GUGGENHEIM BILBAO

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BODEGA OTAZU

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PALMA DE MALLORCA

Guggenheim Bilbao, Jeff Koons Puppy

ART AND SPACE

GUGGENHEIM BILABAO

This month’s Travelogue with a focus on Spain begins with a visit to the Guggenheim, Bilbao with a private walk-through of the exhibition Art and Space with curator Manuel Cirauqui and Polish conceptual artist Agnieszka Kurant, whose new works are included in this impressive and extensive group show. Then we head to Pamplona, Navarra for the weekend for a VIP visit to Bodega Otazu, an impressive new private collection of contemporary art, located on a picturesque vineyard in Northern Spain, owned by the Penso Family from Venezuela. Included in this segment is an exclusive interview with the owners and curators of the collection Sofia Mariscal and Guillermo Penso Blanco. Finally, we end this months Travelogue with a weekend trip to Palma de Mallorca to cover Unique Multiples’ first pop up and gallery collaboration with Jelato Love, a new space for contemporary art run by curator Ché Zara Blomfield and Javier Esteban, featuring the first solo exhibition of British artist Michael Pybus in Spain and the launch of Unique Multiples inaugural edition.

This year I finally decided to make the pilgrimage to Northern Spain, not to walk the Camino de Santiago, but to visit the much-lauded Guggenheim Bilbao- Frank Gehry’s most celebrated architectural monument and what Architect Phillip Johnson has described as "the greatest building of our time." While I must admit I am not as staunch a Gehry fan as Johnson, once I stood face to face with this undulating, glinting, mirage, clad in titanium steel I was quickly seduced. The traditionally industrial city has been made over thanks to Gehry’s bold architecture and the museum itself has become a huge cultural draw, bringing in over 1.3 million visitors a year and boasting an impeccable collection featuring several stand out site specific, monumental works. These include American minimalist Richard Serra’s enormous, gravity-defying installation of hot-rolled steel, Torqued Elipses and his 100-meter-long Snake, permanently installed in the museums “Fish gallery;” an imposing installation of nine, 12 meter tall, double-sided L.E.D. signboards by American provocateur Jenny Holzer; Louise Bourgeois’ towering bronze spider with spindled legs, Maman, ominously poised on the bank of the Nervion river; and a giant green floral Koons puppy of ridiculous proportions at the museums front entrance, stalwartly greeting all those ‘pilgrims’ who made the journey to Northern Spain just to see this Contemporary art spectacle.

Louise Bourgeois Maman

I could not help thinking that these monumental and imposing works on such a massive scale were so quintessentially American, a reminder that the "Guggenheim effect" has also been denounced by critics as a symbol of gentrification and cultural imperialism. Soft power and cultural capital aside, imposing is an understatement here, as the singular architecture, geographical location and these outstanding monumental works made for an unforgettable and lasting impression.

After snapping the requisite selfies in front of Koon’s behemoth West Highland terrier carpeted in flora, we ventured inside and were immediately confronted by Jenny Holzer’s dizzying wall panel of vertical LED screens. I have been a fan of Holzer since moving to NYC years ago and have never tired of running into her widely disseminated text based works. Holzer’s first appropriation of electronic signage was originally flashed on Times Square’s Spectacolor board in 1982, and her Truisms such as “Abuse of power comes as no surprise” and “Money creates taste” have become as ubiquitous as her Inflammatory Essays– a series of commercially printed posters that were wheat pasted all over lower Manhattan in the 80s. I even came across one of Holzer’s Truisms at Art Basel Hong Kong back in 2015, where the fair organizers had brashly printed “Money Creates Taste” on the canvas totes brandished by all those HNWIs walking about the fair.

