{"id":4237,"date":"2022-05-03T17:14:41","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T17:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.niio.com\/wordpress\/?p=4480"},"modified":"2022-05-25T14:58:50","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T14:58:50","slug":"expanding-formats-nfts-at-art-brussels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.niio.com\/blog\/expanding-formats-nfts-at-art-brussels\/","title":{"rendered":"Expanding formats: NFTs at Art Brussels"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pau Waelder<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The 38th edition of the <\/strong>Art Brussels<\/strong><\/a> art fair, which took place between the 20th and 23rd April, featured for the first time a dedicated space to NFTs and a selection of works sold as non-fungible tokens by participating galleries. This was made possible through a partnership with Parallel<\/strong><\/a>, a production and advisory platform dedicated to contemporary art and Web3 technologies. Parallel worked with the galleries to showcase a selection of the NFTs<\/strong><\/a> hosted on the online space <\/strong>JPG<\/strong><\/a>,<\/strong> a platform that has developed a curatorial protocol for the presentation of this type of artworks. Additionally, Parallel built a booth that served as an information desk, a meeting point for guided visits, and also hosted an augmented reality artwork. To complement this educational task at the art fair, the team also organized a series of talks about NFTs in collaboration with <\/strong>iMAL<\/strong><\/a>, the leading New Media Art Center in Brussels. 
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As a guest to both the talks and the visits to the galleries, I had the opportunity to observe the different forms of presentation of the artworks, some combining an online and physical presence, and to discuss with gallerists and visitors the options that NFTs and blockchain technologies present to collectors of contemporary art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Parallel NFT Touchpoint booth at Art Brussels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The galleries<\/mark><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It might be expected that NFTs are mainly sold by young galleries, or those already focused on digital art, but actually the galleries participating in the collaboration between Art Brussels and Parallel are quite different from each other. Veteran galleries with an outstanding record in the contemporary art market Michael Janssen<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(Berlin) and <\/strong>Nagel Draxler<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(Cologne, Berlin, Munich), have integrated sales of artworks minted as NFTs, alongside the younger contemporary art galleries The Hole<\/strong><\/a> (New York), Plus One<\/strong><\/a> (Antwerp), and Office Impart<\/strong><\/a> (Berlin), as well as others with a particular focus on local and national art scenes, such as Anca Poterasu<\/strong><\/a> (Bucharest), <\/strong>Sapar Contemporary<\/strong><\/a> (New York), and Green on Red<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(Dublin). An exceptional case among them is Galerie Charlot<\/strong><\/a> (Paris, Tel Aviv), which has been dedicated to digital art for more than a decade, and consequently presented the booth that most seamlessly integrated the languages of digital and contemporary art. 
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There were interesting connections and similarities between the different artistic projects presented at the galleries, and for this reason I will focus on these connections rather than list the artworks displayed on each booth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sabrina Ratt\u00e9, Winter Garden<\/em> (2016)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The lightness and solidity of 3D worlds<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Artists Sabrina Ratt\u00e9<\/strong><\/a> (Charlot) and Theo Triantafyllidis<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(Nagel Draxler) are known for their particular approach to building 3D worlds, the former creating architectural spaces that blend natural and artificial forms bordering abstraction, the latter fully appropriating video game environments and characters to create immersive scenes, some of which are dominated by the presence of a brawny female ork, the artist\u2019s iconic avatar. Their works find a physical presence, in the case of Ratt\u00e9, in prints that depict a selected view of her imagined worlds, and in Triantafyllidis\u2019 work as an hologram that underscores the illusory aspect of the digital image. Artists Frederik Heyman<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(Plus One) and <\/strong>Louis-Paul Caron<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(Charlot), on the other hand, build their virtual worlds with a particular attention to the textures and physical qualities of each element, and while Caron emphasizes the artificiality of his compositions, Heyman skillfully reproduces every detail. Their works, by contrast, have no physical output: they live as images on a screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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