After a four-year break in the city, the New Art Dealers Alliance (Nada) inaugurated its 2022 New York edition this week (5-8 May) at Pier 36. The event will feature 120 galleries, non-profit organizations, and cultural partners who will support new artists’ work.
This artwork by the Japanese art collective Exonemo invites the observer to “rescue” a virtual pet by scanning a QR code, one of several pieces at the fair this year to feature an NFT aspect. If a pet is not acquired within 10 minutes, it will morph into a new pet with fresh AI-generated patterns.
The sarcastic piece responds to growing worldwide bans on the selling of caged pets and the ethics of “euthanizing” a digital being, in addition to exposing the increasing merging of the physical and virtual worlds. The piece is currently in a beta stage and will be upgraded for a July showing at NowHere.
Stephen Thorpe, a British painter, and Jeremy Couillard, an American digital artist, have collaborated to create a video game arcade-like environment, with Thorpe’s vibrant paintings of arcade games in nature flanking the booth’s walls and Couillard’s video game Fuzz Dungeon streaming in video installations at the center.
The game, which was previously webcast 24/7 from the gallery’s basement, was a mash-up of apocalyptic visuals, text, and ambient music by the artists Chris Parrello and Lobby Hotel. It will be available in an unusual format, as a computer on which the game will be downloaded.
A cultural partner of the fair, the online gallery Daata presents a compelling eight-minute video by the multidisciplinary artist Trulee Hall
The work depicts a primary character that disintegrates, multiplies, and reassembles, resulting in a two-headed figure that masturbates, kisses itself, and meditates. The work is described as a “narrative where multiple personalities and possibilities of self are visualised via the metaphor and physicality of a two-headed body,” as well as a “dark monastic fantasy of sex dolls, self-love, and the out-of-body experience.” It is accompanied by an ominous soundtrack. It’s being sold as a non-functional toy for $3,000.
and then