Leo Villareal: Cosmic Bloom

Criticism and conversations about art, technology, and NFTs

Commentary

A trade fair-style booth advertising a blockchain company

Art Gobblers

A simple green, yellow, blue, and pink drawing of a face with big eyes and thick pink lips, and a few skinny limbs emerging from the chin

Leo Villareal

A digital image of golden rods and blue spheres emanating from a central point

Edicurial

Auriea Harvey

A 3d model of a sculpted head from which extrudes a mass of clay-like substance, with a lit candle at the center

Commentary

An abstract digital image of a mass of colorful threads against a grayscale background

Jonathan Monaghan

A digital image of a horse covered with Uber logos reclining on a beach at dawn beside a Peloton bike

Arkive

A black-and-white photograph of a woman seductively lying on a bed. Her face is encased in a TV monitor

Commentary

What used to be a photo of a woman, distorted beyond recognition

Shirin Neshat

A pair of hands opening to reveal Arabic calligraphy inscribed on the wrists and forearms, softly lit against a black background

A digital image of a low armchair coated with pink petals standing amid a desert landscape under a pale violet sky

Frank Stella & Andres Reisinger

Stella works with digital modeling as a tool to realize physical sculptures. Reisinger uses similar software as his primary medium.

The two artists discuss the role of software in their process, as well as light and motion in both digital and physical sculpture.

David Rudnick & Metahaven

How are the parameters of design shifting in the twenty-first century, as digital media and spaces displace analog ones?

Rudnick and his mentor discuss how they incorporate tectonic shifts in communication into the form and content of their respective practices.

A variety of pop-ups with confrontational messages that include "We're all racist," "This was a setup," and "I am begging you," appear on the homepage of the Whitney Museum of Art website.

Ryan Kuo & Zach Gage

How does ownership operate? How do numbers represent meaning?

Two artists who use digital tools to design evocative interactions discuss metrics, value, and other concepts they both explore in their work.

Critical Perspectives

Commentary

Artist-Centered Cybersecurity

NFT artists have to be constantly alert to the threat of scams and hacks. How can cybersecurity approaches be adjusted to protect the most vulnerable?

Criticism

Sculptural Alchemy

Auriea Harvey’s classically inspired works, which are transferred from physical to virtual states and then back again, reveal the fundamental mutability of sculptural forms.

Criticism

Scale Factor

Evoking the complexity of the universe—and of a single cell—Leo Villareal’s generative artworks reintroduce a sense of wonder, in both the virtual and physical realms.

The Hirsch Truth

Ann Hirsch, a pioneer of social media art and the grandmother of selfie feminism, shares her critical takes on NFTs

Leo Villareal reintroduces wonder to physical and virtual experience Scale Factor

A digital image of layered transparent pink spheres, connected by rods that glow at their intersections