At the moment, 1700 people have bought some of the 10,000 pieces that make up the work “The Currency” by Damien Hirst, one of the three most sought-after artists worldwide in the art world. He now explores the world of cryptographic art with his first collection titled “The Coin.” As a challenge and exercise in skill, the artist makes a work on paper, plastically simple: a series of randomly painted colored dots cover the entire sheet of paper.
“The Currency” proposes a game to the buyer, demanding that he decide between the physical work and its replica minted in NFT. The artist proposes in “The Currency” a reflection, What happens when the work of Art becomes currency (in NFT) and the Currency (the NFT) becomes Art? Where are the boundaries and linkages of each area? To investigate this concept, the artist takes this premise to its ultimate consequences: The artist creates unique works on paper, which are replicated on the blockchain in NFT. Just as NFTs are guarded, each work is guarded in a safe. Each buyer of the NFT acquires the right to the work on paper, and “ultimately, (the buyer) must decide between the digital NFT or the physical work of art, which are works of his property. Whichever he chooses, the other will be burned.” In this way the artist “carnalizes” the process of “burning” an NFTs in the physical simile of “destroying” the work on paper. The work has been minted on Palm Blockchain and is shown on OpenSea.
