BUFFALO, NY.- The first survey organized by an American museum of the leading artists engaged with blockchains, Peer to Peer is an online exhibition and museum fundraiser running November 21 to December 2, 2022.

The Buffalo AKG Art Museum opened Peer to Peer—the first survey organized by an American museum of the leading artists engaged with blockchain technologies. Organized by Buffalo AKG Curator and digital art scholar Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan, Peer to Peer is a groundbreaking online exhibition and museum fundraiser that stages exchanges between these artists and their historical “peers” in the Buffalo AKG’s collection of modern and contemporary art.

Since its founding in 1862, the Buffalo AKG has been committed to defining artistic movements as they emerge, including those born from dialogues with new technologies such as photography and video. Peer to Peer continues this legacy into the present, while considering the role of museums in a decentralized art world. As digital technologies increasingly influence every aspect of our lives, museums have an opportunity to amplify the voices of artists who are creatively and critically exploring the aesthetic potentials and social consequences of these powerful new tools. Peer to Peer features artists from North America, Europe, Central America, South America, the Middle East, and Africa, reflecting the global networks of digital art since the 1990s and of blockchains since the 2010s.




“Over the past two years, tech communities have become embroiled in a debate over the promises and perils of blockchains, which have the potential to transform the internet,” explains Dr. Ryan. “The contemporary art market has become a very public case study for the potential use of blockchains. But it is experimental media artists who have always helped lead the conversation about new technologies, and this exhibition highlights the true breadth and diversity of the art emerging from this new cultural space.”

In addition to showcasing new work by some of the most important artists engaging with blockchains, Peer to Peer is also the first exhibition to highlight the relationship of those artists to the discourse of art history. The exhibition presents thirteen newly commissioned works produced with a variety of technologies, from Artificial Intelligence to 3-D modeling, and ranging in format from videos and GIFs to PDFs, websites, software applications, and smart contracts, showcasing the diverse practices of the artists who have played pioneering roles in forging this new creative world. While technologically experimental, the works also speak to—and transform—themes explored by artists over the last two centuries, including the relationship between abstraction and figuration, the creativity of the unconscious mind, and the definition of art as a conceptual system. The exhibition celebrates both the continued relevance of the historical “peers” to our contemporary moment and the contributions of the new “peers” to art’s ever-expanding network of ideas.

Peer to Peer will be presented online from November 21 to December 2, 2022, by Feral File, an online platform for curated exhibitions of file-based artworks co-founded by artist Casey Reas and Bitmark. At the conclusion of the exhibition, Feral File will keep the works on public display, and from November 29 at 5 pm EST until December 2 at 5 pm EST, they will be offered for purchase in a fundraiser to support the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. The limited editions are sustainably registered on the Ethereum blockchain. With one half being shared with the artists and the platform, half of the sales proceeds will benefit the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, which opens in spring 2023 with a new, expanded campus designed by OMA/Shohei Shigematsu, featuring a state-of-the-art gallery dedicated to media art and a hands-on digital technology lab.

Artists

LaTurbo Avedon • Auriea Harvey • Mitchell F. Chan • Rhea Myers • Entangled Others (Sofia Crespo • Osinachi and Feileacan McCormick) • Casey Reas • Simon Denny • Anne Spalter • Amir H. Fallah • Itzel Yard, also known as Ix Shells • Sarah Friend • Sarah Zucker