The alpha:
- Web3 mixed media photographer Justin Aversano will present the latest iteration of his well-known Smoke and Mirrors collection at Gabba Gallery in Los Angeles on March 25.
- The exhibition will consist of 78 limited edition papyrus silkscreen prints of portraits attached to NFT. Viewers can view the prints, which depict “healers, spiritualists, creatives, and family members,” through April 8.
- Aversano tells nft now that he has a particularly intimate connection to the pieces in this exhibit. “All these artworks, all these art projects really come from a place of death in myself,” he explains.
dive deeper
Justin Aversano is a household name in Web3. One of several people who helped put NFT photography on the map, the artist has launched some of the most successful and thought-provoking projects the space has seen in recent memory.
Twin Flames, a collection of photographs showing 100 pairs of cufflinks that helped establish Aversano as one of the best-selling photographers on Web3, was in part a tribute to the artist’s late twin. The collection remains one of the most sought after projects in the community and has generated 5,900 ETH (just under $10 million) in trading volume on the secondary market.
Aversano’s work often deals with themes of death, pain, and the intangible relationships and connections that exist beyond the limits of ordinary human perception. Smoke and mirrors, that of the photographer Collection February 2022he embraces this idea perhaps more directly than any other of his works.
The collection consists of 78 portraits of “artists, astrologers, psychics, tarot readers, and other forms of mystics” from around the world, each depicting a unique tarot card. Now, Aversano is taking Smoke and Mirrors into new territory by presenting photographs from the collection at the Gabba Gallery in Los Angeles on March 25, reimagined through silkscreen on papyrus prints.
From ancient Egypt to the blockchain
While speaking with nft now about the collection, Aversano drew comparisons between today’s NFT technology and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, noting the permanent and expressive nature that both share.
“It is a digital archeology of hieroglyphs that we are creating in real time.”
justin aversano
“I work on different print media processes,” Aversano explained. “In every project I do with a thematic theme, there is a specific printing method that goes along with that theme. Thus, for example, the tarot project [is] printed on papyrus and connects with our ancestors.”
“We are working with screen printing to make photography a painting. Then there’s another layer: minting these things on the blockchain. For me, that’s a way to connect the future with the past. It is a digital archeology of hieroglyphics that we are creating in real time.”
Smoke and Mirrors features some well-known cultural figures, including Pussy Riot artist and activist Nadya Tolokonnikova, author Neil Gaiman, and NFT collector and Web3 creator Gmoney.
facing death
Of the 78 images in the collection, 22 are classified as “major arcana”, and the remaining 56 are “minor arcana”, with the major arcana being the first 22 cards in most tarot decks. And while an abstract philosophical motif guides the collection, Aversano has also imbued the collection with a different intimacy: the photograph depicting the death tarot card is a portrait of Aversano’s father standing by the grave of the late mother of the artist, who died of cancer. .
“All of these artworks, all of these art projects really come from a place of death in myself,” Aversano said of the conceptual nature that drives her work. “How to connect with life. My father is the photograph on the death card, and he is standing by my mother’s grave with an empty space for her name. [going to be]. “How do you accept death and recognize it?”
While working on Twin Flames in 2021, Aversano partnered with Jason Ostro, artist and director of the Gabba Gallery. The two have been working together ever since to print the collection in such a way that it aligns with Aversano’s vision. Although the NFTs of the photographs to be exhibited in the gallery have already sold out on the primary market, collectors can find them in high schoolfrom a minimum price of 10 ETH.
The IRL exhibition represents another stage in Aversano’s constantly evolving and restless artistic career. As the NFT photography space continues to grow and diversify, the photographer remains a pillar of the Web3 community of that medium, continually experimenting with the opportunities presented by the blockchain.