Jenny Holzer Installation for Bilbao

Conceived of as a permanent, site-specific work for the Guggenheim’s Gehry-designed building, Installation for Bilbao reflects Holzer's expanding engagement with architectural space in the late 1980s and 1990s and more specifically, with the institutional space of museums. Over the last three decades her installations have raised questions about the viability of public art, the commodification and consumption of art, and the relationship between the personal and the political. The texts are a variation of Arno, a body of writing originally composed for a project benefiting AIDS research, adapted for a 1996 outdoor projection in Florence. Viewers are invited to walk through the vertical panels to the “other side” of this cascade of quickly falling electronic syntax transmitted in Basque, Spanish and English, for a glimpse “behind the curtain.” The interior of the massive two-sided LED screens simply reflect themselves back in a mirror on the opposing wall, creating an even more vertigo inducing, dynamic, visual experience.

After spending sometime walking in and out of this amazing Holzer we moved on to the next space, which felt more like an airplane hanger than a museum gallery. This wing of the museum was filled with Richard Serra’s site-specific installation called A Matter of Time, built explicitly for the Guggenheim Bilbao. I never bothered to see his original (much smaller) exhibition that included some similar Torqued Elipses at Gagosian in Chelsea a few years back, as the queue to get in was worse than the inexplicable throngs lined up for butter crème cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery in the West Village.

Richard Serra, A Matter of Time

This was definitely a treat worth waiting for however, even with the 4.5 hour drive from Madrid up to Basque Country. Serra’s towering, curved, massive steel plates, swerved and swayed in an undulating and heady rhythm creating a labyrinth that one could get lost in. These 1000-ton plates of molded steel seemed to defy gravity and appeared to elegantly jut out of the museums concrete floors anchored by some invisible apparatus. As the museum texts aptly points out, "Serra deftly manages to transform all perceived space and time by arranging the works in order to move the viewer through them and through the space surrounding them, creating a feeling of space in motion where the entire room becomes part of the sculptural field."

Walking through these seemingly never-ending walled enclosures, I imagined what it must have been like contending with Serra’s infamous and now defunct public sculpture Tilted Arc, at Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan, as a harried office worker just trying to grab bagel at lunch. Serra’s massive wall of steel in the public square of this corporate building drew such wide criticism from the public that it was finally removed following a long and acrimonious public debate in 1989. While thoroughly engaging in this magical museum setting, I can imagine how frustrating it must have been to have to walk around Serra’s imposing steel wall daily. I would love to hear Jane Jacobs’ thoughts on that particular public art debate. Accompanying this installation was a wonderful in depth documentary film about Serra and his work, a must see for anyone who is not familiar with his impressive oeuvre, history, or this particular body of work.

Anselm Kiefer, The Renowned Orders of the Night

Continuing on with the tour, we walked up to the second floor where we explored the rest of the galleries which featured the permanent collection: predominantly American and European Post War works, Ab-Ex, Pop, some German Expressionism, Johns, Rothko, Basquiat, Warol, a particularly spectacular Anslem Kiefer and DeKooning's ebullient Villa Borghese, nothing really surprising, but very good work by all the usual suspects.

Besides the permanent collection on view the new curator Manuel Ciroqui, formerly assistant curator at DIA in New York, had curated an extensive exhibition entitled Art and Space, which included work from the permanent collection, but also new acquisitions such as that of Polish artist Agnieszka Kurant. Kurant is a New York-based artist originally from Lodz, (and probably one of the youngest female artists in the Guggenheim), whom I had originally met in Stockholm while we were both doing CuratorLab- a curatorial residency at Konstfack University in Sweden. I later showed her work at my gallery Curators Without Borders in Berlin, in an exhibition I curated called Invisible / Invincible: A ticket to Nothingness.

