Pace Verso

NFT Showcase

Past
Jun 21 – Jun 23, 2022
New York

Exhibition Details:

Pace Verso NFT Showcase
Jun 21 – 23, 2022

Gallery:

540 West 25th Street
New York

Press:

Press Release

Connect:

(opens in a new window) @johngerrard.inst
(opens in a new window) @jeffkoons
(opens in a new window) @pacegallery

Pace Verso, the Web3 hub of Pace Gallery, is pleased to detail a forthcoming in-person presentation of two distinct NFT projects. This special exhibition marks the US debut of two NFT projects by John Gerrard and Jeff Koons.

The Pace Verso NFT Showcase celebrates the launch of a new, first-of-its-kind partnership between Pace Verso and Art Blocks, the leading generative art platform, by debuting the inaugural project by John Gerrard. Through this collaboration, Pace Verso and Art Blocks will release groundbreaking NFT projects by Pace’s artists as well as crypto- native artists, bringing generative art to life through in-person and digital programming dedicated to the new NFTs. Over a year in the making, the partnership between Pace Verso and Art Blocks will see Pace artists extend their practices into Web3 as the gallery continues to support its artists’ creative and experimental approaches to the medium.

Presented by Art Blocks x Pace Verso

John Gerrard: Petro National

Selections from John Gerrard’s new NFT series, titled Petro National, will be displayed across a group of custom screens installed along an entire wall of the space. The first NFT project to be released as part of the new partnership between Pace Verso and Art Blocks, Petro National comprises 196 unique, generative works that engage the potential of spatial and temporal media online through game engine technology. The Petro National NFTs feature the outlines of different countries, which are represented as glistening patches of gasoline on the world ocean.

Petro National examines the global impact of burning 100 million barrels of oil per day and the ways that energy consumption has become a signifier of political power. The project explicitly addresses the disparity in oil use between the global north and south, and the Petro National NFTs depict oil spills of different thicknesses depending on the local per capita annual oil use of the respective country. Lower national consumption rates yield thinner, more delicate spills in the NFTs, while higher consumption rates produce more intensely iridescent scenes.

Petro National will be released on the Art Blocks platform on June 21, coinciding with the showcase in New York. This special presentation of Petro National will be followed by Gerrard’s first major solo exhibition with Pace, opening at the gallery’s 510 West 25th Street space on June 28.

MoonPhaseMuhammadAli_earthcomponent (1).jpeg — Jeff Koons, *Moon Phase (Muhammad Ali)*, 2022 © Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons: Moon Phases

A new sculpture from Jeff Koons’s first-ever NFT project, Jeff Koons: Moon Phases, will be on view.

As part of Moon Phases, Koons will send a group of sculptures to the Moon on a rocket launching from the Kennedy Space Center later this year. Moon Phases is presented by Pace Verso in partnership with specialized digital arts and technology company NFMoon and multi-level space company 4Space. The project centers on the Moon as a symbol of human curiosity, determination, and achievement.

Exhibited on a plinth with the Chelsea skyline as its backdrop, the mirror-reflective, stainless-steel sculpture of the Moon on view in the Pace Verso NFT Showcase represents one component of Koons’s multifaceted project, which also comprises sculptures that will be installed on the Moon in perpetuity and NFTs that correspond with each sculpture on the Moon and the Earth. Like the other stainless-steel sculptures that will remain on the Earth as part of the project, the work in Pace’s upcoming exhibition features a small precious stone, positioned to indicate the location of the landing site of the Moon-bound sculptures. The sculptures remaining on the Earth can be understood in relation to Koons’s famed Equilibrium series and iconic stainless-steel Rabbit sculpture from the 1980s.