Damien Hirst is set to showcase a collection of 10,000 NFTs, along with other major works, at Frieze London, which begins next week.
Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images.
The exhibition, titled ‘LG X Damien Hirst: A History of Painting’, which is staged in partnership with electronics company LG, is billed as an exploration of how innovative technology can be a powerful tool for new developments in art.
It will present work from Hirst’s Kaleidoscope and Spin series and will use LG’s technology to show the pieces in a new light, with greater colour and contrast.
Further, Hirst’s NFT collection, titled The Currency, which he launched earlier this year, will also be shown. These 10,000 NFTs correspond to 10,000 unique physical artworks by Hirst and contain high resolution images of the front and back of each of the artworks.
On 14th October – the first public entry day of Frieze London – The Currency Exchange Period begins: a ten-month window in which purchasers of these NFTs may decide to keep either the digital NFT or the physical artwork. Whichever they choose, the other gets burned.
The physical works, which are stored in a secure vault in the UK, have been brought to life through their launch on Palm, a new environmentally friendly NFT ecosystem connected to Ethereum, a cryptocurrency platform.
NFTs are becoming increasingly popular in the art world, being regarded as a digital means to buying art.
Anyone who owns an NFT has a ‘tokenised’ certification of ownership for the art as opposed to the physical product or its copyright.
In March, digital artist Beeple sold an NFT of his work for £50million ($69million).
In March, digital artist Mike Winkelmann – known as Beeple – sold an NFT of his piece Everydays: The First 5000 Days for £50million ($69million) at Christie’s in New York, which immediately placed him among the top three most valuable living artists.
Hirst, meanwhile, recently made headlines by collaborating with Drake to make the Canadian rapper’s album artwork, in a much-meme’d work featuring twelve pregnant-woman emojis.
