Assar_Art_Gallery

The art lovers/Bitcoiners out there now have a new online place that suits all their needs. Cointemporary claims to be the first online art gallery to work exclusively with cryptocurrency.

The platform, described as a “temporary online exhibition of art for Bitcoin”, showcases the work of international artists. However, instead of featuring all the artwork in the same place, Cointemporary chooses to display the artwork of only one artist every seven days.

The painting currently available on the website was created by Larissa Lockshin, a New York-based artist. The webpage previously featured works from Valentin Ruhry or Andy Boot, the two artists in charge of managing Cointemporary. According to CoinTelegraph, the online gallery was created in collaboration with Coinfinity.co and it is headquartered in Vienna.

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Cointemporary’s website explains the basis of the project by defining the art gallery as “an artist run and curated online platform that showcases a diverse range of artworks by international contemporary artists”.

But why using only Bitcoin? Because “BTC represents a decentralized online payment network and a new form of autonomy in the global monetary system, which does not yet exist in a similar fashion in the art world”.

Cointemporary resembles traditional galleries in its dedication to one artist and limited exhibition time, but the goal is to place the artist’s work in a broader global visual context free from the hegemonic monetary system in which contemporary art is embedded.

“Cointemporary establishes a platform for showcasing contemporary artistic practice and tendencies and aims to stimulate discussion beyond typical art world rhetoric. This is the reason why BTC functions as the only payment method; the ongoing discussion of the intrinsic value of this new currency and its high volatility disables the current basis of valuation in the art market”, the website adds.

Featured image from Wikimedia

Larissa Lockshin

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