NEW YORK, NY.- Venus Over Manhattan announces Justin Aversano: Cognition, an unprecedented collaboration with the trailblazing artist and photographer. Aversano made headlines last year with his photographic NFT collection Twin Flames, which broke auction records and catalyzed the growth of a massive community of photography NFT collectors. Cognition expands Aversano’s experimentation with blockchain technology, playing with expectations around impermanence, physical presence, and the life cycle of an aesthetic gesture.
Cognition is comprised of 365 NFTs, each corresponding to a physical painting created by Aversano. All 365 paintings have been digitized as 3D models and minted as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. The NFTs were minted on August 11, 2022 for the price of 1 ETH each and immediately sold out.
Building on the momentum of this historic collection, the artist has partnered with Venus Over Manhattan founder Adam Lindemann to present a one-night only exhibition of the full collection of physical Cognition paintings. The happening will take place at the gallery’s downtown location on Tuesday, September 6. At the end of the night, owners of the NFTs will be able to take home their corresponding physical pieces.
With Cognition, Aversano upends spatial and temporal conventions within both the traditional fine art model and the NFT space. The digital exhibition and sale of the works drives the physical experience of the gallery exhibition, where the community of NFT collectors will have the opportunity to not only claim their tangible paintings, but to meet one another. By pairing each painting with its digital twin, Aversano refuses to establish a hierarchy between the tangible and intangible, demonstrating the ways in which the digital is inextricably linked to the physical.
Venus Over Manhattan founder Adam Lindemann, author of Collecting Contemporary, has led the development of the gallery’s substantial digital footprint in both the traditional contemporary art world and Web3. Cognition follows the gallery’s string of landmark presentations of pioneering generative artist and Art Blocks founder Erick Calderon, including Snowfro: Chromie Squiggles—the artist’s first solo exhibition—and presentations of Chromie Squiggles at Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach. Forthcoming NFT experiences from Venus Over Manhattan include an exhibition by artist Dustin Yellin in late 2022, the return of Chromie Squiggles at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022, and more.
The Cognition series first developed when Aversano turned from photography to painting following the loss of his mother to cancer, taking up the task of creating one new work per day for a year. This daily practice proved to be generative for the artist, challenging his notions of the act of creation while allowing him to experiment with collage and illustration.
Using techniques of free association, Aversano remixes elements from centuries of visual culture, juxtaposing found images referencing antiquity, Old Master and Modernist painting, Dada, Surrealism, and contemporary pop cultural references. He frequently appropriates other art historical provocateurs, manipulating images in the style of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and John Baldessari, among others. At turns playful and subversive, the Cognition paintings serve as a poignant record of a challenging yet creatively fertile period in the artist’s life.
Justin Aversano (b. 1992, New York City, NY) lives and works in Los Angeles. He is the co-founder and CEO of Quantum Art, a platform focused on curating digital culture through NFTs. Before Quantum, Justin launched Twin Flames, a photographic collection of 100 sets of twins. Justin is also the co-founder and creative director of SaveArtSpace, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing community art to public spaces. A humanist and a social entrepreneur, Justin connects his art with the world around him through capturing moments, faces, and communities that surround him, bringing them together through the lens of his camera. He attended the School of Visual Arts, where he studied Philosophy, Art History, and received his BFA with a concentration in Photography.
