Quit XCOPY
Courtesy of Sotheby’s
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A group of 26 NFT artworks from pseudonymous MaxStealth, a tech entrepreneur and crypto art collector, will be sold at a live auction on Wednesday at Sotheby’s in New York.
The collection has an estimated total of between USD 2.9 million and USD 4.2 million.
The core of the collection consists of seven works acquired by MaxStealth within one week in early October 2020, including works by Pak, XCOPY, Hackatao, RAC, Andrés Reisinger, Trevor Jones and José Delbo, all of which are now internationally recognized, especially in the digital the room.
Pack his Conversion routine, 2020, with a pre-sale estimate of between US$350,000 and US$550,000, features cubes divided into quarters and repeatedly turned in unison. It is from Pak’s ongoing series Routinea conceptual experiment exploring market manipulation and game theory, according to Sotheby’s.
Pak’s NFT project, The mergerfetched USD 91.8 million on the Nifty Gateway last December, a record for an artwork sold publicly by a living artist.
Left, 2018, is one of the very first NFTs by London-based digital artist XCOPY, best known for his neon-colored illustrated GIFs. With an estimated value between US$600,000 and US$800,000, this work is the highest priced work from MaxStealth’s collection.
Beeple’s Bull Run
Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Australian-based MaxStealth began his collecting journey in early childhood with stamps. A technology entrepreneur, he was quickly drawn to the world of early crypto art and bought works by pioneering digital artists, according to Sotheby’s.
“As digital art and NFTs have gained momentum over the past few years, few collectors have made a name for themselves like MaxStealth,” Michael Bouhanna, head of NFTs and digital art at Sotheby’s, said in a statement. His collection “speaks to the moment just before NFTs became a worldwide phenomenon, when artists like Beeple and Pak were still at the forefront of the movement, but not yet the figureheads they are today.”
Also on offer are Beeple’s I. Bull Run; ii. Infected; and iii. Into the ether, one of the 271 issues minted in 2020. This title alludes to both the imagery of the ancient Egyptian sacred bull Apis, and the bull market in cryptocurrencies at the time, Sotheby’s said. It has a pre-sale estimate of between US$70,000 and US$90,000.
Beeple was one of the first digital artists to break into the traditional auction market, with its NFT, Weekdays: The first 5,000 dayssold for USD 69.3 million in March 2021 at Christie’s in New York.
Online bidding is now open for these works ahead of the live event on Wednesday.
