G Art Fund Crypto Art Market Insight and Featured Artists 2021 Q2
Written by ArtGee
NFT(Non-Fungible Token)s, are digital assets with non-fungible characteristics. Specifically, NFT is a form of digital asset storage that authenticates the uniqueness of an asset through blockchain technology. NFT is the next big hit in the blockchain industry after DeFi (decentralised finance).
NFT saw explosive growth in 2020, with the overall market size growing by nearly 300% from 2019. Since 2010, NFT gradually integrated into various industries, experiencing multifaceted exploration and experimentation in art, video games, sports, fashion, entertainment, etc. The sales of NFTs in Q1 2021 (excluding NBA Top Shot) topped $2 billion, approximately 20 times more than in Q4 2020. The milestone auction of Beeple’s 5000 Days at Christie’s in February thus contributed to the highest volume of weekly sales in the first half of the year. The frenetic rise has kept NFT in the news, as if everything is NFT-able.
Whether interpreting the data in terms of trading volume or search buzz, NFT showed a downward trend in Q2, signalling a natural contraction and return to healthy growth in an industry that had been over-hyped. The industry as a whole actually underwent a transformation and upgrade in Q2, after the price bubble was blown up by those NFT superstar products. Users are expecting more mature products, and platforms of all kinds are in dire need of further improvement of the trading process and user experience. On the other hand, the simple hype of scarcity and celebrity effect may no longer be a tried and tested strategy. Only by truly leveraging the underlying logic of smart contracts and leveraging the core strengths of IP or brands will NFT truly have a stable market value. As the awareness about NFT of new users increases, the blockchain infrastructure iterates, and the players in the field compete more intensely, it is foreseeable that a more innovative and sustainable NFT ecosystem will soon arrive.
Featured Artists
Krista Kim
A Canadian-based digital artist, Krista creates large-scale abstract artworks inspired by light. As a founding member of the Techism art movement, Krista promotes the combination of art and technology as a new art form, Krista advocates technological innovation as a key component of the future of art and culture. Since 2012, Krista has collected images of LED lights and manipulated them into abstract works of art.
Krista holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Toronto and an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has shows at exhibitions, fairs and galleries around the world and in 2018 was the artist chosen by Creative Director Olivier Lapidus for LANVIN’s Fall collection, a crossover collaboration that introduced the digital art trend of colour gradients to the fashion world. She has been featured in major global media outlets including CNBC, CNN, BBC, Forbe, Vogue, Elle, Architectural Digest, and Forbes has called her “new digital Rothko”.
The work was exhibited at the Istanbul Contemporary Art Fair. This collaboration between Krista and Berlin-based video artist Efren Mur and Parisian electronic music band Ligovskoï was created during the pandemic and aims to present a vision of meditativeness and digital beauty to the collective consciousness.
“Meditation will save us from the machine; art will save us from ourselves. I believe in the healing and transformational power of visual art + sound + meditation on an individual and a social level.Our future is unknown and unstable. There are difficult times ahead due to social and economic unrest due to pandemic risk, digital disruption, automation, and climate change. Collective fear is undeniable, but we cannot allow ourselves to be dominated by fear — we must face the unknown with open hearts and mindfulness. In the chaos, there is a creative opportunity. We must create a better future with compassion and love.”
David Krovblit
A Toronto-based artist living in California, USA. Krovblit originally studied photography and was an award-winning commercial photographer before entering the fine art field. This background gives him a unique approach to his work, a technique that bridges old and new collage methods. Before cutting and pasting the original images in the desired sizes, he uses contemporary digital manipulation to scale and print them in the same way that collage artists have done since the early 20th century, after which he will then work by hand, completing the piece by cutting and pasting each piece.
One of his works has recently been added to the collection of a renowned metaverse institution: Museum of Crypto Art.
This strong woman is hunting her way through the world of big brands while trying not to get hypnotized and sucked into the bullshit vortex. The physical work is a cut collage on a custom baltic birch panel sealed with resin.
Elise Swopes
A Chicago-born artist from Brooklyn, New York, self-taught photographer and designer. Relying on her iPhone to create her art, she began posting her creation on instagram in 2011 and has become an influential artist on the internet. Her work focuses on urban cities. She captures vast cityscapes by remote control drone, climbing skyscrapers or from a helicopter, and then recreates the original images on her iPhone. She delights in drawing inspiration from nature, transforming various everyday elements into abstract patterns to create Magical Realism. She has provided creative design for many well-known brands. Elise has a long-standing relationship with Apple and Adobe, and has also produced numerous media content, including podcasts, newsletters, video tutorials and more.
While in her hometown Chicago, Elise captures this skyline on a misty morning with her iPhone in early 2018. Elise transforms this photo in 2021 into a sci-fi fantasy by utilizing multiple apps specializing in graphic and motion design. For a decade, regardless of the limitations that mobile editing has dealt her, she continues to be the innovator of iPhone art.
“Ascending — Moving, going, or growing upward.”
Ryogo Toyoda (豊田 遼吾)
A renowned 3D illustrator and animation designer from Tokyo, Japan. Toyoda’s creative style combines illustration, CGI (computer-generated imagery) and graphic design. Shortly after graduating from design school, Toyoda worked as an animation artist and graphic designer before starting his own artistic career. Toyoda often draws a lot of inspiration from Japanese video games and anime. He specializes in creating animated figures based on animals. He has worked with FENDI, Apple, Google, Nintendo, Disney and many other top brands.
The motif of this work is the 麒麟 (Qilin), a kind of divine animal from Asian mythology. The animal resembles a deer, but has scales. It is said to be very docile and can live for 1000 years. It is said that if you harm them, bad luck will happen. If you find one, don’t harm it, just throw a monster ball at it.
Pavel Kharitonov (pvkh3d)
A Russian 3D artist. His works are mostly surrealistic, from cyberpunk cities to intergalactic space, Pavel focuses on the psychedelic feel of a futuristic world with bright neon lights and a visually striking use of colour.
The artwork combines elements of cyberpunk and Japanese vaporwave culture, such as vintage cars, sakura trees, neon lights, highways, skyscrapers, pink sunsets, and unidentified flying objects. We feel a moment of tenderness and warmth in the cold world of cyber.
“Everything is clear in the rear view mirror, the coast highway and the golden hour.”
G Art Fund is a crypto art fund launched in 2020 by IOSG Ventures, a top blockchain venture capital, and ArtGee, a decentralised art ecosystem, of which ArtGee is the principal. G Art Fund is dedicated to advancing and popularizing crypto art, aggregating in-depth industry insights and leading the trend in the market. G Art Fund provides key references for pricing in the crypto art market by identifying, analyzing, promoting and investing potential stars and works in the global crypto art market.
