May 17, 2022

Let's Get Digital!, the new exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi

Until 31 July 2022 the exhibition that brings the NFT art revolution to Florence

From 18 May to 31 July 2022 Palazzo Strozzi presents Let's Get Digital!, a new exhibition project that brings to the spaces of the Strozzina and the courtyard the revolution of NFT art and the new frontiers between real and digital through the works of international artists such as Refik Anadol, Anyma, Daniel Arsham, Beeple, Krista Kim and Andrés Reisinger.

Promoted and organised by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Fondazione Hillary Merkus Recordati and curated by Arturo Galansino (General Director, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence) and Serena Tabacchi (Director, MoCDA, Museum of Contemporary Digital Art), the exhibition presents a journey through digital installations and multimedia experiences created by artists expressing the new and multifaceted research of Crypto Art, based on the success of NFTs, digital certificates of authenticity that are redefining the concepts of uniqueness and value of a work of art. Let's Get Digital! offers a glimpse of a movement in full evolution and transformation, which for many constitutes only the starting point for an increasingly accelerated blending of aesthetics and new technologies, a revolution for the entire art world, digital and otherwise.

Besides art, fashion, music, sport and the world of gaming are also creating new NFTs every day, opening up new dimensions of interaction between the real and the digital. An acronym for Non-Fungible Token, 'non-fungible/reproducible token', an NFT is a video, image or any digital content that is certified (or in jargon 'minted') through the blockchain. Literally a 'blockchain', this technology makes files encrypted, unmodifiable and recorded in a repository that ensures a file can be viewed by all but owned only by a single individual or, rather, a single wallet, an identifying but anonymous address. In this new market-based digital world of cryptocurrencies, NFTs populate the so-called metaverse, virtual parallel worlds whose boundaries extend to the tangible and conventional world but with new paradigms of social interaction. By giving value to digital works that by their nature are easily duplicated, this new way of creating, enjoying and collecting art has fuelled an alternative and independent market from the traditional one, but above all has enabled the development of new paths and possibilities for artists' production and for the public's enjoyment, in a new idea of global interconnectedness.

THE EXHIBITION

The starting point for the exhibition is the site-specific installation for the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi by Refik Anadol (Turkey, 1985) with an unprecedented relationship between digital and physical architecture through a hypnotic and multi-sensorial experience, a dynamic work in which artificial intelligence algorithms create illusionistic visions that challenge our notion of reality. Linked to this installation is the journey through the rooms of the Strozzina, where each room offers immersive works and installations created by the artists involved. The protagonists are Beeple (Mike Winkelmann, USA, 1981), whose wide selection of iconic works in which he combines politics, pop culture and irreverent references to current events, set in dystopian or post-apocalyptic scenarios, is exhibited; Daniel Arsham (USA, 1980), who with his research renews a reflection on the idea of sculpture through the creation of time loops in which materiality and immateriality come together in a continuous and perpetual transformation and destruction; Krista Kim (Canada) who with her distinctive minimalist style invites us to enter a world of impossible geometries and reflections, an immersive space of dystopian and reassuring images at the same time.

They are joined by Andrés Reisinger (Argentina, 1990) with the work Arcadia, realised in collaboration with the poet Arch Hades and the composer RAC, in which poetry, sound and images come together in a meditative experience that invites us to reflect on our daily routines and the use of social media. Lastly, the Anyma collective (Matteo Millari and Alessio De Vecchi, Italy) - whose works and live concerts experiment with the intersection of music and visual performance - proposes a site-specific physical and visual landscape for one of the Strozzina's spaces.

"Let's Get Digital was created with the aim of bringing the general public closer to the most recent evolution of digital art, now recognised globally by the contemporary system," says Serena Tabacchi. "Decentralisation, Blockchain and NFTs have certified and disseminated the work of many artists who until a few years ago could not be considered as such. The art of the future meets the digital as the preferred material for creative expression. An infinite variety of possibilities awaits us. The best is yet to come".