Numerous top-tier traders have been quick to plant a flag in the burgeoning world of cryptocurrencies over the past year. Larry Gagosian was not one of them.
"I really don't know much about it," the trader said of the tokenized art when Wall Street Journal in April 2021, after one of its star artists, Urs Fisher, partnered with rival gallery Pace for an NFT project. "I'm not an expert on that, but I pay attention," he added in a financial times profile earlier this year.
Now, after months of polling from the sidelines, it looks like Gagosian is ready to join the game. Through a partnership with the Coinbase exchange platform, the gallery will now accept payments in Bitcoin, Ether, and USD Coin.
Takashi Murakami, Qinghua: after Kitaลji Rosanjin (2022) ยฉ Takashi Murakami / Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. Courtesy of Gagosian.
โOf course, we have been paying close attention to NFTs for some time now; we've looked at what worked well and what didn't," a gallery spokesperson told Artnet News. "Our goal is first and foremost to support our artists and customers to the best of our ability, so we felt it was important for us to take the time to educate ourselves in this field before diving in."
The representative said the gallery has created an internal working group on the subject of digital art "supported by an expert in the market."
โWe are having a number of ongoing conversations with our artists about their interest in this space and continue to explore the myriad ways we can get involved in the crypto and NFT community.โ
Takashi Murakami, Murakami.Flower #0085 (2022) ยฉ Takashi Murakami / Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. Courtesy of Gagosian.
The news was packaged in an announcement that Gagosian will mount a Takashi Murakami solo exhibition this May, making it the Japanese artist's first New York show with the gallery in eight years.
Fittingly, it will feature two body works based on two of Murakami's own NFT projects: his popular 2021 series of CloneX Avatars and its course Murakami.Flowers Serie.
Like Gagosian, Murakami took his time studying the NFT landscape before entering. the the artist announced his inaugural NFT release on March 30, 2021, less than three weeks later Christie's Historic Beeple's Sale Every daybut changed his mind just a few days later.
โI hadn't really digested what NFT art was yet, and I also didn't understand the context of cryptocurrencies,โ Murakami recalled in a recent article. instagram post announcing the relaunch of Murakami.Flowers.
Since then, the artist explained, he has been doing his homework, buying and trading cryptocurrencies to better understand the mechanics of the market.
"I'm sure there's still a lot about this space that I don't understand, and I'll need a lot of guidance from everyone," he wrote. "Having said that, I have quite a sensitive mind, and if I start to panic, I might evacuate myself to avoid a mental breakdown, I hope you understand."
Developed in collaboration with RTFKT Studios and released last November, Murakami's CloneX series comprises 20,000 randomly generated digital figures, each of which, like Bored Apes or Cyptopunks, is dressed in different outfits and paraphernalia.
Murakami.Flowers, meanwhile, features 11,664 pixelated flower images, a riff on the artist's favorite motif rendered in his signature Superflat style. They are expected to hit the market later this spring.
At Gagosian, the artist will present sculptures and paintings based on the two series. Also included in the exhibition, called โAn Arrow Through History,โ will be a series of circular paintings inspired by fish illustrations on a porcelain vase from China's Yuan dynasty (c. 1279โ1368).
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