DRIFT with Jeff Davis

Pace Verso, the hub for integrated Web3 projects at Pace Gallery, and Art Blocks, the leading platform for generative art, are pleased to announce details of Schema, a new collaborative project by DRIFT artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta and artist Jeff Davis. Taking DRIFT’s kinetic sculpture Meadow as a point of departure, this generative art project is produced as part of an ongoing, multifaceted partnership between Pace Verso and Art Blocks. It will be available for purchase through a Dutch auction hosted on artblocks.io beginning at 12 p.m. EST on November 13.

With Schema, Gordijn and Nauta—who first approached Davis about the project in 2022—set out to create a truly collaborative series of generative works that brings together two distinct artistic visions. Comprising 300 animated digital artworks, the project was inspired by two-dimensional schematic designs for DRIFT’s widely exhibited, three- dimensional installation Meadow, an upside-down landscape in which illuminated mechanical flowers open and close as part of a poetic choreography. Hung from a ceiling, this mesmeric work examines the impermanence of the changing seasons and the phenomenology of nature. Iterations of Meadow—which was originally produced as a site- specific installation commissioned by the Chodov Centre in Prague— have been presented at art institutions around the world, including the LG Arts Centre in Seoul and the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields.

Davis, known for his explorations of color and form through algorithmic systems, has brought his unique approach to color theory to Schema. Each artwork in the project uses DRIFT’s schematic diagrams for Meadow, which feature only subtle color touches, as vehicles for exploring color relationships from a generative standpoint. While DRIFT led on the development of the animated qualities in the project, Davis—who has previously exhibited his work with Bright Moments Gallery at its locations around the world, in Sotheby’s curated Natively Digital presentation, and in Phillips’s exhibition Ex-Machina: A History of Generative Art in London—directed its visual and compositional nuances.

Launching on November 13, Schema artworks will be available for purchase via a Dutch auction with settlement— meaning the lowest bid is the price all buyers will pay—hosted by Art Blocks. DRIFT and Davis will direct 20 percent of artists’ proceeds from the primary sale to YAKUM, a nonprofit organization that protects indigenous forests and builds cultural, medicinal, and food sovereignty through reforestation.