VerticalCrypto Art is excited to be curating and hosting a digital-and-physical art auction as part of the Boson Protocol Portal launch with 10% of profits going to UNICEF.

The auction kicks off on Wednesday 17th November 2021 at 5:30pm UTC and will feature seven unique 1/1 digital NFT artworks paired with physical items from a brilliant line -up of artists: Jon Burgerman, Gary Cartlidge, Linda Dounia, Jesse Draxler, Luxpris, Miss Al Simpson and Marjan Moghaddam.

The auction will kick off with a conversation with the artists on Twitter Spaces, at 5PM UTC on Wednesday 17th November, where they will be sharing the inspiration behind the pieces, as well as hearing from members of the Boson team, and the platforms supporting the auction, Zora and Artiva.

Micol, from VerticalCrypto Art, will also be hosting the final part of the Boson Portal launch with a live auction on 18th November at 5pm UTC in the Decentraland Portal events space. All artworks will be viewable by entering Decentraland and you can reserve your spot here to attend the event.

We are thrilled to present below a deep dive of the seven artists featured in this auction, and a curatorial description of each of the 1/1 digital & physical artworks on auction starting Wednesday 17th at 5.30PM UTC.

A curatorial glance into the seven artworks feature in the auction

1. Jon Burgerman — LOT 1: “Open All Hours”

Reserve Price: 2 ETH

Physical Piece: Infinite Object

“A shop selling everything and anything, open everywhere at once, any place, any time, any dimension.”

Curatorial note: This piece is a commentary by the artist on the nature of commerce being 24/7, even more so in the metaverse than physically. Jon’s way of portraying and depicting moments, and commentaries in a humoristic and light-hearted way is unique to his practice and creative work.

Bio: Brooklyn-based British artist Jon Burgerman takes inspiration from animation, pop-art, electronic music and abstract expressionism. Bouncing across different media, Burgerman’s instantly recognisable aesthetic often combines his signature elements of exaggerated expressions, vivid colour, gestural mark making and googly eyes. Burgerman’s work has been exhibited widely around the world and he has collaborated with brands that include Nike, Apple, Samsung, Instagram, Snapchat, Pepsi and Lotte.Twitter: @jonburgermanInstagram: @jonburgermanWebsite: https://www.jonburgerman.com/SuperRare

2. Gary Cartlidge — LOT 2: Indicatur Veritas

Reserve Price: 3 ETH

Physical Piece: Infinite Object

“I thought I could save people in this messy crossover World. My mind can’t define reality, between digital and physical realms, my subconscious wants to hide how broken I am among many lies. But I continue to save as many individuals as I can, I just want to hold it together, I just want to save more people.”

Curatorial note: “That desire and subconscious obligation to save some, to take someone to a better place, this has long been weighing on my mind.” The center of this piece is a rework of “Love and Psyche” by William-Adolphe Bougerau, Gary describes this as the mythological representation of saving someone and being an angel which was the perfect state needed. We can recognise some of characteristics that define Gary’s work: the liminal space which is the desert as a representation of the artists subconscious mind. The checkered floor breaking in with cables running out is a chess game, and also a visual reference to a past matriarch moving in. The space in itself is a contradiction between digital and physical realms, mixing digital and real painting in the overall image. The identities in this piece are accepting to be anonymous which is how Gary wanted to communicate the angel helping, but also showing a personal struggle. The overall piece has lots of small elements that hint at certain lies in the realm we live in, however he prefers some to be left unsaid.

Bio: Gary Cartlidge is a UK based Graphic Designer, artist/street artist. Abstract, sometimes minimal, sometimes maximalism, depends on what a piece demands of it. Sometimes I like to do a controversial edge, asking questions and giving answers to past, current and future events.

Twitter: @troyfitzpatrickInstagram: @garycartlidgeWebsite: https://linktr.ee/garycartlide

3. Linda Dounia — Lot 3: Gooey Bugs / Revolution

Reserve Price: 2 ETH

Physical Piece: Infinite Object

All that you touch. You Change. All that you Change. Changes you. The only lasting truth. Is Change.God. Is Change. — Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler

Curatorial note: Gooey Bugs are an evolving collection of works generated with GANs exploring the science fiction stories that have shaped Linda’s outlook on life. The artist imagine them to be creatures in the different pages she spent much of life pouring into. This particular piece is inspired by Octavia’s Butler’s Parable of the Sower. It explores the concept of change, specifically how the smallest change in any system can alter the system as a whole. In this particular piece, the changes in hues are frequent but informed by one to a few blocks at a time.

Bio: Linda Dounia is an artist, designer, and writer living in Dakar. Her work is multidisciplinary and rooted in her childhood growing up in Mbour. Through her practice, she wants to carve out spaces to interrogate her communities’ experiences of the modern world, and create repositories for how they imagine futures that work for them. She is the creator of Cyber Baat, a DAO of artists of African descent on the blockchain.

Twitter:@LindaDouniaR Instagram:@sandwyrmdance Website: https://thesandwyrm.com/ SuperRare Foundation

Jesse Draxler — Lot 4: VVRKT

Reserve Price: 6 ETH

Physical Piece: 3’x4’collage and acrylic on all wood panel, 2.5” deep

Analog & digital collage of artist’s own photos. Photos are printed, cut with an Xacto, pieces are scanned, digitally collaged. A portrait photo collaged with photos I took of a truck that was driven to the cut-de-sac under a bridge where my studio used to be and lit on fire.

