ArtGee explores the crypto art world of top collector Motoko with you
Nowadays art collecting is no longer a hobby for the few, especially after the NFT and crypto art trend started, people can no longer go through the old auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s to get art, more and more online platforms started to serve the public, so that art lovers can collect art more easily. Under the new market environment, there is a group of pioneers who started their collection in the earliest stages. Today let’s take you on a journey through the art world of motokovault, a veteran crypto art collector Motoko, a pivotal figure in the crypto art world who unearthed and collected works by artists of different styles in the very early days: Beeple, Pak, Jacon Osinachi, Frenetik Void, X_COPY, Killer Acid, blacksneakers, Mad Dog Jones, and FEWOCiOUS to name a few.
- Pak
Pak, a pioneering artist in the crypto world, has created a legend in the past two years and is on his way to becoming a crypto art icon. He was the first crypto artist to exceed one million dollars in total sales of NFT works, and today his total sales have reached $355 million. He is the record holder for the most expensive NFT work, with his The Merge purchased by over 20,000 buyers for a total of $91.8 million, the highest price ever paid for a work of art at public auction by a living artist.
2. Beeple
Beeple is Mike Winkelmann, an American-based graphic designer who works on a variety of digital art, including video, Creative Commons VJ loops, everydays and VR / AR. He has worked on concert visuals for Justin Bieber, One Direction, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Eminem, Zedd, deadmau5 and many others. As one of the founders of the current 3D graphics “everyday” movement, he has created an image every day and posted it online without missing a day for ten years.
Beeple has confessed that before he got touch with NFT, his works rarely sold for more than $100. However, since he began to know the existence of NFT, he put the digital work called “POLITICS IS BULLSHIT” on the NFT trading platform Nifty Gateway for sale, limited to 100 pieces at $1 each, who knew that they were quickly snapped up, and has since embarked on the road of NFT. In a subsequent auction in December, the digital works were sold for $3.5 million in just one week.
3. Mad Dog Jones
Michah Dowbak aka Mad Dog Jones is a multidisciplinary artist from Thunder Bay, Ontario, where he still resides. His works deftly interweave cyberpunk, dystopian imagery exploring themes of beauty, nature and technology. As a lover of the wilderness, which was ever present where he grew up, he brings a fresh thematic to the metropolitan aesthetic, done up in citrus and neon tones of technology somehow rendered as a space naturally human.
4. Esteban Diacono
Motion graphics designer and digital artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina with 25 years of experience in the motion/digital art world. Interested in procedural character design, dynamic simulations, fun stuff and weird things in general. The animation studio he founded has worked for many major international companies including Apple, Aritzia, Gucci, Hugo Boss, Nars Cosmetics, Nike, Pat McGrath and Swarovski and so on.
5. quasimondo
This work is part of a series of GAN generated images that I created as a contribution for Nick Knight’s “Fashion Digital Future” — first shown at Harrods, London in October 2020. In an iterative process I call “Transhancement” I reinterpret catwalk images from 20 years of fashion shows. For this I trained a custom neural network on “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by 16th century painter Hieronymus Bosch. As a result it deliberately misinterprets the data it is given and produces forms and textures that are undoubtedly reminiscent of his aesthetic whilst at the same time introduces surreal shapes and strange compositions. For this series I developed my own custom GAN architecture and training process which attempts to generate a rich variety of textural details whilst at the same time tries not to imitate brush strokes but maintain its own “convolutional” aesthetic.
6. Frenetik Void
As digital technologies change the definition of what it means to be human, the relationship between physical presence, virtual identity and digital corporeality becomes more diffuse.
The work of Frenetik Void unfolds in a science-fiction environment, a post-human universe inhabited by mutating beings, hybrids in which limits are vanished. The suspended bodies in liquid natures build scenes of surrealistic airs. But if there is something that remains as a constant, it is the presence of humanoids that, as symbolic figures, represent multiple behaviors.
FV was born in 1994, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he works and resides. He has been connected to digital technology since his childhood due to his father’s relationship with software development. Frenetik Void was born as a result of his artistic exploration in digital art. He’s one of the first early adopters and pioneers in the CryptoArt scene.
7. skygolpe
Skygolpe cleverly uses faceless portraiture to refer to humanity as a whole, while the solitary figure conveys a mirror-like sense of self, so his message feels directed and personal.
“A useless mirror always reveals what you would like to see” This work belongs to the “Lost Signals” collection. The intent of this project is to deeply fathom the state of irreversibility that leads to consequences. Consequences are intended as the manifestation of the merging of abstract and rational drives. Neurons in the brain communicate via rapid electrical impulses that allow the brain to coordinate behavior, sensation, thoughts, and emotion. Hidden frequencies make up the essence of emptiness forming a different language of perception.
8. Marc O Matic
Marc O Matic is an Australian artist, AR/VR author, animator and technologist who fuses hand-drawn illustration with 3D immersive AR/VR media to create elaborate stylized story-driven creations that explore through virtual and augmented reality. His experiential art and storytelling approach has been showcased internationally at organizations and events in Korea, Japan, and the US, including Siggraph Asia, Adobe MAX, Saatchi Art, South by South West, GDC, and the VR Society of Silicon Valley.
“I Can’t Breathe. I Need a haircut. End Police Brutality. End the Lockdown. Open the Salons. No Justice, No Peace. Open the Strip Clubs. Covid-19 is a lie. I am not a Threat. Give me Freedom or give me Covid-19. BLACK LIVES MATTER. Don’t Take Our Freedom. Justice for George Floyd. Don’t Cancel my Golf Season. We are All Essential. Say their Names. We will not Comply. Silence is Compliance.”
9. Alessio De Vecchi
Alessio was born in Italy and graduated from the European Academy of Design. After starting his career in Milan, he moved to New York in 2006. He has been working as an art director and cg artist in New York, Milan and Tokyo with clients such as Adidas, H&M and Margiela, and his work has garnered positive attention from Vogue, ID Magazine and The Creators Project.
This piece is part of an ongoing series. It investigates the will to regain physical and mental space, but also the necessity of exploring the recesses of the self. The furry worm is wandering. He’s bright in color, but we can’t tell what his mood might be. It’s not given to know if he’s lost or in control of the exploration.
10. Richard
“After 41 Creations and 39 of them sold, I thought it is time to create a little fake movie poster about the collectors and the plattform that made my creations to art. Without them and many more (and also you) I would never be where I am at the moment with the stuff I am creating.”
