Daata x KOKO

2022-07-19 00:00:00

Groundbreaking digital art incubator Daata to curate monthly exhibitions at legendary music venue KOKO Camden Daata and KOKO launch the collaboration with Fished from the river of passing little thoughts - a solo-show of meditative NFT animations and unique hand drawings by London-based artist and musician Orfeo Tagiuri. Daata is delighted to announce an exciting long-term collaboration with the newly renovated and revered music venue KOKO, in Camden, London. Each month, Daata will curate a new exhibition that will be shown on screens throughout the venue. KOKO x Daata will host monthly artist talks and screening events, along with exclusive merchandise available in the KOKO shop and online at Daata. The collaboration launches this July with a series of hand-drawn animations by London-based artist and musician Orfeo Tagiuri. Entitled Fished from the river of passing little thoughts, the collection explores the artist’s sustained interest in capturing life’s lighter moments. The works are for sale on Daata’s ethereum-based NFT marketplace and each edition comes with an original pen-on-paper animation frame. Fished from the river of passing little thoughts mindfully meditates on everyday joy. Tagiuri cherishes the pleasures of quotidian observation and honours those private reflections through affectionate humour. Each work loops on repeat, curiously playing with one of the most commonplace examples of animated observations across the internet - the gif. While gifs are normally associated with slapstick humour and dramatic irony, Tagiuri embraces the qualities we rarely find online: kindness, humility and grace. In spite of their characteristic simplicity, Tagiuri's NFTs demonstrate the artist’s technical skill and confident sense of style. The collection comprises over 100 crisp line drawings, each slightly varied to create a ‘flip-book’ effect. Tagiuri depicts his characters through fluid outlines with minimal shading. This gentle and stylised approach transforms each sheet of paper into an expansive mental landscape, reminiscent of dreams, doodles and automatic drawing - most famously adhered to by Surrealist artists as an exercise in entering the unconscious mind.  The collaboration with KOKO is a transformative one, enabling the public to appreciate these intimate works on a huge scale. Each of the works have a dedicated state-of-the-art Samsung screen - some measuring over 100 inches wide. The seven works are positioned around the LUNO lounge, encouraging art, crypto and music lovers alike to explore the newly-renovated venue. Daata’s Director David Gryn says of the collaboration: “Daata is delighted to be partnering with KOKO to display videos, AR, NFT’s and related merch at a venue so steeped in musical heritage. It has been re-born through regeneration and a dynamic programme of music and arts. We aim to curate an equally historic programme of exhibitions, whose artworks add to the lingering sound and visual memory of anyone who enters the magical building.” Artist Orfeo is equally delighted to be collaborating with KOKO. In a statement, he says “Koko is the perfect home to present these works. It too has formed an important bridge by developing a beautiful and unique setting in such a historically important venue.” The collaboration also enables the gallery to curate a public programme of live events. To celebrate the inaugural collaboration, Daata commissioned leading Curator and Focal Point Gallery Director Katharine Stout to write a curatorial text and interview Orfeo to a live audience on 2 August at 7pm. As Director of Drawing Room, a non-profit organisation that champions the art of drawing, she is the leading expert in her field. The interview is set to be a ‘behind-the-scenes’ window into the artist’s creative practice. With a cult following of over 40k instagram followers, Tagiuri’s work is most commonly encountered online through a digital interface. Minting them on the blockchain not only supports Tagiuri’s emerging practice but protects his work’s intellectual property and ensures that collectors are buying a moving-image work as unique as the hand-drawn originals. As Orfeo says “The works are hand-drawn in the style of early 20th-century animations. It is a delight to bridge the old with the new by placing these pieces into the minted NFT context. It is an opportunity to crystallise ephemeral forms and to celebrate thoughts that might otherwise have drifted”. Unlike most NFT marketplaces, Daata’s online platform is highly curated to provide artists and collectors with the ideal environment for purchasing digital forms of fine art. As with every Daata drop, the Daata NFT marketplace will be totally remodelled to exhibit Fished from the river of passing little thoughts, creating an immersive window into the artist’s free-flowing mind. Entering the site is like becoming a character on Orfeo’s page, whose textured off-white appearance inspired the site’s clean landscape. Recurring motifs from the artist’s vocabulary pop out and welcome the visitors. This is Orfeo’s second NFT collaboration with Daata, having previously featured in Daata’s Body Circuitry drop (January 2022). Of working together again, the artist says “After the great success of our first release I am delighted to work with the wonderful Daata team for this second collaboration, especially as it will exist on their new native NFT platform!” . In addition to the artworks, Daata is releasing a range of wearable merchandise, designed in collaboration with the artist. The baseball-style ‘thinking’ cap, tee and tote all feature designs by Orfeo and riff off their relationship to the body. For example the tote features a character carrying a heavy load labelled ‘ambitions’, as if encouraging the wearer to emotionally place theirs in the tote. Merchandise is a regular accompaniment to Daata drops and allows younger or emerging collectors to support artists at a more affordable price-point. Each item is printed on-demand to reduce waste. Orfeo Tagiuri (b. 1991, Brookline, MA, USA) lives and works in London. Orfeo's practice spans from painting and drawing to performance, film, woodcarving, animation, and music. Orfeo has both exhibited and performed internationally, including at the Contemporary Museum of Art, Rome (2021), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018), at Fiorucci Art Trust's Volcano Extravaganza (2016) and the ICA, London (2015). Orfeo is a graduate (MFA Painting, 2019) of the Slade School of Fine Art, and previously attended Stanford University. In 2020, Orfeo was nominated as one of the recipients of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries, with an exhibition opening in May 2021 at the South London Gallery. Daata is a digital art incubator that commissions, curates and sells all mediums of digital art including video, digital animation, augmented reality, and NFTs. We foster deep relationships with artists, empowering them to bring their most ambitious ideas to life and supporting them via exhibitions, sales, marketing and international partnerships. We strive to be your go-to destination for digital fine art, as well as serve as a platform for blue chip galleries to sell their NFTs – bridging the gap between the traditional art market and the metaverse. To date, Daata has commissioned more than 400 artworks by more than 100 artists and Daata has collaborated internationally with galleries, museums, collections, art fairs, festivals and other organizations including: NASA, Hammer Museum, Kiasma, Julia Stoschek Collection, The Bass, MOCAD, Art Basel, Frieze, EXPO CHICAGO, Phillips, Independent Art Fair, NADA, Art Fair Philippines, PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai, Hauser & Wirth, kurimanzutto, Marian Goodman, Simon Lee, Stephen Friedman, VSF and Thaddaeus Ropac. Daata’s library of commissions are free to view online. Fished from the river of passing little thoughts Orfeo Tagiuri 7 animations sold as editions of 20 at 0.16 ETH each. 25 July - 28 August 2022 For sale from: 6pm BST on 25 July via <a href="https://nft.daata.art">Daata</a>