(ats) The exhibition, entitled “Eternalizing Art History”, presents works “representative of Italy, from the Renaissance to modern art”, summarized Tuesday Serena Tabacchi, of the company Cinello who digitally reproduced the paintings of origin.
Each work has been duplicated in “the highest resolution possible” in cooperation with Italian museums, she explains, and the digital copies have been certified by “NFT”, non-fungible tokens – or “non-fungible token”. in English – allow you to associate a certificate of authenticity with any virtual object.
Theoretically inviolable, NFTs are designed using “blockchain” technology, which serves as the basis for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Popular on the art market, they reassure collectors once morest the risk of copying.
Visible on screens, the six Italian works are exhibited in the same format as the original paintings and the frames surrounding them have also been reproduced identically.
The exhibition, which opens at Unit London Gallery on Wednesday and runs until mid-March, is ‘the first of its kind in the UK’ and thus allows the public to ‘physically experience’ this new form of art while supporting museums “which have really suffered” during the pandemic, assures Joe Kennedy, the director of the gallery.
“The idea is to show masterpieces to which we rarely have access” for reasons of conservation or transport costs, he adds. Half of the net sales related to the exhibition or sale of NFT is allocated to efforts to preserve original works in Italy.
In agreement with the museums, nine NFTs were issued for each painting reproduced. Some have already been sold, including a replica of “Le Baiser” by Hayez sold for the equivalent of around 95,000 francs.
The NFT market, in art but also in other sectors such as video games, soared in 2021 with trade representing 44.2 billion dollars worldwide, according to data from the firm Chainalysis.
Their development also raises concerns. In a report on the subject, Chainalysis estimates that NFT transactions from wallets linked to illegal transactions increased in 2021, reaching $1.4 million in the fourth quarter.
On Monday, the British tax authorities announced that they had seized three NFT works, a first in the country, and arrested three people suspected of trying to evade taxes through the use of crypto-assets.