Grails by PROOF Season IV Collecting art is historically not just about the art itself but who the artist is and the story behind the
Grails by PROOF Season IV
Collecting art is historically not just about the art itself but who the artist is and the story behind the piece. The emergence of NFTs as a way to attribute provenance to digital objects has seen an explosion of interest in the past few years, even if that’s currently seeing something of a lull.
The work of artists like Alotta Money, Josie Bellini, Trevor Jones, Coldie, Snowfro, Beeple, and collections such as Fidenzas and Ringers, show that digital art is here to stay, even as many pockets of the NFT space are reportedly down 95% from all-time highs.
But with the artists playing such an important role in the market, it’s been intriguing to see Grails by PROOF flip this paradigm on its head by abstracting away who the artist is. A gamification mechanic reveals between 20–25 pieces of art to 1,000 whitelisted collectors prior to a minting window — but the catch is no one knows who the artists are behind each respective piece.
This creates a special dynamic that introduces a different type of speculation about who the artist could be behind each work. Some collectors mint a piece they like purely based on their assessment of the art itself, while others take a punt on their ability to guess who the artist might be behind.
Grails was the brainchild of PROOF co-founder Kevin Rose, with the inaugural season launched in February 2022 and the first-ever reveal on March 6, 2022. Eli Scheinman, head of art at PROOF, explains the concept aims:
“To engage collectors in a way that abstracted away some of the financialization of collecting NFTs that was, and still is, in many ways so rampant. By taking away an artist’s name, it really demanded or challenged all of the collectors to really go deep and spend a lot of time with each of these artworks.”
The three seasons so far have attracted some of the biggest names in NFT land, including Snowfro, Larva Labs, Tyler Hobbs, Claire Silver, Dmitri Cherniak, Deafbeef, Emily Xie, Justin Aversano, Alpha Centauri Kid, Josie Bellini and Matt Kane. Plus, names that are lesser known for their art but have celebrity status and are involved with the NFT space, like Gary Vaynerchuk, Alexis Ohanian and Tim Ferriss.
Curtain coming up on Season IV
Season IV (4) of Grails is set for reveal on Aug. 11, with Scheinman continuing to experiment with the mechanics and double down on the storytelling and production value of the reveal.
“We try to maintain that sense of it being special and unique, so that means we’re constantly trying to iterate and improve the experience in new ways,” Scheinman says, explaining that season three had introduced the notion of a series, enabling a single artist to contribute multiple unique pieces as part of a collection.
“In season four, we’re taking that a step further in that three of the five series that are in this exhibition are true long-form generative projects using the Art Blocks engine. Those outputs, when minted, are really generated live in that moment. Whereas in the past, these were pre-curated outputs, meaning an artist would provide us with the files ahead of time, and then we would distribute those on mint.”
“I think storytelling is fundamental to connecting through a piece of artwork, and the way that we do Grails, for example, is really this fun way of playing with that notion in that you go from zero context to 100% context.”
Watch previous Grails reveals: Season 1 / Season 2 / Season 3
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Notable sales came from Autoglyphs, Alpha Centauri Kid and Drifter Shoots.
We also saw Chinese contemporary artist Yue Minjun release his first NFT collection titled ‘Kingdom of the Laughing Man. The 999 pieces minted for between 0.35–0.39 ETH and now sit at a 0.55 ETH floor on OpenSea.
cointelegraph.com