Pushing the Boundaries of the Conventional, Decentraland Presents Metaverse Art Week 2022: The World is Made of Code

Artnet, Frida Kahlo Family, Sotheby’s, Estée Lauder, Nick Knight, Ukrainian Meta History of War Museum, and OpenSea to Showcase the Next Generation of Art

NEW YORK, Aug. 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  Decentraland, the world’s largest user-owned and operated virtual social world, announced today the third edition of Metaverse Art Week - The World is Made of Code. Mirroring DNA in the natural world, in the virtual world, all life is made of code.

Inspired by this year’s Venice Biennale, the third annual Metaverse Art Week will explore how the human spirit is hardwired to elicit an emotional response when presented with art inspired by mathematical designs present in nature, and how metaverse technology is pushing the boundaries of programmatic art and redefining what an immersive experience is.

“Metaverse Art Week 2022 is coming at a pivotal moment for the larger adoption of Web3 technology and decisions about our digital reality. We believe that the future of the internet should be built by decentralized communities who do not seek to profit off of user data, imagination, and creativity,” said Creative Director of the Decentraland Foundation, Sam Hamilton. “This year’s Art Week is a love letter to what the next generation of artists are doing in the metaverse.”

Metaverse Art Week 2022 comes to Decentraland this August from the 24th to 28th. Inspired by globally renowned art events, such as the Venice Biennale and Art Basel, Decentraland is presenting a Web3 experience with immersive art installations, performance and conceptual art productions, and NFT exhibitions unlike anything ever seen before. Metaverse Art Week 2022 will host a series of activities throughout dedicated spaces inside Decentraland, centered around a 3D Sculpture garden known as ‘Art Plaza,’ a gravity-defying open air museum. Adjacent to this area, there will be community-designed and art collective gallery exhibitions, which will introduce panels and round tables.

Metaverse Art Week 2022 Highlights

The Contemporary Art World in the Metaverse

• Frida Kahlo’s Family in collaboration with Ezel.Life, will launch the Frida Kahlo Family Red House, an immersive experience showcasing the first-half of Frida’s exceptional life. This unique partnership is bringing never-before-seen artwork from Kahlo to the metaverse through Ezel.Life’s newest NFT collection, enabling access to future Kahlo content launches. 
  
  “We are thrilled to partner with Decentraland to bring Frida Kahlo’s family home, The Red House, into the metaverse. This experience will uncover many untold stories and memories about Frida Kahlo’s challenges and triumphs that add depth to her exceptional life as an artist. The Red House is the first of many exciting projects Ezel.Life will deliver to digital audiences globally, including immersive experiences at UNESCO World Heritage sites Teotihuacán and Chichén Itzá,” said Pedro Quinzanos, co-founder and CEO of Ezel.Life. “We look forward to sharing our deep pipeline of unique content as we execute our mission of bringing time, culture, and humanity to Web3.”

• Artnet, one of the biggest art communities online, is exploring the idea of the Metaverse through performance art, live-poetry and AI during Metaverse Art Week. In collaboration with renowned artists Sasha Stiles and Hsinyen Wei, and others, the art experiences are happening across different venues during the week. An auditorium will host panel discussions around the future of art and technology. Limited artist wearables will be given away during the activation.
  
  “What does it mean to experience art in the Metaverse? Artnet was founded over 30 years ago as the first art platform online in the world, and technology has always been at the core of our DNA. As a brand that prides itself on developing critical conversation around art and technology, we wanted to explore the Metaverse in a meaningful context, to provoke thought and create truly unique encounters with art--- that is why we are inviting performance artists, poets and AI, human and non-human to interact with each other in Decentraland. We wanted to onboard our users to experience something uniquely valuable in the Metaverse.” Jiayin Chen VP, Artnet.
  

• Sotheby’s surprises with multiple new art collaborations, including the first jewelry sculpture in the metaverse with Metagolden. Throughout Art Week, Sotheby’s will display its permanent collection:
  
  “Sotheby’s held its first sales dedicated to NFTs and digital art just 18 months ago. In that time, we have been at the center of some of the most historic moments for digital art – from achieving record results for iconic projects like the Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, to devising innovative ways to exhibit digital art, not only in our physical galleries globally, but also in Decentraland,” said Michael Bouhanna, Vice-President of Sotheby's. “We were the first - and still the only - auction house to have built a dedicated virtual gallery. Our Decentraland space has allowed us to curate creative and thoughtful exhibitions of both digital art and a number of physical works of art too, such as Sandro Botticelli’s ‘The Man of Sorrows’, for which we transformed one of the galleries into an immersive cathedral-inspired space.”
  

