In partnership with Gallery, fxhash is celebrating fxhash 2.0, a new multichain era for generative art, with a curation competition for fxhash 2.0 projects. Gallery is a platform that empowers artists and collectors to curate, share, and discover the digital art they enjoy with an engaged community of artists, collectors, and art enthusiasts.
The competition is open to everyone, and winners will receive a coveted official fxhash cap! For more information on how to enter, see the end of the article.
Gallery is inviting three esteemed generative art collectors and curators to judge the competition. They are Patricia Klein, Mitchell, and Pixelpete - each of whom has unique approaches to curation and extensive and interesting collections on fxhash. What follows is a roundtable discussion between the three of them as they unpack their curatorial vision, early fxhash experiences, and much more.
How did you find out about fxhash? When did you collect the first work, and what was the project?
Mitchell: Starting off my art journey with Hic et Nunc (HEN), I found myself being drawn to generative artists such as Marcelo Soria-Rodriguez, Iskra Velitchkova, William Mapan, and Joanie Lemercier - among others. While I couldn’t collect their art with my budget at the time, I started noticing familiar names collecting their work. This gave me a good foundation of both artists and collectors to follow on Twitter (now X), ensuring I would be able to keep up with the latest releases.
In doing so, I came across a link to the fx(hash) Discord channel, where I noticed so many familiar names, and I knew I was in the right place. I still didn’t know exactly what I was looking at, nor did I have any prior experience with collecting long-form generative art, but it just felt like something special was happening.
I still didn’t know exactly what I was looking at, nor did I have any prior experience with collecting long-form generative art, but it just felt like something special was happening. - Mitchell
The first purchase I made was Weave #83 by Third Vision. The simplicity, variety, and warmth just naturally drew me in. In about a minute, I had my first taste of the full minting experience: clicking the ‘Mint’ button, waiting for the transaction to confirm, and then seeing the “Waiting to be signed” copy before the final reveal. The beta-induced friction created an almost theatrical experience. I immediately felt a sense of connection in knowing that my specific engagement with the artist’s own algorithm resulted in the newly minted piece - for anyone to see. I had to mint more.
Pete: I forget exactly how I found out about fxhash initially, but similar to Mitchell, I had been dabbling in collecting and even releasing work on Hic et Nunc shortly after its creation and know there was some discussion about the launch of the platform in the Art Blocks discord, which likely led me there. I created an account weeks after it went live, but it wasn’t until Yazid and Zancan released (kinder)Garden, Monuments that I really started paying attention. I had missed the Garden, Monoliths release and was never able to pull the trigger on one that resonated in those early days. I think I tried and failed to mint kGM, unsurprisingly, given it was my first attempt at minting on the platform, but was able to collect #265 the following day, which I have to this day. I remember plotting it shortly after and was so enamored by that experience and the intimacy which that exercise gives with the work.
Patricia: My friend Duane King told me about this new Tezos platform. That was a few days after fxhash had opened in November 2021, and he had already started collecting. I watched for a few days to see what was going on before I purchased something myself. That was Cellular Canvas #86 by nicthib. I’ve been fascinated by the aesthetic of cellular automata and similar systems for a long time.
Do you have certain principles in mind when curating for your Gallery? Are there certain messages you hope to deliver to your Gallery audience?
Patricia: My main Gallery shows an intuitive and personal selection of collected pieces. There’s probably a focus on code-based art, and in general, I tend to gravitate toward conceptual, abstract, and technical pieces. But overall, it’s still fairly eclectic. I quite enjoy seeing interactive pieces next to looping GIFs next to digitized paper collages.
One message may be that, no matter your budget, you can find incredible works to collect. In the end, a tight Gallery of a few collected pieces can say so much more than just putting everything you own next to each other.
...no matter your budget, you can find incredible works to collect. - Patricia
Mitchell: I enjoy art that balances the narrow middle between the margins of a human vs. a computer. Another way to put this is whether the art feels like a human attempt at perfection vs. code-created imperfection. That narrow intersection seems to easily focus my attention without me realizing it, and more importantly, I don’t need to have my first thought be, “That’s so digital” or “I could’ve painted that”. The beauty of the art itself is what pulls me in. And that beauty is also what effortlessly keeps me there to reflect and be appreciative.
Those are the feelings I want to communicate with my Gallery. And especially since our lives are filled with screens we can’t get away from, I’m grateful to share that ethos with anyone who chooses to spend time with my curation.
Pete: To this day, I think that my online curatorial skills are a bit lacking. I have a really hard time showing restraint and tend to feel like I’m leaving artists out whose work I really cherish, so often overpopulate them. That said, I really love finding common connections (concept, form, color) between projects and, in doing so, creating a really natural flow as one scroll through a Gallery. One of the things I admire most about the advancements that we’ve seen on Gallery is the ability to see a work as it is intended, so have always worked to arrange them in a way that allows pieces to be shown running live without bogging down the experience too much. Kudos to the team for prioritizing this, which is not a small feat.
What are your favorite pieces you collected in the past few years, and were there fun memories/stories associated with those pieces?
