This year’s fair will host leading NFT artists and allow visitors to mint their own virtual artwork.
The end of the pandemic must be nigh, at least in Hong Kong. Art Basel returns in the flesh at the end of the month after going hybrid for the past two years. But while it fully returns to welcome reality, it seems that much of the art world itself is scurrying headlong into a tech-heavy, simulated future.
In short, everything we know about anything has changed. Video art installations have seemingly now been consigned to the junk heap of tried-and-true traditional art media together with acrylics, watercolors, stone-carved sculpture, and oil paint.
We can thank non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse for that. According to a media release issued Monday, the Asian arm of crypto-asset linked blockchain network Tezos, TZ APAC, is presenting an NFT and «generative art» exhibition featuring over 20 artists from around the world at Art Basel Hong Kong (27 to 29 May).
Minting NFTs Live
The exhibition, titled «NFTs + The Ever-Evolving World of Art» follows a similar exhibition at Art Basel Miami Beach last year, with the artists on display in Hong Kong including Bjorn Calleja from the Philippines, Song Ting from China, France’s Nicolas Sassoon, and South Korea’s Chaeseok Lim.
As part of the exhibition, TZ APAC will also hold an interactive live mining showcase together with FXhash that will allow visitors to mint their own NFT artwork live at the exhibition.
So, if you are a high-net-worth investor who has been chastened by recent events in both the financial and crypto-asset markets, this could be a chance to take a break from all that and take a stab at artistic immortality, at least virtually.
