From 18 May to 31 July 2022, the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation presents Let’s Get Digital!, A new exhibition project that brings the art revolution accomplished by NFTs and the new frontiers between real and digital to the spaces of the Strozzina and the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi. An ultra-contemporary journey through the works of international artists such as Refik Anadol, Anyma, Daniel Arsham, Beeple, Krista Kim and Andrés Reisinger.
The exhibition presents a path between digital installations and multimedia experiences created by artists who express the new and multifaceted researches of Crypto Art, based on the success of NFTs, digital certificates of authenticity that are redefining the concepts of uniqueness and value of a work of art. art. Let’s Get Digital! offers a look at a movement in full evolution e
transformation, which for many is only the starting point for an ever more accelerated mix of aesthetics and new technologies, a revolution for the whole world of art, digital and beyond.
NFT (not just art)
In addition to art, fashion, music, sport and the world of gaming also create new NFTs every day, opening up new dimensions of interaction between real and digital. Acronym for Non-Fungible Token, “non-fungible / reproducible token”, an NFT is a video, image or any digital content that is
certified (or in jargon “minted”, coined) through the blockchain. Literally a “chain of blocks”.
The file is as if it were in the safe
This particular technology makes the files encrypted, uneditable and recorded in an archive which vouch for a file
to be viewed by everyone but owned only by a single individual or, better said, by a single wallet, an identifying but anonymous address. In this new digital world based on cryptocurrencies, NFTs populate the so-called metaverses, virtual parallel worlds whose borders extend to the tangible and conventional world but with new paradigms of social interaction. By giving value to digital works that by their nature are easily duplicated, this new way of creating, enjoying and
collecting art has fueled an alternative and independent market from the traditional one, but above all it has allowed the development of unprecedented paths and possibilities for the production of artists and for the enjoyment of the public, in a new idea of global interconnection.
The exhibition
The starting point for the exhibition is the site-specific installation for the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi by Refik Anadol (Turkey, 1985) with an unprecedented relationship between digital and physical architecture through a hypnotic and multisensory experience, a dynamic work in which artificial intelligence algorithms create illusionistic visions
that challenge our notion of reality. The path through the rooms of the Strozzina is linked to this installation, where each single room offers immersive works and installations created by the artists involved. The protagonists are Beeple (Mike Winkelmann, USA, 1981), of which a wide selection of iconic works is exhibited in which he combines politics, pop culture and irreverent references to current events, inserted in dystopian or post apocalyptic scenarios; Daniel Arsham (USA, 1980), who with his research renews a reflection on the idea of sculpture through the creation of time loops in which materiality and immateriality come together in a continuous and perpetual transformation and destruction; Krista Kim (Canada) who with her distinctive minimalist style invites you to enter a world of impossible geometries and reflections, an immersive space of dystopian images and
reassuring at the same time. These are joined by Andrés Reisinger (Argentina, 1990) with the work Arcadia, created in collaboration with the poet Arch Hades and the composer RAC, in which poetry, sound and images come together in a meditative experience that invites us to reflect on our daily routines and the use of social media. Finally, the Anyma collective (Matteo Millari and Alessio De Vecchi, Italy) – which with its works and live concerts experiments in the context of the intersection between music and visual performance – offers a site-specific physical and visual landscape for one of the Strozzina.