New Digital Art event HERE launches this weekend.- HERE is a new weekend-long event dedicated to digital art spotlighting the ongoing strength of the digital art landscape and the dynamic voices shaping the space.
Free and open to the public, HERE takes over two floors of No.9 Cork Street in London to convene an international cross-section of top artists and galleries that are driving forward the conversation and the global art market. Visitors will have the opportunity to experience works in person by pioneering artists including John Gerrard, Stefan Brüggemann, Lorna Mills and A.A. Murakami, presented in collaboration with galleries including Lisson Gallery, Galerie Nagel Draxler, and more.
Organized by the digital art platform Verse, HERE takes place on 25th and 26th November 2023 and is presented in collaboration with Digital Art Week, which returns to London in April 2024. HERE reflects the highly curated approach that Verse brings to all of its offerings. Each presentation has been hand-selected by the Verse curatorial team led by Artistic Director Leyla Fakhr, former Tate curator. The result is a rare in-person experience of a range of pioneering digital artworks in one place, representing some of today’s most innovative artists.
The selection of artists and presentations featured at HERE includes:
Kevin Abosch, presented in collaboration with Galerie Nagel Draxler
Stefan Brüggemann, commissioned by Island
Sofia Crespo x Anna Ridler, presented by Nguyen Wahed
John Gerrard
Jan Robert Leegte, presented in collaboration with Upstream Gallery
Lorna Mills, presented in collaboration with TRANSFER
Haroon Mirza, presented in collaboration with Lisson Gallery
A.A. Murakami, presented in collaboration with Pace
Joe Pease, presented by Verse
Paul Pfeiffer, presented by Artwrld
Roope Rainisto & Elman Mansimov, presented in collaboration with Fellowship
Several presentations spotlight artists who have long been integrating digital technologies into their practices, decades before the advent of blockchain-based artworks, such as Paul Pfeiffer (Artwrld), LornaMills (TRANSFER), and Haroon Mirza (Lisson Gallery). At HERE, Artwrld presents an editioned long-formwork from Pfeiffer’s NFT collections Vs. (2023) depicting the seminal match between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr; TRANSFER presents a new series of Mills’ playful collages that merge GIF culture with kinetic art; and Lisson Gallery presents Mirza’sSkip_loop(2019), a computer-generated animation of an undulating seascape that loops every 6 seconds—the average viewing time of an artwork in a museum or gallery.
HERE also features pioneering examples of generative art, such as Roope Rainisto’s (Fellowship) triptych of AI video artworks generated from prompts fed through a text-to-image model, expanding on a concept introduced by Elman Mansimov in 2015 with align DRAW–the first-ever text-to-image generator–which unveiled the possibilities of creative interplay between humans and machines. Some of Mansimov’s original creations will also be presented by Fellowship at HERE. Upstream Gallery presents Jan Robert Leegte’s Mountains and Drop Shadows(2023), a series of 80 NFTs depicting AI-generated images of mountains juxtaposed with a drop shadow—exposing the stark contrast between natural grandeur and ethereal, digital materiality. Galerie Nagel Draxler presents Accoutrement (2023) by Kevin Abosch, asynthetic photograph from the artist’sExpositionseries that mediating a conversation between AI and traditional photography.
Other works include a video by Joe Pease (Verse) in the surreal looping style that has garnered him an immense following; a generative collection by A.A. Murakami (Pace) that pays homage to their iconic neon installations, harnessing light and color to harmoniously bridge the physical and digital worlds; a new work by Sofia Crespo and Anna Ridler (Nguyen Wahed), on the heels of their recent join presentation of Paris Photo, that builds on their collaborative explorations into the ways that artificial intelligence can enhance our understanding of the natural world; and a new commission by Stefan Brüggemann (The Island) that invites collectors to “re-mint” any of their existing NFTs to receive an upgraded replica emblazoned with text from the artist.
HERE is enlivened by a program of talks and other events to extend dialogues around the ideas and issues driving digital art practices as well as the broader contemporary art market. Programming includes conversations between artist Haroon Mirza and Serpentine curator Kostas Stasinopoulos, and artistJanRobert Leegtein dialogue with V&A curatorPita Arreolaand Upstream Gallery FounderNieck de Bruijn. Saturday evening features a live DJ set by AHMD, a collaboration between artists Eddie Peake, Prem Sahib and George Henry Longly; all attendees will receive a free digital artwork created by AHMD
A thriving new art world has emerged since ownership of digital artworks became provable. There’s something very special happening here—people are connecting in online communities around art that pushes the limits of what is technologically possible, discussing and sharing new works non-stop. Outside this community, this kind of art tends to be lumped into the same category as digital trading cards. They couldn’t be more different. In bringing together some of the digital space’s most pioneering artists and their galleries for HERE, we hope to shed some light onto artists pushing numerous boundaries and show people how fascinating the NFT art world really is.
Verse co-founder and CEO Jamie Gourlay
HERE, Saturday, 25th November and Sunday, 26th November 2023, No.9 Cork Street, verse.works/HERE
Events and Programs Saturday, 25th November
4-5pm: Talk with Jan Robert Leegte (artist), Pita Arreola (Curator of Digital Art, Victoria and Albert
Museum) and Nieck de Bruijn (Founder and Owner, Upstream Gallery)
5-6pm: Talk with Haroon Mirza (artist) and Kostas Stasinopoulos (Curator of Live Programmes,
Serpentine Galleries)
6-10pm: DJ set by AHMD (artists Eddie Peake, Prem Sahib and George Henry Longly); all
attendees will receive a free digital artwork created by AHMD
Admission: All events are free with RSVP HERE