In that show back in 2007, Agnieska showed a talking parrot from Poland, who she had trained to say “I am not a bird.” This crazy Polish parrot sat by my desk at the gallery squawking incessantly about his existential dilemma for a full month in my ear. Although that was somewhat of a bane, this was probably the most fun I had ever had working on exhibition. Amongst other works, the show included a massive pile of take away posters from Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Christopher Wool on 'loan' from the Hoffman collection; a stealth “fighter jet” driven in on a trailer from Vienna by the Knowbotics Research collective; an invisible wall text that could only be read with a black light, by Austrian conceptual artist Werner Reiterer; some paper rocks made of declassified Stasi documents by Daniel Knorr who represented Romania in the Venice Biennale in 2005 with his empty pavilion; and a pair of gallerist Johann König​’s old ‘coke bottle’ glasses, a last minute contribution from NY based artist and enfant terrible Jordan Wolfson.

Agnieszka Kurant, End of signature, Guggenheim New York

Agnieska and I had spent time at the Moscow Biennale prior to this, where she had graffited her name in invisible ink on the wall of one the exhibition halls in what I thought was a lark at the time. This small yet bold gesture turned out to be the inspiration for my “Invisible” exhibition in Berlin. Flash forward 8 years later to 2015 at the Guggenheim, New York, where Agnieszka’s work entitled End of Signature was writ large, in neon tubing on the facade of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic 5^thAve. building across from Central Park. In this work Kurant investigates her interest in the loss of individual authorship in the face of larger economic and cultural forces and the resulting development of collective intelligence. With End of Signature, she encouraged "visitors to contribute their own signatures, which were collected, combined, and transformed through a software program into one crowd-sourced communal autograph and then projected onto the Guggenheim Museum’s facade at nightfall, where the collective signature was signed and resigned in perpetuity, declaring the multiple identities of museum visitors, the art world, or society at large."

Agnieska had invited me to a talk at the museum about Art and Space, along with Damien Ortega, Marcius Galán, Asier Mendizabal, Ivan Navarro, Sergio Prego, and Alyson Shotz, moderated by curator Manuel Cirauqui, which turned out to be my excuse for finally making the trip up to Bilbao. Ciroqui’s point of departure for Art and Space was the unlikely collaboration between Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida​ and German philosopher Martin Heidegger in 1969. This resulted in the publication of an artist’s book whose title inspired that of this exhibition, which presented more than 100 works by international artists and was meant to act as a reinterpretation of the history of abstraction over the past six decades. As described in the exhibition text, “Art and Space was conceived to pay tribute to the capacity of Frank Gehry’s building to generate unique dialogues between its breathtaking spaces and key works from the modern and contemporary era, including works from the permanent collection, selections from the constellation of Guggenheim’s other outposts and a few loans from major collections…resulting in a celebration of place and architecture through art.“

Alyson Shotz, Object for Reflection

Agnieszka Kurant and curator Manuel Ciroqui graciously walked us through the exhibit before it was open to the public, along with a few other artists in the exhibition, including Mexican installation artist Damian Ortega and the Brazilian artist Marcius Galán. It was an extensive and thoughtful grouping of works which spanned over 50 years and included mostly sculptural works and installation, but also a few paintings, photographs and some video.

In her work Agnieszka Kurant investigates what she calls “phantom capital”—the invisible or imagined forces that influence society economically and politically and the negative space that connotes the negated, omitted, or hidden— be it in the realm of politics, economics, information, or culture. Conceptually inhabiting the intersections between art, technology, science and philosophy, Kurant brings many strategies to her work—from conventional research to sophisticated data analysis.

Continuing her examination of “phantom capital” in this exhibition, Agnieszka’s work Air Rights is a series of three plinths with small black meteors surreptitiously hovering above them. Agnieszka uses the levitation of her meteorites to evoke the convergence of the artistic value of air, (referencing Marcel Duchamp’s bottled and commodified Air de Paris, 1919), with it's real estate value in today’s economy- specifically, the empty air space above skyscrapers which is bought and sold by real estate developers. Ciroqui playfully showed us how the floating sculptures moved when you just blew on them ever so slightly, revealing just how fragile they were under the spell of the hidden magnetic components that Agnieszka installed within the plinths, yet another reference to the power of unseen invisible forces.

