Collecting the Future:
Photography and Generative Art on the Blockchain

Presented by Assembly and Art Blocks
May 26 - July 22, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, May 26, 6-8pm
Assembly, 4411 Montrose Blvd, Suite F

Collecting the Future presents photography and generative artworks that speak to the historical trajectories of artists presenting and preserving their work through blockchain technology. Art Blocks and Assembly Curated are among the first platforms to embrace “Web3” as a generative tool, a method of cultural preservation, and a new frontier of dissemination for artists. This exhibition highlights several of the boldest uses of technology to fuel digitally native artistic practices and embraces the fluidity of artistic presentation on screen, as prints, and as sculpture.

Since 2020, Art Blocks has been a pioneer in bringing compelling works of contemporary generative art to life on the blockchain. The first-of-its-kind platform seeks to bring the future of art-making into contemporary life by connecting collectors, fine art, technology, and creative coding to manifest an extraordinary experience ripe with new possibilities. Beginning with founder and CEO Erick Calderon’s Chromie Squiggle, Art Blocks set out to create a community around the possibilities of algorithmic digital art. The company has since grown to be a leader in the generative art world. Included in the exhibition at Assembly are some of the projects that helped shape the history and community of Art Blocks, including early works by DCA (Daniel Calderon), Rafaël Rozendaal & Danny Wolfers (Legowelt), Anna Lucia, Sarah Ridgley, as well as more recent works by Matt DesLauriers, Aranda\Lasch, and Junia Farquhar.

Assembly launched its “genesis” NFT project in 2021 with Alejandro Cartagena’s 50 Carpoolers, excited about the potential to bring art to new audiences as well as the blockchain’s ability to cement the artist’s participation in the secondary market. As an artistic medium and a technology that has historically been adapted to new methods of reproduction and circulation, the blockchain presents another step in photography’s evolution, tracking ownership, circulation, and provenance transparently within a decentralized framework. In early 2021, very few fine art photographers had ventured into this new landscape, and with the rapid success of this initial collection, a growing number became interested in its relationship to their own practices. As the first art gallery representing fine art photographers in the NFT space, Assembly serves as a lighthouse, guiding artists alongside the institutions that support them through the presentation of curated NFT collections that preserve the artistic process and context of the artist’s work. Since the launch of Assembly Curated, the platform has worked with many notable artists from around the world on their debut collections on the blockchain, including widely-exhibited works by artists as well as works created specifically for this new medium. Collecting the Future will feature works by Alejandro Cartagena, Daniel Gordon, Gregory Eddi Jones, Klea McKenna, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Alec Soth, Barry Stone, and Penelope Umbrico.

Both Art Blocks and Assembly Curated present work that is inherently digital. Photography, which now often begins as or is printed from a JPEG file (made up of binary code), and generative art, which utilizes written code to create works through algorithmic systems. Both mediums naturally had lives before NFTs, but the blockchain has enabled a new way to circulate, preserve, and share work within its natively digital habitat. Unlike posting a JPEG on a blog or social media, which has found its apex in Web2 technology, the blockchain allows artists to gain more than just exposure for their work, creating a method of both ownership and community connection through engagement, socialization, and collecting of the work as NFTs. The 1/1 editions presented in this exhibition are hallmarks of the history of this emerging space for artists pioneering a new community for their work in the midst of a global pandemic, when physical interaction became limited and virtual methods for interaction became more widespread.

Though a unique NFT work is owned by one, serving as its own certificate of authenticity for the digital piece, it can be seen and shared by anyone with a computer—a profound and novel expansion of what it can mean to collect and share work with a larger community. For the first time, the artist is also compensated for that exposure and valued within the digital space through the on-chain traceable technology. This revolutionary shift emphasizes a collective vision and understanding of art rather than one housed within the confines of a private or institutional collection. In fact, the NFT market continues to expand and has been embraced by the traditional art world with acquisitions by major institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and unprecedented digital art acquisition efforts announced by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Collecting the Future bridges the traditional and virtual art communities through a technology that remains one of the most notable developments of the 21st century.