March 7, 2022

Beeple, YOU GOT MAIL, 2021-2022

Three hours before Beeple’s first gallery show at Jack Hanley Gallery opened today, a long line had already begun to form. Beeple made international headlines in 2021, when an NFT by him sold for $69 million at Christie’s and initiated a bona fide boom within the art world, but curiously, the Jack Hanley show had flown under the radar. 

Beeple is a natively digital artist who loves to shock. Beeple is the perfect face for NFTs and proponents of Web3 in general: they want out of the system, not to take sides within it.  How that maps onto the existing political spectrum is complicated, mostly because the space is very diverse.

Installation view of Beeple’s show at Jack Hanley, New York. Photo: Katya Kazakina

And Beeple included a few oil paintings as well. The works are painted and printed on traditional surfaces: oil on canvas, pastel on paper. There are large-scale prints, almost 7 feet tall and 11 feet wide.  All works are accompanied by associated NFTs that go to the owner of the physical works.

Hanley stated a number of folks had expressed curiosity in shopping for every of the works.”It’s not clear how we’re going to type that out but,” he stated. Hanley appear shocked by the road he had seen rising outdoors—an uncommon sighting at his gallery or, for that matter, any New York gallery. I advised him the viewers outdoors his door was excited. “Are they?” Hanley responded. “I’ve been signing payments in right here all day. I’ll come out and see it.”