Agnieszka Kurant, Air Rights

Damien Ortega featured one of his well-known disassembled Volkswagen Beetles, an incredible monument to his practical, hands on skill and ability to deconstruct the everyday, quotidian and concrete objects we are surrounded by, and display them like atoms floating in space. According to the exhibition text, “For Ortega, meaning does not belong to singular forms but rather is produced by the relationships that spring up between multiple things. Recombining and disassembling mass-produced and vernacular artifacts, he charts the constellations of social, economic, and political forces that underlie material culture.” In this case, Cosmic Thing, “the people’s car” originating in Nazi Germany and manufactured only recently in Mexico and Brazil, is revealed as an emblem of political ideology and the inescapable reach of global capital. As we entered the gallery Ortega was hoisted up in a mechanical “cherry picker” adjusting some of the dangling car parts suspended by invisible wire from the ceiling.

Damien Ortega, Cosmic Thing

A new artist I discovered in the exhibition was Brazilian artist Marcius Galan. His piece intervened directly in the walls, floor, and ceiling of the gallery by means of tints and plays on light that created the illusion of a glass panel that bisects the space diagonally. Art and Space also included works by Zarina Hashmi, Isa Genzken, Eva Hesse, Gordon Matta Clark, Vija Celmins, Pierre Huyghe, Bruce Nauman, Jean-Luc Moulène, Eduardo Chillida, Julie Mehretu, and Cristina Iglesias, amongst many others.

Marcus Galan, Diagonal Section

BODEGA OTAZU

PAMPLONA, NAVARRA

Bodega Otazu, Pamplona

The weekend before ARCO we traveled up North from Madrid, this time travelling five hours to Navarra, Pamplona, for a VIP tour of Bodega Otazu, an idyllic, sprawling, family-owned vineyard, featuring the Kablanc collection. Bordering France and located in the heart of the Navarra wine region, Bodega Otazu is the northernmost producer of red wine in Spain, and is one of the few Spanish wineries that has obtained the highest certification for the quality of its vineyards: Pago Appellation. This beautiful location boasts a 13^thcentury Chapel, a large family villa and a pristine Bodgea, housing not only the label’s auspiscious range of wines and a wine museum, but also the contemporary art collection, curated by Guillermo Penso and Sofia Mariscal.

Bodega Cellar

Arriving Saturday afternoon, we spent the day perusing the property starting with a reception and wine tasting, sampling their delicious range of wines, including Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo and Merlot, followed by a private tour in small groups, led by the very knowledgeable team who taught us about the history of the vineyard, the micro climate, the origin of the grapes and the careful attention to detail in all aspects of the production of their wines. Sofia and Guillermo later took over the tour themselves, talking about the art works and the exhibition entitled Pretext(s) that they had curated just for this occasion.

We visited the extensive collection housed inside the historic bodega itself, the old cellar - a magnificent building dating back from 1840- now turned into a museum, which hosts important pieces from Spanish artists such as Manolo Valdés, José Guerrero, and Baltasar Lobo, combined with contemporary works of artists such as Jong Oh, Liam Gillick, Eva Rothschild, Andrea Galvani, Daniela Libertad, and Tony Orrico, who did an impressive endurance-based drawing performance in the cellar of the Bodega itself later that evening before the dinner. The collection is also spread throughout the winery and landscape, featuring works by Jaume Plensa, Jim Dine, and Alfredo Jaar each in dialogue with nature.

13th Century Chapel, Jim Dine

The selection of works that were on view this year were organized around the theme of Pretext(s), weaving every work in the collection together “with a complex set of themes, the idea of everything being connected organically and the round trip between idea to the object and from the subject to the concept.” It was an all-encompassing yet concise way to contextualise and link together so many diverse works in the collection. Below is the full interview with the dynamic couple who curated the show, Guillermo Penso and Sofia Mariscal.

