NFT Artist and Collector OSF: ‘NFTs Are Just a Medium’

London’s Home of Wonderful Artwork (HOFA) gallery is likely one of the pioneers of the crypto artwork scene, being one of many first venues to showcase NFT artworks in a bodily area again in 2021.

Again then, it took a considerably conservative method, specializing in prints of CryptoPunks alongside bodily sculptures and NFT-adjacent work.

This time round, its “Past the Display” exhibition is dialing up the digital factor, with vibrant screens displaying eye-popping animated work by the likes of XCOPY, OSF and DeeKay. However the phrase “NFT” is nowhere to be seen.

NFTs are “only a medium,”  mentioned NFT artist and collector Ovie Faruq, aka OSF, who confirmed Decrypt across the area. “It is identical to, do I’ve my portray on an oil canvas, or do I’ve {a photograph}? Or do I’ve a display displaying some digital artwork? It is only a canvas; it is only a mechanism to transact,” he added.

In the end, he argued, “individuals will begin shopping for NFTs with out figuring out they’re NFTs. And that is the form of factor that can get us over this, like, stigma that is connected to it.”

“We’ve not used the phrase NFT in any respect for this occasion,” OSF added. “The main target is supposed to be, that is digital artwork; we need to show it in a approach the place individuals can resonate with it.” Which means shifting the main target away from costs and hypothesis and onto “championing artists,” he added.

It’s considerably ironic, then, that OSF’s personal contribution to the exhibition, “Tremendous Fan,” inadvertently predicted the present PEPE-led memecoin market frenzy. The digital paintings, which OSF drew “two or three months in the past,” encompasses a “type of loner character” who’s obsessive about Pepe the Frog, and surrounded by market charts displaying inexperienced and crimson candles.

“It in all probability resembles lots of people inside crypto tradition,” OSF mentioned. “Perhaps, like, the COVID period as properly. It’s meant to be a little bit bit satirical.”

Additionally featured within the exhibition is XCOPY’s “MESCO TETRO”—“which not one of the People received the reference of however clearly all of us do,” mentioned OSF, whereas conceding that, “I nonetheless do not actually know if it’s perhaps based mostly on Tesco plastic luggage.” The work was one of many final XCOPY minted on the SuperRare shared contract, he added. “Within the previous days that they had one shared contract, so all of the artists would mint on this contract. After SuperRare allowed artists to mint on their very own sovereign contracts, XCOPY introduced that he’d mint 4 remaining items on the SuperRare shared contract. “He offered considered one of them, he gave considered one of them away—so somebody made like £300,000 on the giveaway—and this is likely one of the ones that was unsold,” mentioned OSF.

Different artists whose works seem within the exhibition embody animator DeeKay and photographer Cath Simard. “She does these loopy expeditions and hikes, tremendous harmful stuff, and he or she captures his moments and makes use of composites to create a remaining picture,” mentioned OSF.

What the exhibition is aiming to showcase, mentioned OSF, is that throughout the NFT artwork area, “there are individuals with real intentions making an attempt to attain noble issues. It will get dragged down by this affiliation with crypto bro tradition; that’s not what any of those artists listed below are about.”

“Past the Display” runs at Home of Wonderful Artwork till Might 26.