• On behalf of the Decentraland Foundation, over a dozen artists will exhibit their work in a virtually outdoor sculpture garden. In this exhibition featuring some of the largest scale and highest fidelity works ever seen in Decentraland. Curator David Cash has brought this year’s theme “The World is Made of Code” to life with 3D sculptures, and video works by industry leaders including Krista Kim, legendary image-maker Nick Knight, and Lady Gaga’s creative Director Nicola Formichetti, amongst others. These pieces will be exhibited alongside works from a number of our featured galleries, including Artnet and Sotheby’s. Explore the outdoor sculpture garden to witness the full potential of 3D art in Decentraland and witness levels of creativity that extend beyond the confines of reality into the realm of the surreal
• UXart Lab will present internationally recognized Latin American masters from the 60s like Julio le Parc, Beto Ressano, Eduardo MacEntyre, and Gyula Kosice which represent the best of kinetic and pop art in the region, two of them currently exhibiting in the Venice Biennale which showcase the global impact and the power of decentralization cryptoart brings to society.
• International pop artist Burton Morris, in collaboration with House of Tang, has installed Pop!Wall, a 3D interactive art wall resembling Morris’s notorious popcorn kernel artwork. The kernel represents "the seed of a new idea," a perfect graphic image to represent the explosive creativity and innovation brimming from Web3's culture of co-creation. The ArtWall is located in Soho Plaza, where visitors are challenged to climb its structure and prove their metaverse aptitude through elite parkour skills. Those who reach the top are rewarded with a free pair of Pop!Soles, Burton's first NFT sneaker. Pop!Sole was facilitated by Banquet Labs.
  

Web3 Art Spaces

• Decentraland mainstay the “Cash Labs Gallery” will launch its permanent collection, featuring different shows on each of its four floors. The first floor will consist of pieces curated under the theme From Physical to Digital, highlighting NFT artists including Damien Hirst, Laurel Charleston, Justin Aversano, Kenny Schacter, David Henry Nobody Jr., and others. The second floor’s theme Art for the Metaverse highlights the digitally native art practices of Krista Kim, Bryan Brinkman, IX Shells, David Bianchi, and more. The third floor will feature a takeover by SHOWstudio which showcases Nick Knight’s first NFT collection.
  
  “One of the most exciting elements we can discuss regarding the metaverse is its limitless potential. Anything is possible—beyond the confines of reality,” said CEO and Founder of Cash Labs, David Cash. “This is the case from a novelty perspective, such as the ability to levitate or fly, but also from a point of practicality. If an artist wanted to create a 50-meter-tall sculpture of a human figure out of solid marble in physical form, this would prove prohibitively expensive. However, in the metaverse, anything is possible.”
  
  Continuing to innovate at the intersection of beauty, art and technology, Estée Lauder is participating in Decentraland Art Week with an exclusive POAP experience designed by Dr. Alex Box, renowned identity designer and pioneer of Beauty Futurism. Inspired by the legacy of visionary founder, Mrs. Estée Lauder, the POAP by Box will be available for attendees to collect and garner access to future Web3 activations from the Estée Lauder brand.

• In one of the first cross-metaverse collaborations, Spatial is proud to partner with Decentraland in supporting & lifting the voices of artists globally during Metaverse Art Week. Spatial has also partnered with Metamundo Studio to host events in the Luis Fern gallery which can be visited in both Spatial and Decentraland.
• Known Origin prepares a set of activations, including “Crypto Winter,” an amusing installation that reflects the vulnerability of the crypto market, and a curated exhibition in their gallery space and an Art Week Open Party.
• A Rarible co-curated exhibition with the Decentraland Foundation will take place in the magnificent beehive room, with Jeff Sambuco, Custom Horror, Dijiact, MazinFlow and other creators.
• Using an infinite engine, the OpenSea collection will showcase a bespoke infinite gallery that portrays every single NFT available in OpenSea.
• Makers Place commissions Alan Bolton to adapt his art to the Plaza plus special curated gallery exhibitions.
• SuperRare Labs is preparing an unedited exhibition in their gallery in the Voltaire District.

Digital Artists & Communities

• Gavin Shapiro will debut his Fibonacci piece, inspired by fractals and other patterns that emerge in nature, created in collaboration with Arben Vllasaliu.
• Crypto Valley NFT Gallery showcases Ukrainian Meta History - Museum of War. Meta History is the largest Ukrainian charitable NFT project. Its main task is to document the truth about the events in Ukraine in the language of art, and leave it forever imprinted on the blockchain.
• Decentraland Community Activations: the playful installation of Burton Morris x Doll House; the Cryptoarg exhibition in the Art Plaza; the Vuelta Art Collective presents a series of immersive metaverse installations composed by “The Tower Labyrinth'' and “The Pyramid Labyrinth”; The data art installations of Tauromaquia, an interactive data sculpture inspired by a bull-fighting scene, is deformed by the real time price changes of the top 100 crypto coins. Indie Village is a newly built artist’s neighborhood in Decentraland for independent artists and creators to collaborate on interdisciplinary art, and they have curated artwork by Studio As We Are, Vueltta, Infinite Objects, CADAF, Breezy Art, theVERSEverse and many others.
  

Metaverse Art Week 2022 is designed to showcase the latest technological innovations in digital art and design development through an extensive virtual world fair that brings the contemporary art world into further alignment with the emerging world of Web3. Metaverse Art Week 2022 aims to demonstrate the frontier of extended reality and the evolution of the visual internet.

About Decentraland
Launched in 2020, Decentraland is a virtual social world powered by the Ethereum blockchain and the first decentralized metaverse. Within the Decentraland platform, users can create, experience, and monetize content and applications as well as socialize and attend a wide range of daily community-driven events. Decentraland is unique in that it is owned, created, and governed by the people who use it every day. Through the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) users can submit proposals and even apply for grants for the community to vote on.

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