Are oil paintings the new NFT? Zien, have announced a new collaborative drop with the artist Parker Ito in which you can buy an NFT and redeem it for an oil painting.
Ito, whose work began within the post-internet art movement, continues to push the boundaries of how art and technology interact. Together, they unveil a new 10,000-piece artwork project that marks several firsts in the history of painting.
Starting 22nd August 2024, collectors can mint a unique Parker composition as an NFT and then redeem it for an oil on canvas painting made in a painting factory in China, delivered to the collector’s door. The NFT is $25, while the oil painting prices are as follows: $300 for a small (16×14 in.), $450 for a medium (25×22 in.), $2000 for a large (42×37 in.), and $6000 for an extra-large (84×74 in.), with free worldwide shipping.
ParkerIto.net uses new technology and international commerce networks to expand how artworks are made and distributed. Notably, ParkerIto.net is the first time a painting series has been created with general 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 artmaking techniques, ParkerIto.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. ParkerIto.net marks the first time a serious “art world” artist with a strong exhibition history has made a PFP project. 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 Picasso and Braque proposed new art forms with their collages in the 1910s, Parker and fellow digital NFT collage makers now push these images to new extremes.
Parker Ito,ParkerIto.net, August 22nd, Zien.io
ParkerIto.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, Shumon 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, 1OF1, and Kadist.
About
Parker Ito (b. 1986, Ventura, CA) is a Yonsei/Gosei Japanese American artist, à la mode, living in San Francisco and working in Los Angeles associated with Post Internet or Zombie Formalism, depending on who you ask. In the years gone by he has exhibited his oeuvre in galleries, museums, and coffee shops on 4 continents and will continue to exhibit his work in the future (hopefully). His website is: Parker.sex
Zien is a contemporary art platform that aims to transform the centuries-old user experience of collecting art. At the heart of the platform are what we call Expanded NFTs, digital artworks that can be acquired and later redeemed, on-demand, for physical counterparts. To date, Zien has enabled drops by artists such as Agnieszka Kurant, Shezad Dawood, Petra Cortright and Ed Fornieles, and produced drops that have been acquired by renowned institutions including Centre Pompidou, Kadist, 1OF1, and
Castello di Rivoli. @joinzien
