Zien, a platform for collecting contemporary art as NFTs that can be redeemed on demand for art objects, is proud to announce a new collaboration with the artist Parker Ito. Ito’s early contributions emerged within a community of artists who engaged with art primarily through Internet technologies.
His practice is characterised by the creation of a vast, interconnected network of artworks. His work spans various mediums, including installations, paintings, sculptures, videos, drawings, websites, books, printmaking, and now NFTs. Together, they unveil Parker/to.net, a new 10,000-piece artwork project that marks several firsts in the history of painting.
Starting Thursday 22nd August 2024, collectors can mint a unique Parker composition as an NFT and then redeem it for an oil painting made in a painting factory in China, delivered to the collector’s door. The NFT is $30, while the oil painting prices are as follows: $350 for a small (16×14 in.), $450 for a medium (25×22 in.), $1500 for a large (42×37 in.), and $4000 for an extra-large (84×74 in.), with free worldwide shipping.
Parker/to.net uses new technology and international commerce networks to expand how artworks are made and distributed. Notably, Parker/to.net is the first time a painting series has been created with generative technology at this scale to produce artworks that can be redeemed for hand-produced paintings. Combining Parker’s focus on the Internet, networked systems, and traditional art-making techniques, Parker/to.net continues Ito’s experiments using emerging technologies to discover new ways to interact with images.
The project is based on the PFP format, the most popular and optimum form for NFTs because of the way they encapsulate and propel mimetic and cult power, with archetypal NFT examples taking this format, including CryptoPunks, Bored Apes and Milady Maker. The central figure in these new Parker works is the Parked Domain Girl, a popular stock photo Parker has returned to many times in his painting series, “The Most Infamous Girl in the History of the Internet” (2010 – ongoing).
To create the images, Parker uses rapidly improving generative image-making tools. Parker’s extensive archive of source material-whether found, created by the artist, meme, gif, jpeg, text, or something else-is compiled and filtered through the generative software HashLips. The results are a new type of algorithmically produced, densely layered collage. Just as artists of the early 20th-century proposed new art forms with their collages, Parker and fellow NFT artists continue to update this tradition with the aid of new technologies.
Parkerlto.net is part of Zien’s ongoing contemporary art collaborations, which aim to offer new ways for artists and galleries to produce and sell art online. Since beginning in 2020, Zien has collaborated with artists including Agnieszka Kurant, Shezad Dawood and Petra Cortright. They have also collaborated with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Shuman Basar, and Dean Kissick, among others, to bring internet-native artworks to wider audiences. Zien has introduced thousands of collectors to a new way of collecting contemporary art. Zien projects are in the collections of major institutions, including the Centre Pompidou, Castello di Rivoli, Hartwig Foundation, lOFl, and Kadist.
©2024 Parker Ito
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