SB: First of all congratulations on your recent engagement...what exciting news! I am so sad that I cannot make it to the wedding in Mexico City, I am sure it will be quite the celebration!

GP: Thank you so much. We are very happy.

SB: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me about your collection and the bodega. This year was my first visit to Otazu and first time in Navarra and it was an unforgettable trip. The bucolic scenery paried with the pristine bodega, delicious wines and expansive collection of contemporary art made for an unforgettable experience. Now that I am based back in Madrid I look forward to visiting next year to see what new works you have added to the already impressive collection.

GP: Hopefully one of many visits. It is a very dynamic project and every time you come back you´ll find a lot of changes and new projects.

SB: I wanted to ask how you and your family decided to combine the bodega in Navarra and the Kablanc collection, but first perhaps you can tell me a little more about the origins of the Kablanc collection itself?

GP: It was a very natural process. Art had always been part of our lifes so when we acquired the estate in 1989, we realized we had the perfect place to combine the family passions: wine and art. The family had always collected but we never sought to create a structured collection, even less one opened to the public. Nonetheless, 7 years ago my father had the vision of creating a contemporary, international art collection that would be hosted and merged with the wine project. In this sense the gratest challenge we faced was how to integrate art beyond simply hanging paintings on walls. During these past years artists have participated in our biennale prize, they have created site-specific works, designed lables, developed projects and have even become enologists to blend their own wines.

SB: Does the family collection differ from the collection that you and Sofia have curated? If so, how?

GP: To some extent the Kablanc collection, given its public nature, responds to a differnet logic and internal dynamics than the original family one. In this sense the collection has undergone different phases and advisors until some 3 years ago when we started managing it.

SB: When was the collection founded and what is the name Kablanc indicative of?

GP: The family collection started some 30 years ago. However, the Kablanc contemporary art collection now showcased at the winery was started some 7 years ago. Kablanc is a name conceived as an acronym from the family´s last names.

SB: Did your family begin the collection in Venezuela?

GP: Art has always been an important part of our lives and collecting a living process that started some 30 years ago. Yes, we have spent an important part of our lives there.

SB: The Kablanc collection seems to contain a lot of contemporary art from the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America…is this the specific focus for the collection?

GP: Yes. The idea was to create a collection that could not only be reflection of our interest and history but also one that can shed light on important relationships that have not been as present in the mainstream as we feel they should. The private collection gathers mostly pieces by Spanish and Venezuelan masters. Mostly artist from my parents generation whose vision laid the foundation for today´s contemporary art.

SB: I know that you studied philosophy and political sociology – did you also study art history or was your interest in contemporary art cultiviated by your family?

GP: I had a very diverse education that started with telecommunication engineering and ended up with a PhD in Philosophy. Nonetheless, art has mostly come from my upbringing rather than a formal education or study.

SB: Did your study of philisophy and political sociology inform the academic and humanist persective of the collection?

GP: Most definitely. I think every collection is reflection of the collectors interest. Being hosted in a 1000 year old estate has made us view both the collection and the winery as parts of an holistic project where part sheds light on different aspects of culture as a whole.

SB: How did your family end up deciding to settle in Navarra, Spain?

GP: My dad is from Navarra. Otazu started as way for my family to return to its roots and add value to a land they hold dear.

SB: Every 2 years you invite 4 artists to submit a proposal for the Otazu Biennale that you have established for which you comission a monumental site specific “intervention” can you tell me more about this?

GP: Yes, the idea is to get artists engaged in a dialogue with the landscape and the rich history of Otazu. This year Otazu held its third Biennale...It was the seccond edition with Asier Mendizabal winning the foundation prize with a wonderful concrete piece called Crudo Zarzo (2017). For the second edition the participant artist were Pedro Cabrita Reis, Roman Ondák and Damian Ortega.

SB: Can you tell me more about Otazu’s Biennale and how you came up with the concept for this and what it entails?

