Late last month, Decentraland, one of the world’s largest metaverse solutions with over half a million active monthly users, presented the 3rd edition of its annual Metaverse Art Week. Featuring art world mainstays such as Sotheby’s, ArtNet and Frida Khalo, the event, curated under the theme ‘The World is Made of Code’, presented art of new and old, high and low, mainstream and cutting edge, all together within the immersive digital context of the metaverse. Below, we spotlight the five standout moments from the event.
The Art Plaza
On behalf of the Decentraland Foundation, over a dozen artists exhibited their work in the virtual ‘outdoor sculpture garden’ of the Art Plaza. The Soho plaza district was transformed by this exhibition featuring some of the largest scale and highest fidelity works ever seen in Decentraland. The Plaza, Which remains on view for the next year, features 3D sculptures and video works by industry leaders, including Krista Kim, legendary image-maker Nick Knight x SHOWstudio, and Lady Gaga’s creative Director Nicola Formichetti, among many others.
Artnet
Artnet, one of the largest online art communities founded over 30 years ago as the first art platform online in the world, chose to explore the idea of “the metaverse through performance art, live poetry, and AI art” during this year’s Metaverse Art Week. In collaboration with many renowned artists, various art experiences happened across a variety of venues during the week. An auditorium hosted panel discussions around the future of art and technology, and they even shared limited artist wearables that were given away throughout the event.
Known Origin
Known Origin presented an awe-inspiring set of activations in their own gallery, including a virtual installation called “Crypto Winter,” an amusing activation that reflected upon the vulnerability of the crypto market, as well as a curated exhibition. On top of being the venue of the virtual ‘opening party’ of this year’s art week, it was also a standout as one of the most visually stunning immersive exhibitions presented this year.
Estée Lauder
Estée Lauder continued their ongoing innovations at the intersection of beauty, art, and technology for the occasion of Metaverse Art Week with an exclusive POAP experience designed by Dr. Alex Box, renowned identity designer and pioneer of Beauty Futurism. Inspired by the legacy of visionary founder Mrs. Estée Lauder, the POAP by Box was available for attendees to collect. Those who managed to find and claim one of these POAPs will be able to garner access to future Web3 activations from the Estée Lauder brand.
Sotheby’s
Sotheby’s celebrated Metaverse Art Week with the debuting of multiple new art collaborations, their new metaverse permanent collection, and the launch of the first jewelry sculpture in the metaverse in collaboration with Metagolden. This piece, set to be included in an upcoming physical Sotheby’s auction, will be breaking down auction house stereotypes as allowing a “phygital” lot in this sale was very forward thinking of Sotheby’s and speaks to their investment in the digital realm moving forward. According to Francine Ballard, founder of Metagolden:
“For our part, we have been pairing luxury physical products with digital assets since we entered the Web3 space in 2021. However, this sale will provide an interesting use case in terms of how the two can be resold together on the secondary market, as we plan to expand our offerings from jewellery and art into fashion utilising open commerce infrastructure. Our newest collection, HW3 (House of Web3) is co-founded by some of the biggest and brightest names from the physical and digital fashion spheres combined, and will debut to a very select group in October.”
To discover many of these exhibits and more, click here and begin your own personal exploration.
