New Pavilion’s inaugural project is an exclusive NFT release from acclaimed contemporary artist Robert Montgomery. YOU ARE AN AGENT OF FREE SUNLIGHT is a hard-hitting critique of the digital world of today. On view at Danysz Gallery Paris as part of a solo show titled Salvage Paradise. This video piece, which uses the artist’s signature poetic prose will be offered as 100 NFTs on KnownOrigin, January 28th, 2022.
“New Pavilion founder Kingston Trinder is a curator and publisher I know and trust. He curated a series of my billboard works in Los Angeles in 2014. I am working with New Pavilion as the platform is committed to developing and publishing NFT works that are works of art in the wider sense- part of the wider discourse of contemporary art, and which resonate both within and beyond the NFT marketplace and have a strong footprint in the art world.”
–Robert Montgomery, Artist
Critiquing the very medium the work is hosted on, Montgomery explores the existential sphere of the digital world we have created. It looks at how digital communication and devices have become the managers of our time; tracks how our own biographies are now reflected back to us within advertising media (“social media”) and asks what that means for questions of intellectual and emotional freedom and our connection to the natural world.
YOU ARE AN AGENT OF FREE SUNLIGHT references our reliance on smartphones
“ Like a witch’s cat, it is your primary familiar, a little illuminated window with fire from the inside, and a little box of ghosts, exactly tailored for you.”
Defining our reality, this digital space has the ability to analyse and track humanity, more invasive than any time in our history. Montgomery notes our resistance to any barriers to our screens, how the digital world works to discord with nature, “you are annoyed when the sunlight kills it”. Prose spirals and zigzags, crashes and disintegrates into the darkness, in the poetic final sentences the artist invites viewers to leave their screens and realise the magic of the natural world.
Montgomery’s work joins an acclaimed group of artists producing one-of-a-kind exclusive NFT artworks hosted on knownorigin.io releasing January 28th, 2022 at 8PM UTC and will be available for purchase.
“New Pavilion offers beautifully executed, conceptually engaging NFTs from celebrated artists, estates, and institutes from around the world. We are immensely pleased to announce British conceptual artist and poet Robert Montgomery’s NFT artwork, YOU ARE AN AGENT OF FREE SUNLIGHT as our inaugural project, and to collaborate with Danysz Gallery and KnownOrigin in releasing Montgomery’s evocative questioning of our new digital landscapes, and our individual liberty within increasingly invasive technologies. Montgomery’s Salvage Paradise establishes New Pavilion’s aesthetic and conceptual vision, deeply aligning with our additional NFT projects releasing from iconic creators and estates in 2022”.
–Kingston Trinder, co-founder of New Pavilion
About the artist
Robert Montgomery (b.1972, Scotland) is a British contemporary artist well known for his work in public space and guerilla billboard poems. He makes billboard poems, light works, fire poems, woodcuts, paintings and watercolours. His work brings text art closer to the language of poetry. He represented the UK in the 2012 Kochi Biennale and the 2016 Yinchuan Biennale. His work is in museum collections across the world including the Albright Knox in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. He has had solo museum projects at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, Oklahoma Contemporary in Oklahoma City, and the Cer Modern Museum in Ankara. His work is hugely popular on the internet, the piece “The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You” has been shared online more than 20 million times. Montgomery has worked with low consumption LED lighting and solar power since 2010 and was one of the official artists for both ArtCOP21 (Paris 2015) and ArtCOP26 (Glasgow, 2021). robertmontgomery.org
About New Pavilion
New Pavilion is an innovative consultancy developing authorised non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and digital artworks, in collaboration with some of the world’s most celebrated artists’ estates, contemporary creators, arts foundations, and cultural institutions.
New Pavilion enables collaborators to effectively utilize evolving digital architectures and technologies, with an emphasis on blockchain and non-fungible tokenization. And to facilitate symbiotic collaborator participation within these transformational new ecosystems.
New Pavilion evolves iconic creators’ works into Ethereum-based NFTs for acquisition by individual and institutional collectors, without technical complexity. Preserving renowned creators’ original visions while offering substantial new revenue opportunities, and new audience engagement, New Pavilion facilitates the evolution of material works into highly desirable digital assets.
*New Pavilion is developing numerous collaborations with contemporary artists, artists estates, and cultural institutions for 2022, aided by several strategic, cultural and technology partners and platforms. newpavilionart.com
KnownOrigin is an artist-driven, digital art and NFT marketplace powered by Ethereum. knownorigin.io
