Money can now also be made with NFTs on the traditional art market.

Ever since Beeple, alias Mike Winkelmann, sold his digital collage entitled “Everydays: The First 5000 Days#” at Christie's for a good year ago for 69 million dollars, we have known: sometimes even a lot of money.

The dictionary does not yet list the term, but it has long since slipped smoothly off the lips of many people.

Word has also got around that this is the abbreviation for “Non Fungible Token”.

These non-exchangeable certificates of ownership guarantee buyers the uniqueness of the data constellation that, strictly speaking, their acquisition consists of.

Pop art of the next generation, so to speak: while Andy Warhol and colleagues made mass-produced items the subject of unique pieces, today an NFT guarantees the originality of a digital work, which means that it can be reproduced at will.

In fact, NFTs are considered to be forgery-proof because they are recorded in a so-called blockchain.

This chain of data, which can be expanded indefinitely, must be understood as a kind of electronic cash book, which will one day also make the question of provenance research superfluous because, as the experts at least emphasize, it allows complete tracking and subsequent changes are impossible.

If you want to own such a work, you should own a “wallet” filled with cryptocurrency.

Hybrid of exhibition and lecture series

The community of NFT marketers is still relatively small.

At least not as large as the number of supposed experts who are currently talking about it as a matter of course.

Changing that is the aim of the project “Unblock Gaudi.

Digital Art via Blockchain" in the Frankfurt Museum of Applied Art.

Project managers Tuan Khanh Hoang Nguyen and Paolo Perez have realized a hybrid of an exhibition and a series of lectures that is intended to break down inhibitions and bring the new technology closer to the inexperienced and those who are little or not at all familiar with it.

The exhibition section is clear and essentially consists of a handful of monitors installed in the museum foyer, which can be seen almost at a glance.

On it you can see a changing selection of the approximately 4,000 positions by 1,300 artists from Nguyen and Perez's collection, who met in Moscow in 2020 and have been working together ever since.

First of all, it can be seen that NFTs should not be understood as a new type of image, but on the contrary everything that can be digitized can also become NFT.

In terms of art, this means that paintings and drawings are just as suitable as templates, as are photos, videos or computer programs.

Their creators gain notoriety less on the conventional stage than through the number of clicks that their presentations generate on the Internet.

Quality, of course, is becoming less important

The screens are embedded in an ironically analogue setting between an antiquated living room complete with television lamp and rotary telephone and a holiday setting with deck chairs, air mattresses and parasols.

This is intended to signal that NFTs make you independent of a visit to the museum and that you can access them in any situation, as long as you have a mobile device at hand - and don't ask about format, proportion, relationship to space and, last but not least, about the third dimension.

Nguyen and Perez are also on the NFT mission because they do not consider the additional attention that the pandemic has brought to purely digital art to be short-term hype, but are convinced of its potential.

In addition to maximum transparency, the new technology enables easy participation: you do not need more than an Internet connection and the ability to remember a security query consisting of up to 24 words.

Above all, a maximally democratic concept leaves the traditional ways of art education: exhibition opportunities no longer depend on the goodwill of the curators and gallery owners, but are global and possible at any time.

Quality, of course, is becoming less important.

Everyone is their own curator, and an artist is anyone who thinks they are.

With his famous dictum,

In addition to the visual view, regular lectures, panel discussions and workshops often provide insights into the latest variety of digital art in a playful way.

Unblock Gaudi.

Digital art via Blockchain Museum Angewandte Kunst, Schaumainkai 17, the exhibition runs until July 24