Palazzo Strozzi opens up to the world of NFT: exhibition of international Crypto Art artists kicks off

Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi ’s new exhibition that will open to the public from May 18 to July 31, 2022 was presented today: it is Let’s Get Digital!, a new exhibition project that brings to the spaces of the Strozzina and the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi the revolution of NFT art and the new frontiers between real and digital with the works of international artists such as Refik Anadol, Anyma, Daniel Arsham, Beeple, Krista Kim and Andrés Reisinger. Promoted and organized by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and Fondazione Hillary Merkus Recordati and curated by Arturo Galansino and Serena Tabacchi, the exhibition offers a journey through digital installations and multimedia experiences made by artists expressing the new 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. The exhibition aims to offer a glimpse into a movement in the midst of evolution and transformation. In addition to art, fashion, music, sports and gaming are also creating new NFTs every day, opening up new dimensions of interaction between real and digital. An acronym for Non-Fungible Token, “non-fungible/reproducible token,” an NFT is a video, image or any digital content that is certified through the blockchain. This technology makes files encrypted, unchangeable and recorded in a repository that ensures a file can be viewed by all but owned only by a single wallet, an identifying but anonymous address. In this new digital world, NFTs populate so-called metaverses, virtual parallel worlds whose boundaries extend to the tangible, conventional world, but with new paradigms of social interaction. This new way of creating and collecting art has fueled an alternative and independent market from the traditional one, but more importantly, it has allowed the development of unprecedented paths and possibilities for artists’ production and public accessibility.

The exhibition

The exhibition opens with a site-specific installation in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi created by Refik Anadol (Turkey, 1985): a novel relationship between digital and physical architecture through a hypnotic and multisensory experience, a dynamic work in which artificial intelligence algorithms create illusionistic visions that challenge the notion of reality. Linked to this installation is the path through the Strozzina’s rooms, where each room features immersive works and installations created by the artists involved. These include 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 on display; 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 transformation and destruction; Krista Kim (Canada) who with her minimalist style invites us to enter a world of impossible geometries and reflections. And again, Andrés Reisinger (Argentina, 1990) with the work Arcadia, created in collaboration with poet Arch Hades and composer RAC, in which poetry, sound and images come together in a meditative experience that invites reflection on daily routine and the use of social media. Finally, the Anyma collective (Matteo Millari and Alessio De Vecchi, Italy), which proposes a site-specific physical and visual landscape for one of the Strozzina’s environments.

A special volume published by Marsilio Arte will also be published on the occasion of the exhibition, which will be presented to the public on June 28, 2022 as part of a meeting attended by artists and experts in digital art and the NFT world. “Confirming its ambition to unite avant-garde and tradition, research and popularization, Palazzo Strozzi proposes a unique project in the Italian cultural scene,” said Arturo Galansino, general director of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi."Let’s Get Digital represents one of the first and most important exhibitions dedicated to the NFT revolution ever realized by a cultural institution in our country and aims to bring the general public closer to works and themes that are radically transforming our relationship with art, and with the digital world as a whole. As part of the Palazzo Strozzi Future Art program with the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation, this exhibition stands as one more piece of experimentation and vision on the art of the present and the future, opening more and more to new possibilities of artistic production and relationship with the public."

"Let’s Get Digital was created with the aim of bringing the general public closer to the most recent evolution of digital art, now globally recognized by the contemporary system," added curator Serena Tabacchi. “Decentralization, Blockchain and NFTs have certified and spread the work of many artists who until a few years ago could not be considered as such. This movement born from below has made famous artists who until a few months ago were appreciated exclusively through social communities. United by the desire to express themselves in the means most congenial to them, through the most modern digital technologies, they have quickly become part of the ecosystem of contemporary culture. This exhibition involves some of the undisputed protagonists of the field on a planetary level: just as Palazzo Strozzi has hosted the absolute masters of the past and those of the contemporary, today it opens up to experimentation, to research. The art of the future meets the digital as a favorite material for creative expression. An endless declination of possibilities awaits us. The best is yet to come.”

“I am particularly proud to be part of this ambitious project of the Fondazione Strozzi capable of combining art with the digital universe and its unstoppable evolution that enters, ever more powerfully, into our daily lives,” stressed Andy Bianchedi, President of the Hillary Merkus Recordati Foundation. “In fact, the Foundation I lead wants to represent and will represent in the future, by shared mission and iron will, a consistent platform to support talent and to foster all forms of contemporary creativity. This exhibition responds exactly to our wishes.”

The exhibition is promoted and organized by Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and Fondazione Hillary Merkus Recordati as part of the Palazzo Strozzi Future Art project. Supporters of the exhibition project are Fondazione CR Firenze, Comune di Firenze, Regione Toscana, Camera di Commercio di Firenze, Intesa Sanpaolo, and the Palazzo Strozzi Partners Committee.

For info: www.palazzostrozzi.org

Hours: Daily from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Thursday until 11 p.m.

Tickets: Full 10 euros, reduced 5 euros for young people under 18 (Thursday from 6 p.m. for under 30); joint ticket at a cost of 15 euros for Donatello, The Renaissance exhibition and Let’s get digital exhibition.

Pictured is the site-specific installation by Refik Anadol. Photo by Ela Bialkowska / OKNO Studio

Palazzo Strozzi opens up to the world of NFT: exhibition of international Crypto Art artists kicks off

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