A New Museum Opening in November 2024 in Manhattan, Kansas
Digital Art Platform Iconic Announces Series of Digital Art Drops With the Museum of Art + Light
Iconic, a company that expands cultural experiences with digital innovation, will commence a series of unique digital art drops in support of their partnership with the Museum of Art + Light, a new museum with special focus on digital art opening November 2024 in Manhattan, Kansas. To kick off this series, Iconic will release an exclusive collaboration with digitally native artist Grant Yun on July 18. This will mark the first of five digital and print releases and auctions Iconic is presenting in partnership with the MoA+L, with further drops to follow with acclaimed digital artists Erick ‘Snowfro’ Calderon, Tyler Hobbs, Sasha Stiles, and Emily Xie in the lead up to the museum opening.
A physical exhibition of the five artists’ works titled Code & Canvas: Defining Digital Art in the Age of Blockchain will open in the MoA+L’s De Coded Digital Gallery during the grand opening of the museum in November 2024. This groundbreaking exhibition marks the first time an art museum has dedicated an entire gallery to collect and display digital art permanently. Conceived as the first contemporary art museum in the world to showcase immersive, digital, and permanent collections from inception, the MoA+L will explore the limitless convergence of visual art, the creative process, and digital technology. A work from each artist’s digital work will become a part of the Museum of Art + Light’s permanent collection, and the proceeds of each release and auction will be split among Iconic, the Museum, and the artist.
On July 18, Iconic will release a series of limited digital and print editions by Grant Yun titled ‘An Old Soul’. Yun, a digitally native artist well-known for his vector works, incorporates minimalist aesthetics in his depictions of landscapes, interiors, figuration, and still life. Yun’s unconventional path as an artist – he studied religion, biochemistry, and medicine before breaking into the digital art world – provides ample inspiration, with his artworks often exploring themes connected to death, existentialism, nature, and memory. His style – which the artist refers to as Neoprecisionism – pays homage to painters of the early 20th century, notably Edward Hopper, yet stands out as distinctly contemporary through the use of digital techniques. This exclusive release will feature 150 editions, each comprising a digital artwork and a matching hand-signed, hand-numbered physical print.
“We are thrilled to work with Grant Yun on this limited-edition release in partnership with the forthcoming Museum of Art + Light,” said Chris Cummings, Founder and CEO of Iconic. “Grant’s multifaceted approach, which beautifully blends elements of 1920s Precisionism with modern digital techniques, offers a fresh perspective on minimalism and abstraction. We are excited to launch this partnership and share Grant’s work with our collector base.”
Later this summer, digital artist Emily Xie will place three of her striking computational artworks up for auction. Xie’s digital work explores how diverse materials and patterns intermix to create cohesive visuals infused with themes of mythology, tradition, and heritage. Prior to pursuing art full-time, Xie built a career as a software engineer while experimenting with creative coding on the side, a shift that has led her work to be collected and exhibited internationally.
In September, pioneering digital artist and entrepreneur Erick ‘Snowfro’ Calderon will auction three works from his Chromie Squiggles series, among the most collected NFTs in existence. Calderon initially conceived ‘Chromie Squiggle’ to demonstrate the seemingly infinite variability potential for a generative algorithm ahead of launching the artist’s Art Blocks digital art platform. The series rapidly gained popularity in the digital art community following its release, becoming a playful trademark for the artist.
Generative artist, creative coder, and painter Tyler Hobbs will offer three new digital outputs accompanied by their physical prints, created using the QQL algorithm he developed in collaboration with Indigo Mané. Using computational methodologies and inspired by the generative mindsets of modern painters, including Sol LeWitt and Bridget Riley, Hobbs’s QQL algorithm explores the possibilities of co-creation and the power of emergence in long-form generative art. For the first time, Hobbs will use his algorithm to personally curate a trio of QQL outputs available for auction.
In October, Sasha Stiles, a first-generation Kalmyk-American poet, artist, and AI researcher, will release a limited series of unique prints corresponding to COMPLETION: FRAGMENTS, her acclaimed 2022 digital collection where each artwork represents a stanza from an AI-generated poem. Co-authored by Stiles and ‘Technelegy’ – her customized AI text generator – COMPLETION: FRAGMENTS , embodies Stiles’ pioneering approach to posthuman poetry, combining AI-powered text and audio, analog spoken word, and generative code. The physical prints that will be auctioned for sale correlate to the poetic stanzas of the digital works and will be signed by Stiles and Technelegy (via pen plotter). For MoA+L’s inaugural exhibition, the prints will be displayed alongside the complete collection of digital works, offering a media-rich performance of the entire poem while expressing our linguistic innovations from analog to AI.
To learn more about each artist and to stay up-to-date on release and auction dates, please visit Iconic’s website, iconicmoments.co.
“Iconic’s expertise in the digital art world is an invaluable resource for the Museum of Art + Light, and we’re grateful for their partnership and coordination of the exciting releases with some of the most renowned digital artists of our time,” said Erin Dragotto, Executive Director of the Museum of Art + Light. “The acquisitions from Grant Yun, Emily Xie, Erick ‘Snowfro’ Calderon, Tyler Hobbs, and Sasha Stiles will mark some of the first new acquisitions to the Museum’s permanent collection, highlighting our dedication to bringing art of the 21st century to our visitors.”
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