Pete: That’s a tough one, as they really add up! An all-time favorite project from fxhash has to be Hollow by Jacek Markusiewicz. This project references an unrealized project by Eduardo Chillida which I had learned about years ago through a close friend and former colleague who always has fun discoveries related to art and architecture, of which we’re both involved.
Aside from that, there are many others I hold close, such as Anna Lucia’s Art For Walls In Public Spaces, Miniscapes by Rich Poole and ThePaperCrane, Take Wing by Melissa Wiederrecht, and then much of the more explorative abstract work from folks like Leander Herzog, Richard Nadler, and Kim Asendorf. Plus a few anonymous artists that I have really enjoyed finding and speculating who they might be by.
Patricia: I love pieces that have a strong conceptual layer beyond the aesthetics. Like Bone Work (Gulf of Mexico) by John Gerrard. Because it’s also a real-time simulation of the sun, I check in on it from time to time to see how the light changes. It’s beautiful when art transcends the bounds of its medium like that.
But in general, I’m interested in all kinds of projects that make me curious, where I want to dig deeper to learn more about the project, the artist, or their point of view. Reading A Book by Kim Asendorf did that for sure. Or dg5721() by Cyril Diagne, where it was just mind-blowing to me that it’s possible to put a neural network in a generative art project.
Fun memories are attached to many pieces. Basically, all the works that I collected in the early fxhash days when it took hours or even days until they were revealed and you finally saw what you minted.
Mitchell: contrapuntos #349 by Marcelo Soria-Rodriguez is easily one of my favourites. Marcelo is incredibly thoughtful with everything he does, and I highly recommend reading his context-building posts to better understand his process. The collection was minted near the launch of fx(hash) and at a time when I wasn’t really sure of my individual tastes and preferences with art in general. But after minting #349, I instantly had overwhelming feelings of balance and harmony when spending time with it. It’s the first piece that made me want to dig deeper and engage more with generative art.
RGB Elementary Cellular Automaton #903 by ciphrd, is another favorite in my collection. I was lucky to mint quite a few RGBs at launch, and #903 is by far the one that stands out to me. For me, it represents curiosity, passion, and growth within myself and the whole fx(hash) community. And it happens that #903 represents its namesake with the obvious red, green, and blue.
Garden, Monoliths #49 by zancan is the piece that instantly makes me feel relaxed and introspective. Digital art, especially in the generative art space, typically isn’t able to make me feel like I’d want to spend time in the world that the artist is trying to build (if that’s the intention). With Garden, Monoliths #49, I can look at it on a busy day and be transported to a calm meadow full of life.
How has Gallery influenced your curation philosophy?
Mitchell: When I first built my Gallery, I initially curated based on market value. To be perfectly honest, I initially saw this as a way to validate my time and decisions over the past few years, while also signaling to others that I was a “good” collector. My initial Gallery looked more like a collection instead of a curation.
And while credibility is still important, being genuine and meaningfully connecting with others are the utmost priorities in my on-chain and off-chain life. It was in the curation acts of adding/removing and changing the order of pieces that I really started to narrow in on what pieces I truly connected with and why. And even further, it helped me realize which artists resonated with me and made me want to dig deeper into their processes.
My Gallery has an overall logical progression in terms of feelings from piece to piece that I hope viewers can experience, but the curation process also means that every piece has a deeper internal meaning for me.
And while credibility is still important, being genuine and meaningfully connecting with others are the utmost priorities in my on-chain and off-chain life. - Mitchell
Pete: One thing that I appreciate that Gallery allows me to do is to try to contextualize what I am collecting and, in doing so, discover trends in what I’m drawn to that I’m not consciously aware of. This often might happen in unpublished galleries that I can quickly pull together to get a sense of where I am headed at a given time, which can later inform how my taste might be evolving. In this same sense, it also is one of the tools that allows me to check who I am collecting - seeing the work coexist might help me recognize any biases that I had not fully taken note of.
Patricia: I’m not sure it has influenced my curation philosophy, but it certainly supports it. Gallery hides all the metrics like floor prices, whether it is from a sold-out collection or even on which blockchain it was minted. It just makes it so easy to focus on the most important thing: the art itself. That’s what matters to me.
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Patricia Klein is an independent art director and designer with a focus on brand design and the visual language of science.
Mitchell is the program manager for blockchain at Shopify and a founding member of Tender, a community focused on advancing the generative art space.
Peter Molick (pixelpete) is a photographer and art collector interested in sharing the art of thoughtful, creative, and critical voices. He is an advisor for Art Blocks and Assembly Curated.
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Join the fxhash X Gallery curation competition and win an official fxhash cap!
How to enter:
1. Curate your favorite 2.0 projects on Gallery. All projects published on fxhash between December 1-31, 2023 are eligible for curation.
2. On X (Twitter), post a link to your Gallery page tagging @fx_hash_ and @GALLERY with hashtag #Galleryxfxhash by Monday, December 31, 2023.
Nine winners will be selected by Patricia, Mitchell, and Pixelpete and announced on Monday, January 8, 2024.
Bonus points:
1. We care about inclusivity in curation;
2. X threads are a great way to create a narrative around your curation.