Curatorial note: Jesse Draxler’s style is distinctive for being a dark mystery. This artwork, which started digitally are photos which have been printed and cut out, they have then been digitally scanned, then placed in grids, enlarged them, printed them out and collaged them onto the panel. Jesse then went to create depth in the piece by cutting out the edges and peeling up the paper around the sides, to then finish off with layers of clear coat and black. The uniqueness of this piece is its starting nature of being digitally native first, and then reverse engineering it to make it physical, making it very different from works the artist has done in the past.

Bio: Jesse Draxler has been a prolific & influential creator in the metaverse since the early days of Tumblr. His multi-disciplinary work marries elements of fine art, illustration, photography, fashion, & digital applications. Draxler has had solo exhibits in LA & NY, & has been in exhibitions across Europe. Draxler collaborates with Hugo Boss, McQ Alexander McQueen, Ferrari, & more. He also works closely with the music industry creating artwork for Prince, NIN, Daughters, & Poppy, amongst others.

Twitter: @JesseDraxler Instagram: @jessedraxler Website: https://www.jessedraxler.com/ SuperRare

Luxpris — Lot 5: The Grand Assimilation

Reserve Price: 4 ETH

Physical Piece: Infinite Object

Curatorial note: The Grand Assimilation is constructed from college and code. It questions the purity of artistic creation in a hyper-connected and hyper-monetized digital landscape. In a market at the behest of volatile economics, what divides expression from a product, and can there even be a difference? The dreamlike composition depicts the artist conceiving an idea for a new artwork.

Bio: Luxpris is a creative technologist who assembles abstracted landscapes and collages with code. They work primarily with p5js and use generative processes while designing. The result is extraterrestrial, angular, and heavily geometric. Conceptually they are drawn to questions unearthed when collaborating with machines. What does it mean for an artist to act as a curator of a computer’s procedural outputs? Where does the user end and the machine begin?

Twitter: @Luxpris Instagram: @luxpris Website: https://www.luxpris.com/ SuperRare, ArtBlocks — Elevated Constructions, ArtBlocks Wave Schematics, ArtBlocks Pathfinders

Marjan Moghaddam — Lot 6: Glitch Goddess Duo in Pink & Blue No1

Reserve Price: 3 ETH

Physical Piece: Infinite Object

Curatorial note: Derived from the viral and widely acclaimed Glitch Goddess series of #arthacks, first seen at ArtBasel in 2018 in a Picasso painting, which then went viral and became the first feminist digital art piece. In this piece, this Duo of Pink and Blue uses only 2 transformations while investigating digital bodies. Digital Bodies is a concept the artist has been creating with and embodying for many years, the concept of elastics bodies expanding the boundaries while redefining the possibilities of digital plasticity and its inherent and unique aesthetics. Through this Marjan has pushed the traditional sculptural volumes of figuration, using a proprietary technological pipeline and aesthetic that she has since termed as Chronometric Sculpture, which blends the ideals of sculpture with that of animation. For this unique piece, an additional generative system using a random seed deforms the walking figure as a 1/1.

Bio: Marjan Moghaddam is an award-winning, pioneering, digital artist & animator known for her unique style and artistic language. Her work has been exhibited by world renowned galleries, festivals, & institutions, and is held in private and institutional collections. Her AR art has been exhibited in the Smithsonian, & made the Forbes Best of AR list for 2019. She was an Adobe Artist in Resident for Aero. Her critically acclaimed #arthacks have gone viral and been profiled in numerous publications.

Twitter: @TheMarjan Instagram: @marjan_moghaddam_art Website: https://linktr.ee/MarjanMoghaddam SuperRare

Miss Al Simpson — Lot 7: CRYPTO NATIVE

Reserve Price: 4 ETH

Physical Piece: Infinite Object

Curatorial note: As with all her artworks, Miss Al Simpson starts with a digital collage, her trademark. She likes to combine collage of modern culture with drawing and digital ink work, which then tends to influence the feeling of the end artwork in itself. With this piece particularly, Miss Al likes the idea of digital collage as a tattoo of the characters face, adding elements of subversion and punk culture. The artwork is composed of various layers created by the artist, which are akin to the process of the collage in itself. The layers are then worked as animations to end with the final results of this punk and futuristic digital painting.

Bio: Miss AL Simpson is a crypto artist and writer with a love of black ink and collage. Anna Louise grew up watching vintage movies and drawing from fashion magazines and books and uses those early faded glamorous influences in her crypto art practice.

Drawing on influences such as Kippenberger and Rauschenberg, Anna Louise uses found items such as billposters and magazines to build up a textured mixed media surface, in order to explore themes of confused popular culture. Layering her work with power and fragility; tales of passion and desire are exposed. At times, these stories are gentle whispers, at other times, they are loud and brash graffiti. Fragmented portraits hidden in urban landscapes reveal an honesty and broken reality; a mixed up version of the popular culture that submerges us all.

Exploring the rips of popular culture and society’s vulnerability, Anna Louise produces images of dystopic fragility…’a keeper of fragile things’.

Twitter: @missalsimpson Instagram: @annalouisesimpson Website: https://www.missalsimpsonartist.com/ SuperRare, NiftyGateway, KnownOrigin

The auction will be live on Wednesday 17th November at 5.30PM UTC HERE.