Alpha Centauri Kid and OSF on art and doing Web3 events right

IRL events in Web3 can be difficult to pull off. Whether it’s exorbitant ticket prices or gatherings that feel more like an excuse to throw a party than a way to appreciate and support artists and their work, NFT enthusiasts can have a hard time navigating the realm outside the laptop. So it’s refreshing when an organization commits to an immersive gallery experience that puts art at the center.

It was with this in mind that the fine art institution HOFA Gallery (House of Fine Art) unveiled Beyond the Screen on May 5, an exhibition celebrating digital art and artificial intelligence in London’s Mayfair district. Through May 26, HOFA has partnered with Kreation, an NFT and VR experience platform, to provide a more evocative and lived experience for the show’s visitors that effectively captures the essence of the displayed artwork.

Last week, nft now settled down with OSF, the show’s co-curator, and featured artist Alpha Centauri Kid to talk about their new works for the exhibition as well as their thoughts on the slow NFT market. HOFA Gallery co-founder and CEO Elio D’Anna similarly offered his thoughts on the importance of curating and hosting physical Web3 events that revolve around the center of the creative Web3 industry: the art itself.

Curator of the show

HOFA Gallery was one of the first in the world to embrace the revolution happening at the intersection of crypto and art. In 2018, it hosted Qvantum, an exhibition that accepted more than 20 types of cryptocurrencies. At the time, no other galleries accepted crypto as payment for multi-million dollar works.

OSF – AKA Ovie Faruq – a collector, digital artist and Web3 community leader, also had an early passion for NFTs. This led him to connect with the HOFA Gallery and co-curate the Beyond the Screen exhibition. OSF was first introduced to the gallery after stumbling across its September 2021 exhibition, Portrait of an Era, which put Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, Autoglyphs and more on bold physical display. After getting to know Jake Elias, HOFA’s co-founder, the idea came to host an event that would be primarily a digital art event, not just an NFT event.

“There are a lot of NFT events out there right now,” OSF said while speaking with nft now. “But most of them don’t really celebrate art for art’s sake, get it shown properly, or focus on the artistic viewership and curation of what’s been done. These events are great for meeting and networking, but it’s not enough events where the art is displayed in a way that is memorable.”

OSF is a big believer in the ability of IRL events to serve as a way to broaden the appeal of the NFT space to people beyond the walls of Web3. Allowing people to engage with an immersive experience at an exhibition or pick through the details of a 20-foot-tall projection of an artist’s work, he says, is something that makes a huge difference in people’s attitudes toward crypto art.

The work OSF made for Beyond the Screen, Super fan (pictured below), is a departure from the kind of pieces he’s made over the past year, which heavily falsified cityscapes and the exterior faces of buildings.

“This piece is kind of like the opposite,” OSF said of Super fan, which depicts a crypto-NFT loner inside the living room surrounded by Pepe paraphernalia. “I’m sure a lot of people are like this, and maybe even myself to some degree. And I think the satire comes from being a little over the top with all the Pepe-themed artwork.”

Beyond the screen

As the AI ​​art movement continues to gain momentum and digital art NFTs become increasingly widespread, the HOFA Gallery team said they wanted to showcase work from some of the most inventive artists in both spaces. Beyond the Screen features 13 works from a roster of nine artists who define these genres, including XCOPY, Orkhan, OSF, Cath Simard, DeeKay, Ivona Tau, Gavin Shapiro, Alpha Centauri Kid and 25m42.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of momentum around AI art,” D’Anna said while speaking with nft now. “AI is just another medium. Before art was very strictly sculptures and paintings, and then it evolved into visual art, and then into generative art, and now it evolved into AI. It’s a natural progression. And I think that it would be unwise for any gallery to underestimate the creative power with which artists explore and push boundaries.”

One of the artists in the show known for pushing boundaries is Alpha Centauri Kid (ACK), a renowned digital artist whose work has sold at Christie’s, featured in Proof’s Grails drops, and helped start the open edition craze with 2022-2023. ACK has three works for Beyond the Screen, including two versions of The mousea work that was auctioned at Christie’s last November for over $100,000, and a rare landscape-based work.

“I will be exhibiting a work from my Broken Keys piano collection, The chosen one“, said ACK in a correspondence with nft now. “This piece is special because landscape scenes are not my traditional medium, so I wanted to challenge myself to create a landscape scene that was completely me, and I think I succeeded.”

Sales are down, head high

None of the artists on Beyond the Screen’s list have any delusions about the state of the NFT market, whose sales volume figures have dropped to the lowest seen since late 2021. But talk of a bear market is nothing new for Web3 artists; some even see it as a chance to show their true colors.

“When you have a downturn, it’s actually an opportunity,” OSF stressed about the crypto winter. “When we’re in a bull market, it’s very difficult to prove [your stripes] because everyone can be seen as opportunists trying to profit from good times. But in the bear market, if you stick around, people can say, ‘Look, Ovie was in the bear market in 2022, 2023, now here he is in the 2024 market.’ For me, it’s a huge opportunity to earn a place in the category of people who stick around all the time.”

Another crucial factor OSF points out is that despite the market’s numbers being so low, several crypto artists have done very well in the past year, Grant Riven YunSam Spratt and the Alpha Centauri Kid among them.

“The question [of the bear market] is often worrisome, but at the end of the day we can’t time the market or really fight it,” ACK said of the matter. “I’ve learned not to even consider that as a factor in my decision making. I like to exist outside of the trends and just work with the art that speaks to me and do my best to convey that visually to those who care enough to take a longer look.”

Difficult market conditions aside, HOFA and its Kreation partners have seen a 200 percent increase in new AI and digital art collectors since 2021, according to a press release from the gallery. The NFT industry may be slow, but interest in creating and collecting digital art continues to grow despite the headwinds.

Beyond the Screen will move to HOFA’s Mykonos gallery once the London run is over. In addition, D’Anna says that art lovers can look forward to a separate show they will put on this summer with the pioneering AI artist Refik Anadol.

“It’s going to be an NFT summer,” D’Anna said with a laugh.