The sale of the work in the series Portraits of a Mind, called Block 21, is scheduled for October 7.
It is super interesting how art surprisingly gains more terrain in the crypto ecosystem. Blockchain technology becomes an inspiration for many artists. Also, this crypto-art begins to be sold in the most important galleries and auction houses in the world. Several media reported how a work that is part of a project of 40 pieces that carry a transcript of the Bitcoin Blockchain code is ready to be auctioned at nothing more and nothing less than in the important auction house Christie’s in New York.
It is part of the Robert Alice Project, started by London artist Benjamin Gentilli to promote Blockchain culture in the visual arts. Already the first blocks (0 to 20) of this work were offered privately to collectors and are currently in the hands of some well-known names in the crypto world, including Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, Bloq chairman Matthew Roszak, Coinscrum founder Paul Gordon, among others.
The artwork to be auctioned at Christie’s on October 7 will also appear in the galleries of the auction house in New York between October 1 and 7. “Block 21” will set up for sale at an estimated price ranging between $12,000 and $ 18,000.
Another detail to explain is that the auctioned artwork is also related to a non-fungible token (NFT) based on Ethereum, which will serve as a way to demonstrate authenticity and will be a digital representation of the physical painting. “The NFT will be hosted on Ethereum, which will establish links between the Bitcoin codebase as the originator and ground zero for the rest of the ecosystem,” Gentilli said in an email.
Vivian Brodie, a contemporary art specialist at the auction house, said: “This is the first time that Christie has presented a work that explores crypto culture at auction and, as always, we are very excited to welcome new audiences and collector communities from around the world to Christie’s”.
The Decrypt medium explains that the work is a kind of wheel or circle whose surface is inscribed with 322,048 digits of hexadecimal code, some of which are highlighted in gold, radiating outward from a central void. Its secrets are not immediately noticeable. If the viewer takes a closer look they will read “Block 21” on the inside edge. He says that this circle to be sold is linked to 39 others around the world, a collection that spans more than 50 meters long. The hidden meaning behind the 12.3 million digits etched on their surfaces? is that they are an accurate and handmade transcription of the original digits of the historical code v0.1.0 that launched Bitcoin
The works themselves are canvas discs, 50.59 inches in diameter (1.28 meters), with layers of suspended pigment and graphite and aluminum paint, with each digit individually engraved. As we said, dotted here and there are gold digits, a metaphor for mining, arranged in a constellation-like pattern of decentralization.
As Decrypt explains, they are circles because they go back to symbolic circular figures: from coins to rai stones, cipher wheels, and astronomical charts. Even with a specialized machine, it took Gentilli three years of dedication and patience to complete the job, forcing him to quit his previous job and move to an abandoned police station to get his work done, Decrypt says.
Analysis of the work
On the artist’s website, he reveals that “Portraits of a Mind is an artist’s response to the inevitability of digital degradation, to the idea of this founding code as a now-historical text, and the history of Bitcoin. Portraits of a Mind, a fingerprint carved in paint, is a reflection of the nature of identity in our newly decentralized age. There is also a portrait of Satoshi Nakamoto, the work explores the politics and aesthetics of open source code and its relationship to identity and truth ”.
By: Jenson Nuñez.
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