mowna Tezos exhibition

Curator's statement

What is art's role in Web3?

How can artists collaborate with and on the blockchain?

How do NFTs serve artists and the art world?

What work messages best in the NFT medium?

The mowna Tezos exhibition celebrates the wild and newfangled artwork on the Tezos blockchain. We have selected work from fxhash that we feel is pushing the generative art field forward and work from objkt that is forging the Web3 art revolution.

As curators we've provided a diverse collection of wild and newfangled art worthy of attention, celebration, and investment. The process of curating involved three months of watching the live feed on objkt to see what work was being minted. The artworks on platforms such as objkt (2.9 million NFTs) and fxhash (over 1 million generative artworks) were reviewed for what we find to be the most compelling work on the Tezos blockchain.

We have curated 66 artists from 29 countries working in the genres of animation, film, gifs, generative, toys, games, poetry, paintings, photographs, interactive, 3-dimensional sculpture, petscii/ascii, sound, and video loops.

The show offers a collection of 106 NFTs including 34 interactive works, 3 games, 16 videos, 30 gifs, 23 images, and 4 3-dimensional models from a diverse range of artists.

This is mowna's first exhibition on the Tezos blockchain. We were drawn to Tezos for its #CleanNFT, the blossoming experimental art scene, and the exciting generative artwork coming from the fxhash platform.

The artwork that is being made on the Tezos blockchain is among the most interesting to have been created, with artists pushing the limits on technologies, financial models, culture, science, nature, philosophy, media, communication, and more.

We acknowledge and offer our sincere gratitude to the founders and early artists, curators, collectors, and builders who created the Tezos blockchain and launched the objkt and fxhash platforms. We hope that our service will benefit all of the Tezos community.

Artists featured: ailadi, Aluan Wang, Andreas Rau & Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez, Anna Malina, Augurs, [ a y s h ], Burka Bayram, Ce Vignolo, Diego de los Campos, Diego Lazzarin, diewiththemostlikes, Eddie Lee, Elna Frederick, Elsa Muray, Empress Trash, ertdfgcvb, ferluht & OOPO, Frank Force, Huw Messie, Iñigo Bilbao, Iskra Velitchkova & Zach Lieberman, Johan Karlsson, Karsten Schmidt, LIA, Liam Egan, Linda Dounia, Lola Dupre, Lorna Mills, Luiz André Gama, lulu xXX, makeitrad, Mario Klingemann, Micah Alhadeff, Monokai, Nathaniel Stern & Sasha Stiles, NeoSutras, Nude Robot, Orfhlaith Egan, Parallax Rendering & Tezopunk, Phlins, Pierre Gervois, Quilla Nina, qubibi, Radarboy3000, Renata Janiszewska, Rodell Warner, Rose Jackson, s_r_r_z_, Sabato Visconti & Sky Goodman, Somfay, Spøgelsesmaskinen, Stellabelle, SV3ZR, TENDER x William Watkins, Tommy Mintz, Unicorn Stew, V4W.ENKO, W3irDtrip, Wioulet, ZALA

Part of the work as curators for this exhibition is to set prices that we find to be realistic to the worth of the art and the time invested by the artist in making it. With transparency valued, all of the work in the mowna Tezos exhibition was either bought by or airdropped to the museum (tz1Ty8m4fYPwP5F6RKdEm6KjvnDb7GGHoFZY) or collected by its curators joey zaza (tz1YfcY1soS1KTDAWm1krQp9u2358PxqA4w5) and cari ann shim sham* (tz1PbWMfZhLaH71Rhqx7f8k6SaST6ypja6Sy).

Not all of the exhibited work will be made available and we are valuing the art for the long-term. We are experimenting with sustainable business models for Web3 that support artists. With this exhibition, any purchased work ultimately supports the artist either directly or on secondary through royalties. Priced work can be collected from the museum to support the artists and the museum, or it can be collected directly from the artist if available, or from the artists' collectors if available, or one can make an offer on works that are not listed. We leave these choices to you as the collector. Ultimately we support these artists and hope you will too.

The fxhash works for this exhibition are featured below.

Let’s get started with a game!

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Up next is a dance.

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Let’s make some sound!

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And of course there will be ASCII art.

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A moment to relax.

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And self portraiture.

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Movement. Sound.

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Shape studies.

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Swimmers.

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And poetry.

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A fantastic music maker.

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And Turner Light.

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Introspective portraits of future selves.

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An experimental AI attempting to defeat itself in a game based on rock paper scissors.

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Vague, fragile, human-made structures.

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Dissolving, dancing, decaying structures.

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An exploration of the emergent visual properties that arise from placing layers of simple lines atop one another, the Moiré effect.

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Voronoi & jump flooding algorithms in a unique and never repeating sequence.

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And pfps, as tribute to Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

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Inspired by the weaving of cloth through a digital loom.

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🔥🔥🔥

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And ending with another game.

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We hope you have enjoyed the fxhash portion of the mowna Tezos exhibition. We look forward to all of the wild work that this space will bring forward.

🎉

cari ann shim sham* and joey zaza

co-founders mowna