What Will NFTs Change About Art? Damien Hirst, Rafaël Rozendaal, TeamLab and Others Join Forces at Gyre Gallery

Gyre Gallery will hold an exhibition of NFT art entitled Artistic Experiments in the Age of Hyper-Technological Reproductionー What Will NFTs Change About Art? The exhibition is scheduled from March 24 to May 21.

NFT stands for “non-fungible token,” which circulates digital data as a completely independent online asset. It is also a system for verifying digital “originals” that uses blockchain technology. The exhibition at Gyre Gallery links NFT art created since 2014 with ideas from 20th-century art history, focusing on artistic experiments with NFTs through three chapters: “Sharing,” “Aura of Simulacra,” and “Supranational Power.” Each theme corresponds to what can be seen as the prerequisites for the artworks: “ownership/contract,” “creation,” and “exhibition.”

Participating artists include Damien Hirst, Rafaël Rozendaal, Lu Yang, Robert Alice, Rhea Myers, Shunsuke Takawo (Generativemasks), TeamLab, Sol LeWitt, Seth Siegelaub, Mariko Mori, Masaki Fujihata, Taihei Shii, and Tetsutaro Kamatani. The exhibition is curated by Yohsuke Takahashi and supervised by Takayo Iida (Director, Sgùrr Dearg Institute for Sociology of the Arts).

The unprecedented bubble in NFT art in the early 2020s occurred alongside the rise of virtual currencies but quickly collapsed in the following years. Although NFTs have been criticized for turning art into a speculative financial instrument, the original philosophy behind their creation was the liberation of expression and the breaking of the rules of existing society.

Through this online and offline exhibition and related publications, participants will raise questions about the new meanings and value systems created by NFTs, examine and redefine the role of contemporary artists in a new information environment, and explore the impact of virtual space on the reality of our lives and the minds and culture it shapes.

Find out more about the event: