Art Brussels 2022 Partners With Parallel on NFT Programme
The fair will have a booth devoted to the technology, host a series of talks on the subject, and present NFTs in an online exhibition.
Theo Triantafyllidis, Smoke Break (2018). Courtesy Galerie Nagel Draxler.
Art Brussels will have an official Web3 partner when it returns to the Tour & Taxis exhibition centre from 28 April to 1 May.
Parallel, which was founded last year, has been enlisted to support participating galleries' NFT initiatives. They will have their own booth at the fair providing collectors with an introduction to art practices on the blockchain and more information about how to purchase NFTs.
Parallel also teamed up with local institution iMAL (Art Center for Digital Cultures & Technology) on the ArtBrussels.NFT Speaker Series. Contributors include Belgian art historian Pierre-Yves Desaive and artists Joan Heemskerk, Casey Reas, and Jonas Lund.
At least a dozen of the 157 galleries taking part have collaborated with NFT artists, whose work they will exhibit either in their booths or in an online exhibition curated by Parallel using JPG, a curatorial protocol for NFTs. They include: Plus-One Gallery, Office Impart, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Galerie Charlot, Galerie Michael Janssen, The Hole, ADN Galeria, Erika Deák Gallery, DMW Gallery, Sanatorium, Sapar Contemporary, and Super Dakota.
Office Impart, for instance, will show Kim Asendorf's series 'Sabotage' (2022), which includes a web tool that allows the collector to edit works in the series, and Jonas Lund's What You Get Is What You See (2022), an animation that displays the browser size of every visitor to his website. Also, Galerie Charlot will exhibit Antoine Schmitt's generative NFT UkraineWar2022 (2022), which will raise funds for UkraineDAO, an initiative backed by Pussy Riot that's supporting humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
Art Brussels joins a growing number of fairs incorporating NFTs in their programming.
In 2021, Artissima and Art Fair Philippines introduced NFT sections, while Ora Ora became the first gallery to present an NFT at an Art Basel fair with their presentation at Art Basel in Hong Kong.
This year, Art Dubai also introduced a digital section for galleries working with NFTs. —[O]