GP: The idea was that every two years we would invite 4 important contemporary artist to propose a site-specific monumental piece for a space we designate within the boundries of the estate. The winning piece is then produced and the artist would design a wine label inspired by it for a wine called Bienal. The idea was to profit from the wonderful landscape and history that the estate has in order to create uniques works that reflect both on our project and on the artist´s practice.

SB: Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar won the first edition of the Biennale and produced his installation of glass cubes of water, sound and color entitled The Color of our Lives, and preiminent Spanish artist Asier Mendizabal won the second edition, creating a stunning concrete piece Crudo Zarzo, both situated on the expansive grounds of the Bodega itself. Can you tell me more about this year’s winner, how you select your jury and what your criteria is for choosing an artist's proposal?

GP: The jury is made by collectors, instutions and the foundation. This year we had Manolo Borja from Reina Sofia and Julieta Gonzalez from Jumex and me. The main criteria is the integration with the space and creativity within an artist practice.

SB: Sofia has been running her own gallery in Mexico city MARSO, do you and Sofia work collaboratively, across borders with each others' prospective projects?

GP: We share the same passions and is not rare to see me working at Marso´s stand or Sofia giving tour to potential wine clients.

SB: Sofia – you run your own gallery in Mexico City …does your program inform what you collect for Otazu or are these two completely separate projects for you?

SM: Guillermo and I met through art and we share similar interest and taste in art. MARSO and Otazu are complete independent projects but of course our taste and interest are reflected in both programs.

SB: I am familiar with a few of your artists – Andrea Galvani (whose work I love) Americans- Tony Orrico, who did an incredible performance this year at Otazu, and Virginia Colwell, and Daniela Libertad – all very interesting and diverse practices…Can you tell me more about your program at MARSO and what your interests are as a gallerist?

SM: I’ve been always interested in artist whose practices have a deep research background, strong formal components and an overall poetic contents. Many of the artists I work with are interested in exploring aspects of the body and space in a political / historical context.

SB: Does the gallery and your roster have a particular focus?

SM: We’ve been trying to invite artists from many different countries to react to the Mexican / Latin American context. We’re not focussed on Latin American artists but we can definitely say that many of our artists react and introduce their experience in Mexico in our residency program.

SB: You seem to have a very collaborative and educational approach…can you tell me more about your interdisiplinary programming?

SM: We started the project as a non profit - curatorial initiative. I come from and academic background, and research, education, editorial and archive projects have been always part of the project. We’re now in the process of becoming a foundation again. Focussing in the residency program, educational and editorial project.

SB: MARSO had a fantastic booth at ARCO this year, and the gallery seems to be making quite a name for itself…do you plan to stay in Mexico city and continue running the space?

SM: Thank you, I’m glad you found our booth interesting! We always try to curate our booths. The gallery has been running successfully for almost 5 years, we’ve introduced many young artists to the international circuit and offer a space to show international artists in Mexico. This year I felt it was a good opportunity to go back to the project’s origins as a non profit, so we’ll be launching MARSO Foundation, that’s going to focus in the residency program, and an editorial and educational program and of course is going to be linked to Otazu’s foundation activities in Spain, our idea is to keep on building international bridges to art, in this case especially between Mexico and Spain.

SB: It seems you have a fantastic future together curating, collecting, running the Bodega and building the Foundation and family collection. I look forward to following you both and wish you the best of luck! See you next year in Otazu!

SM: Thank you Sarah, that’s our hope! We’re looking forward to seeing you in Mexico and in Otazu!

UNIQUE MULTIPLES & JELATO LOVE

PRESENT MICHAEL PYBUS

PALMA DE MALLORCA

Last but not least, we head to Palma de Mallorca, the Balearic island off the coast of Spain, for the launch of Unique Multiples' inaugural edition and our very first brick and mortar pop up event with Jelato Love on the occasion of British artist Michael Pybus’ first solo show in Spain. The last time I had been to the Balearic islands was a visit to Ibiza in my 20s with a raucous, jet setting group of friends from NYC for a summer of DJs, beach hopping and espuma parties. This trip was quite different. Although Palma is also a popular tourist destination particularly with the Brits and the Germans, and it's international airport is one of the busiest in Spain used by 26.3 million passengers in 2016 alone, it is thankfully, a much more sedate island than Ibiza.

