EXPERIENCE
digital art

This International Women’s Day, Artpoint presents GAZE, an online exhibition and NFT sale of all-women artists. In partnership with both leading and emerging artists such as Marjan Moghaddam, Lisa Odette, Hermine Bourdin, Rory Scott and Rank SSS, the GAZE collection recontextualises the ‘male gaze’ - an art historical and sociological concept whereby art, images and culture are created with heterosexual men as the intended audience. In this way of seeing, women are presented as sexualised beings, sites of pleasure and objectification. Through the lens of the artists in this exhibition, the ‘male gaze’ is inverted in multiple ways: firstly, by depicting the female body from the perspective of a woman (Marjan Moghaddam, Lisa Odette), secondly, by critiquing directly the notion of surveillance, policing and voyeurism over the female form (Hermine Bourdin), and lastly, through the way in which women may perceive and occupy the natural or metaversal worlds (Rank SSS, Rory Scott).

There is yet another layer to GAZE. This exhibition is being released in the Web3 ecosystem as a collection of NFTs. The Web3 and NFT space is notorious for its break-neck pace - participants jump from project to project and artist to artist in the hopes of catching the ‘next big thing’ and securing ‘generational wealth’. Missing out on a project induces FOMO, and so individuals feel as though they must always be switched on, reacting quickly to the rapidly changing tides and trends of the NFT world. In contrast, to ‘gaze’ at something is to ‘look steadily and intently, as with great curiosity, interest, pleasure or wonder’ [dictionary.com]. With this exhibition, we thus invite viewers, collectors and fellow creators to take the time to truly look at the artworks, as one would in a gallery or museum. In a Tik Tok’ed world where our attention spans are being obliterated, alongside a Web3 ecosystem that doesn’t know how to rest, the need for art and culture to make us pause, contemplate, and allow it to move us is ever more imperative.

Despite the seeming contradiction between the ‘real world’ and our digital lives, nature is one of the primary subject matters treated in the works of digital artists today. Using new technologies and digital tools, artists have long explored the frontier of our increasing digital presence and what this means for our interactions with the natural environment. Within this lens, topics such as the continued impact of humankind on climate change, and what a natural world could look like in a purely technological age have arisen.

Embracing the broad theme of ‘nature’, five artists reveal what the importance of the natural world in a digital age means to them in Artpoint’s third NFT collection: TERRA-BYTE. Vartist, a world builder and creator of metaverses, imagines what a natively digital environment could look like, in a vibrant colour palette and pattern inspired by organic forms. Elsewhere, we stumble upon the augmented still lifes of Hannes Hummel, who takes an age-old art historical subject matter - the Flemish still life - and brings it to life with a unique, distinctly technological twist. Tapping into the meditative and healing properties of nature, Patty Madden presents her idyllic environments, adorned with architectural accents and hypnotic repetitive movements that are intended to encourage a sense of peace within the viewer. For Franz Rosati, a triptych of generative artworks depicts three hypothetical landscapes, generated through an AI algorithm that processed topographic images to produce a world that could exist in reality… and yet they are the imagination of the machine. Lastly, the mesmerising time-lapse videos of Jamie Scott ground us back to reality, unravelling in slow motion the themes of life, death, beauty, and the impermanence of time.

In TERRA-BYTE, each artist’s vision of nature in the digital age is just a snap shot of how the natural world coexists with technology today. The discourse is pluridisciplinary, evolving, and will undoubtedly produce new challenges and critical messages to convey as society becomes more and more digital. The question this exhibition poses is this: what could it look like to live in a digital-natural world? With TERRA-BYTE, at least the possibility is easy on the eyes.

Pour cette septième édition de « Lumière » Saint-Gervais, Jérémie Bellot nous envoûte pour cette fin d'année dans une expérience féline et toujours aussi lumineuse. Après avoir séduit plus de 2 millions de personnes lors d'une première escale à la fête des Lumières à Lyon, Eikosis poursuit son voyage au pied du plus haut sommet du monde...

"Eikosis" est avant tout une installation lumineuse sculpturale qui illuminera les Alpes Française du 22 au 28 décembre 2022. Pendant une semaine, la sculpture, d'une hauteur de 4m en forme de chat fera resplendir ses étincelles jusqu’au petit matin. Traduction grecque du nombre vingt, Eikosis tire son nom de la structure du chat, constituée de de deux icosaèdres - polyèdres composés de 20 faces - très prisés dans la pratique de l'artiste. Eikosis fait également écho au nombre de chats constitutifs de la collection de NFTs adossés à la sculpture, dont 10 seront mis en vente lors de cet évènement. 

Jérémie Bellot considère le chat comme l’animal totem d'Internet, traversant les rues la nuit mais aussi les vidéos adorables et les mèmes dans le domaine numérique. Mais le chat a surtout un lien direct avec la cité Balgencienne, où l'artiste a réhabilité le château de Beaugency en véritable centre d’art numérique. Dans cette ville, les habitants sont affectueusement appelés "les chats de Beaugency", en hommage au mythe du Chat et du Diable écrit par James Joyce. La mascotte d'Eikosis est aussi un clin d’œil à l'ami félin décédé de Jérémie Bellot créant ainsi un lien narratif entre l'intime de l’artiste, son affection pour sa ville, et le voyage de l'œuvre dans les mondes physique et virtuel.

Prolongeant l'idée de l'icosaèdre dans le monde numérique, la sculpture Eikosis sera accompagnée d'une série d'œuvres d'art numériques à collectionner, sous forme de NFTs. Ce premier projet ambitieux de NFTs à la Fête des Lumières de Lyon puis à "Lumière Saint Gervais" célèbrera le voyage des chats dans le monde virtuel. En acquérant un NFT d'Eikosis, les spectateurs pourront emporter chez eux un morceau de cette œuvre culturelle monumentale, souvenir de cette expérience ludique et colorée. Les chats d'Eikosis voyagent ainsi bien au-delà de l’évènement lui-même, et entrent dans les foyers et les vies des collectionneurs qui emportent cette pièce chez eux.

On ne vous en dit pas plus, mais il se pourrait que notre ami félin ait des envies d’ailleurs et dépasse très bientôt les frontières Européenne pour de nombreux continents célébrant la lumière…

Collectionnez un petit chat, devenez membre de la communauté Eikosis, faites voyager ce chat partout à travers le monde ! 

On the occasion of ARTPOINT’s first NFT drop, The Cabinet of Imagined Worlds, four established and emerging digital artists propose a vision of parallel realities that could only exist in the depths of our fantasies, memories, or even nightmares… until now. The concept of a ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ is an art historical phenomenon dating from the Renaissance, in which rooms containing a plethora of knick knacks and objects of note, such as articles of natural history, religious or historical relics, works of art and various other ephemera were accumulated, often resulting in a bizarre and sometimes surreal presentation of the world.

In the same vein, and leveraging techniques in photogrammetry, 3D, or artificial intelligence, four artists bring to life their respective perspectives of what a world uninhibited by natural forces or common sense could embody. Whether the worlds of these artists are inhabited by giant mushroom fauna, fluroscently coloured rocks, particles from a fond memory, or puppet-like beings that spring to life, each artist draws from their own internal imagined realities—their own cabinet of curiosities—to exhibit and make public their visions for a parallel world.

These works, later to be exhibited physically via the ARTPOINT exhibition network, bridge the realm of the impossible with our concrete day-to-day life, juxtaposing and blending the boundaries between consiousness and subconsciousness, IRL and the metaverse, and reality with imagined worlds.