Entrée libre
Renseignements: 977771286
THE EYE OF PHOTOGRAPHY | DICKSON YEWN
PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION DICKSON YEWN
Kate Vass Galerie, Zürich is pleased to present a solo show by Dickson Yewn.
Yewn is a Hong Kong born artist educated in Paris, Ottawa and New York. His conceptual fine jewellery collections draw inspiration from Eastern philosophy, mysticism and Chinese culture. Dickson has been featured in 7 solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions worldwide and his art works are collected by the Heritage Museum of Hong Kong and the City of Montpellier in France.
Perhaps, campaigning to challenge boundaries is meant to be the sacred mission and faith that an artist casts talent and rages dreams soar upon. For Dickson Yewn such an epiphany derived from his early memories from which he grew a precocious yet visceral sensitivity, unfolded as the first endeavor for exploring his own touches in the realm of fine arts. In his very first production Photographs of Betrayal (1997), Yewn attempted to build up a set of photogenic rhetoric which narrates an unrest contemplation rendered by a young yet dangerous mind contending spiritual ambivalence, turbulence of puberty, and philosophical complexities all metaphorically fluent as a Hamlet style monologue. Despite its freshness and young momentum, protagonistic pieces of Photographs of Betrayal have been ranked among the collections in Hong Kong Heritage Museum.
Like most of early Chinese migrants, Dickson Yewn’s parents emigrated to Hong Kong seeking a better life in the 60s. Yewn spent his childhood on roaming through the lights and shadows drenched in diasporic ambiance, in the mood of bohemian Chungking Mansions, a cosmopolitan melting pot overwhelmed with polyglot hordes, where his artistic fantasy wrought and delights of youth relished. Yewn stepped on the journey in meditating his own cultural identity thoroughly after he became fascinated in Taoism; the ancient Chinese wisdom from which Yewn finally reached his self-searching destination and found bedrock of enlightenment. While discontented for his own culture has been insincerely expressed by chinosiere chic, Yewn has began deploying his perceptions and insights stemmed from Taoism in his artistic conception, in the hope to realize a more vivid and lively impressionism of ‘contemporary Chinese art’.
No Man’s Land (1999); the second photographic dedication which marks a significant transition of Dickson Yewn’s artist career, a conceptual photography where he tentatively created a series of “Chinese ink paintings” animated by dark room techniques. For Yewn, No Man’s Land has been a personal, psychical testimony through which he questioned his relationship with nature, life and beyond. While submitting himself to the upsurging fertility and wild, untamed pulse of the mother nature, he applied series of ethereal imagery to depict vital forces of Ch’i, a cosmic energy of eternal whirling which gives birth and draws the end to all life. Thus, in monotonous yet gradient hues the stream of consciousness floats in light of an otherworldly mise-en-scène, in which both metaphors and symbols are amply discernible, denote the solemn essence in resemblance at the form of Tai-chi (太極) that frictions emerge from harmony whilst fusions coincide with paradox. Gender discourse is also employed in Dickson Yewn’s artistic conceptualization, for No Man’s Land can be implicitly conceived as a ‘land of no men’, a domain of femininity, a promised land which remains to be pure, untouched but critical to tacitly defy patriarchal representations by postulating his artistic stance aligning with social-cultural context. As the photogenic works of No Man’s Land earned its international recognition among those collectable at the Regional Council, Montpellier, Yewn began to improvise more of his learning from I Ching (易經) along with fine jewellery arts into the embrace of No Man’s Land, where the profound metaphysics and hexagram are staged as tropes and classical subtlety jointly with modern sensations, from there No Man’s Land has been ingeniously elaborated as a thematic pivot to include variety of series, namely Mini Wearable Sculptures, Installation Art of Chinese Chess, Mahjong Game, and Dream and Reality.
Within the framework of No Man’s Land, ‘Dream and Reality‘ reflects Dickson Yewn’s world perspectives more as they convey not merely purpose of arts but ethical connotation. From there ‘No Man’s Land‘ has also transfigured to a promised land for harbouring phenomenons and entities that ‘no one cares’ and ‘on one sees’, as to justify and redress for the marginalized, oppressed, and deprived. Butterflies are beautiful but fragile and short-living, their life span is enriched so dramatically with striving from this phase to another. Despite prevalent fond regards, contemporary jewellery design of butterflies is often rigid and unnatural in the choice of colours and materials, many time overly decorated with expensive stones which change the original appearance of butterflies in the most unforgiving manner, making no reference to the species that they are supposed to represent. Hence Yewn’s Dream and Reality series of artworks are meant to unravel an overly constructed yet twisted reality, just as people often take the wrongful misinterpretation of butterflies for granted. Each and every piece of this butterfly inspired collection is named after the original species, devoting the utmost attention to mimic the true nature of the species regardless the commercial values of the precious or non-precious materials being used, thus finished by exquisite fine jewelery craftsmanship and wood inlay techniques.
MONACO INFO - LE JT : VENDREDI 4 MAI 2018
EXPOSITION MODELAND AND MR LAGERFELD À LA GALERIE CARRÉ DORÉ
Kate Vass Galerie owner and director Mrs Vasilieva interviewed by Monaco Info TV at Carré Doré Monaco
“MODELAND AND MR. LAGERFELD “ by Simon Procter
in collaboration with Galerie Carré Doré
View full interview here at 8:15”