Christie’s Auction House is Betting Big on Digital Talent
Check out FEWOCiOUS and Hackatao in the coming weeks!
Top Left: Year 1, Age 14-It Hurts to Hide; Top Right: Year 2, Age 15-My Mama’s Dream; Bottom Left: Year 3, Age 16-When A Child Feels Lost; Bottom Right: Year 4, Age 17-His Name is Victor
FEWOCiOUS: This Is My Life
Victor Langlois aka FEWOCiOUS is an incredibly talented 18-year-old artist who has exploded onto the art scene in the past year. Victor’s story is an emotional one. He grew up in Las Vegas with an abusive father and ran away when he was 12 to live with his grandparents. Unfortunately, Victor struggled as the new kid at school and did not get support for his artistic aspirations from his grandparents. Due to his circumstances, Victor plunged himself into his creative processes and learned how to use Photoshop and Procreate among other tech tools in developing his own artistic style. His art reveals his pain through his journey; his feelings are raw as his tears run down the faces he illustrates. The digital renditions cry out loud and the combination of the painful cries and the contortions of the faces he depicts, can bring the viewer to tears. Fortunately, Victor’s series ends with Year 5, Age 18, I Taught Myself How To Fly, which depicts a young person ready to take off. Victor announces, “I am alive” “I can fly.”
He certainly can and did. Victor now has financial freedom and has moved out of his grandparents’ home to a home of his own in Seattle.
He has emerged as one of the hottest young stars of the digital art movement. In March of 2021, FEWOCiOUS sold more than $4 million worth of NFTs on Nifty Gateway and continues to explore new avenues to meet the demand of his super fans from custom sneakers to clothing and now to Christie’s.
His Christie’s debut series is titled: Hello, I’m Victor (FEWOCiOUS ) and This Is My Life. It is a coming-of-age story through his artistic creations. Victor will be selling five new digital art pieces, along with physical paintings and an assortment of his never-before-seen drawings from each year. This series will capture each of his formative years of growth from age 14 to 18 as a young transgender artist in the digital arena.
“Each of FEWOCiOUS’ five new 1/1 NFT auction pieces and paintings captures a year of his growth and the transformation of both his artwork and his inspiring journey from Las Vegas to Seattle, and from Victoria to Victor Langlois. Each 1/1 piece is paired with a 1/1 original painting plus a collection of newly and never before minted doodles, drawings and journal entries, hand selected from his archives from that year (14 for year 14, 15 for year 15, and so on).
Upon request, Victor will also personally be delivering the physical painting of each 1/1 auction piece, along with physical prints of the archival pieces, in a custom suitcase to each collector across the world, an ode to how he transported his earliest drawings and paintings, when leaving behind his past in pursuit of a brighter future.”
Year 5, Age 18-I Taught Myself How To Fly
The auction will be held from June 23 10AM - June 30 2PM (EDT). We believe that FEWOCiOUS is an inspiration to many people across the globe and demonstrates that anything is possible with hard work, dedication, and a little luck.
Hackatao x Christie’s Bring Leonardo Da Vinci’s Head of a Bear into the Metaverse
July 3-8, Christie’s London will present a companion piece to Leonardo da Vinci’s study Head of a Bear where the 15th and 21st centuries meet in collaboration with digital artists Hackatao. “Hack” emphasizes the pleasure of going under the skin and discovering what lays underneath, while “Tao” references the Yin and Yang of the creative balance of the artistic duo Sergio Scalet and Nadia Squarci of Milan, Italy. The dynamic team formed in 2007 experimenting with all sorts of mediums and expressing themselves in both physical and digital creations. Hackatao’s art pieces often engage intellectual challenges and incorporate issues of society, environment, humanity and crypto, as well as references to art history, symbolism, and psychology. Scalet and Squarci moved in 2011 to a small medieval village nestled in the Carnic Alps, detaching themselves from the energy of the city, thus allowing them to create with more natural materials, while still being connected to the digital art community through technology. Since 2018, the pair have been pioneers of the crypto art space. Many of their works link the past with the present and show that even with the passing centuries, the dramas and needs of humans do not change much in essence, only in form.
Thus, it is fitting that Hackatao was chosen for the rebirth of da Vinci’s Head of a Bear which they bring majestically to life. “This specially commissioned digital work will be unveiled at Christie’s King Street from 3 July, as part of the Classic Week view, visible via the Aria AR app. The digital work has been donated to The Museum of Crypto Art where it will subsequently appear.”
“Hover over the image of da Vinci’s Head of A Bear and, via the Aria App, the bear head becomes animated, fur undulating and ruffling and head-turning, and ultimately the mouth of the bear opens and the viewer enters into its jaws. The transition from Leonardo’s drawing, through the mapped 3D head, to the final digital drawings resembles an ocean wave. Throughout this very technical metamorphosis from physical to digital, the attention to detail driven by nature’s movement ties the two works together. Leonardo da Vinci was at the forefront of art at his age and now, in 2021 his work has inspired this response by Hackatao, with each artist taking their inspiration and vision from the everyday subject matter.”
Hackatao are visionaries who have developed a language that ties new media to nature. They use the black and white of text with swaths of color that highlight questions which abound in society today. Through their dynamic renders, they continue to experiment and probe; what lies ahead?!
Stay Curious!
~NFT Art Source