NFT Art Sensation Tyler Hobbs makes his London debut—with a gallery show full of IRL paintings

by James · March 10, 2023

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See the works at Unit London until 6 April.

Tyler Hobbs. Photo by Sarah Karlan for Avante Art.

Inside a Mayfair gallery earlier this week, a collection of London’s cognoscenti erected colorful textured glasses along a well-appointed table that stretched the length of the room. Glamorous as it was, the scene was a typical enough art gallery dinner, except for the fact that the usual attendees, which included magazine critics and an art historian from the Courtauld Gallery, toasted an artist whose star rose during the NFT craze, and they clinked glasses across the table with people called things like “blockbird” and “shamrock”.

It was at Unit London, where the generative artist Tyler Hobbs inaugurated his first solo exhibition in the UK. On view until April 6, “Mechanical Hand” includes three paintings on canvas and 17 works on paper. Real canvas and real paper, that is.

Hobbs became a sensation during the NFT bubble of 2021, best known for his highly sought-after “Fidenza” NFTs – a series of 999 algorithmically generated and randomized color grids. In 2023, he remains a breakout since his market is one of few seems to have survived the crypto crash. One of these pieces hammered down at Christie’s Evening Sale in London last week to £290,000 ($348,667).

But the focus of the evening was definitely on IRL art. The artist, who studied computer science at university, created the works on display using algorithms, codes and plotters – a sort of robotic arm directed by a computer – to create aesthetic compositions, which he then embellished by hand, either by painting or drawing on the surface.

Tyler Hobbs, Delicate Futures (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Unit London.

Hobbs relates her work to the systems-based practice of artists such as Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin, who took similar methodological approaches to mark-making. Speaking to the room, Hobbs said this kind of work “can only be experienced in person.” And while the sale of these physical works was indeed coded on the blockchain, and there were two NFTs also displayed in the gallery on the screens, there was little to no mention of the now poisoned word “NFT.”

This detail did not deter OG NFT collectors from celebrating Hobbs’ success. “I loved the piece and Tyler’s explanations for each piece made it all the richer,” Hobbs fan and NFT collector blockbird told me of the piece. “I think this commitment to the physical is a great move, as it really helps explain and bridge the qualities of his algorithmic work to a new audience. For me as a digital-first collector, it still has great appeal. I would love one of these at my house.”

And if celebrate, even in a whisper, one NFT artist was unusual for many of the renowned guests of the art world, the state of affairs was also new for the artist, who confessed that he had never sat around a dinner table “in the middle of a gallery like this”.

Describing the exhibition, Hobbs said it aims to ask questions about the “adolescent relationship between humans and machines”.

“Computers and machines are profoundly influencing our aesthetics, and I want to observe how that happens,” Hobbs said in a statement. “What implicit bias does the computer have, and what indicators does the hand leave behind?”

The questions add conceptual depth to the work, as they certainly feel highly relevant as algorithm-assisted text and image generators increasingly take over many of our daily tasks, and we collectively ask how we can move forward using a combination of both physical and digital tools.

Tyler Hobbs, Return one [Red] (2021–2022). Courtesy of the artist and Unit London.

Of the works that were shown, it was the works on paper that shone the most. The earth-colored gouache of Adjusted movement recalling an ancient Roman mosaic or an Aboriginal dot painting. The pastel-smeared paper grids look as if generative art pioneer Vera Molnár had a baby with a Rothko color field. The pale pink and purple watercolor to Delicate Futures has in it something of Helen Frankenthaler’s blandly stained paintings. The larger works on canvas, for example those primarily hung at the back of the room, Return one [Red], is markedly less successful. The, in particular,I thought it looked like a Kusama painting in D version. Like much machine-generated art, everything was very good at looking like something else, and not very good at looking like nothing else.

But what do I know? Unit London director and co-founder Joe Kennedy told me the next day that the show had “pretty much sold out.” The show at Unit London is the start of a landmark season for the artist who will open another solo exhibition later this month at Pace Gallery in New York to coincide with NFT.NYC. Prices for the works in the show start at £25,000 (around $30,000), rising to £300,000 ($360,000) for the red painting at the back of the room, which had sold to a Hong Kong-based collector by the end of the evening.

“Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand” is on view until April 6 at Unit London. See more of the works below.

Detail. Tyler Hobbs, Filling system 1 (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, “Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand” at Unit London. Photo: Marcus Peel, courtesy of the artist and Unit London.

Tyler Hobbs, user_space (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, “Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand” at Unit London. Photo: Marcus Peel, courtesy of the artist and Unit London.

Tyler Hobbs, Adjusted movement (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Unit London.

Installation view, “Tyler Hobbs: Mechanical Hand” at Unit London. Photo: Marcus Peel, courtesy of the artist and Unit London.

Tyler Hobbs, By proxy Yellow 1 (2021). Courtesy of the artist and Unit London.

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