Michael Pybus, Installation view, Jelato Love

Palma is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands in Spain and is situated on the south coast of Mallorca in the Mediterranean. While considered a peripheral art center, there is a smattering of contemporary art galleries on the balmy, palm tree populated island, including Lundgren Gallery, Kewenig, Horrach Moya and Pelaires, but also worth visiting are the Es Baluard Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Casal Solleric, Museu Fundación Juan March and Fundacion Pilar i Joan Miro. Newcomer Jelato Love is a welcome addition, adding a much younger and edgier program. They recently set up shop in a neighbourhood known for its proliferation of Gelaterias…thus the name, Jelato Love.

Es Baulard Museum of Contemporary Art

Hailing from New Zealand, curator Che Zara Blomfield and her partner Javier Esteban, (originally from Palma), decided the neighborhood needed a bit of culture and contemporary art to break up the over abundance of gelato shops servicing all the tourists in the area. Che had formerly run the Composing Rooms in London and Berlin, featuring predominately Post Internet artists including Jon Rafman, Harm van den Dorpel and Petra Cortright, and was the first gallery to show Cortright’s work in London before her meteoric rise to fame and before the infamous, LA-based dealer Stefan Simchowitz decided to represent her.

Jelato Love had planned to open with a solo show of British artist Michael Pybus about the same time tha​t Unique Multiples was planning to launch our inaugural edition with him, so we decided to join forces and promote the exhibition and Michael’s work together in Spain for the first time. The collaboration proved to very fruitful and the show and gallery opened with great success. The exhibition's paintings, drawings and Michael’s first edition with Unique Multiples’ were placed in collections in Mallorca, Barcelona and Madrid, as well as the United States and the United Kingdom.

Jelato Love, Michael Pybus Installation view

Unique Multiples' edition with Michael Pybus and our event with Jelato Love this past April, was the first of many upcoming collaborations. On an ongoing basis, Unique Multiples will periodically introduce these new museum quality editions by international artists, where they will be featured on our website and available for purchase online.

We are also committed to promoting these artists and their works with institutions, partner galleries, curated exhibitions, and international brick and mortar pop ups such as this one. We feel that while art is increasingly being discovered, experienced and sold online, with the rise of Instagram and other online art platforms, the galleries, non-profit art spaces and institutions who exhibit and promote these artists still make up the foundation of the art ecosystem and play an extremely vital role in the dissemination of contemporary art.

We hope that this new and novel collaborative and international approach enables bourgeoning and established collectors alike to collect these unique artworks directly from the artists, offering more access in an art market that is typically difficult to navigate. We also hope this will enable emerging artists to connect with a more global audience through our online platform and international partnerships.

In addition to this new model for collaboration, production and dissemination, all Unique Multiples' editions are certified with our partner Verisart on the blockchain, offering collectors and artists ironclad certificates of authenticity for their works. This creates much needed trust and a new industry standard in what is typically an opaque market, especially for editioned art works and especially as more art is being sold online.

You can find Unique Multiples' edition by Michael Pybus available for purchase online here.

You can find the full press release for the exhibition at Jelato Love here.

Stay tuned for our upcoming inaugural blog post at Unique Multiples for more on Blockchain technology and its use cases in contemporary art in “The Tipping Point for Art and Technology: Part 2” and save the date for the launch of our second edition with Canadian artist John Monteith at Spike Magazine in Berlin on the occasion of the 10th Berlin Biennale June 13th!

John Monteith, Kidred Spirits,

Unique Multiples Edition

coming soon