Japanese artist EXCALIBUR (Yoshinori Tanaka) is fascinated by modernity in all its facets: social transformations, new mythmaking, decentralized reality, culture of computer games, information overload. EXCALIBUR has a solid career in the offline art world, his works were presented all over the world: from USA and Japan to Cambodia and Taiwan.

A small series of conceptual works “*Grater Zero Japan-Satoshi*” heirs/refers to a project of Japanese avant-garde artist Genpei Akasegawa “*Greater Japan Zero-Yen Note*” (1967). In 1960s Akasegawa created numerous Japanese banknotes that he started using as a material for other works. He stated that banknotes are just paper, for which he even got sentenced by local authorities. EXCALIBUR refers to this prominent case in Japanese art history and brings up the discussion around originals and fakes.

But why should I be original? Why can't I be non-original?

This work is an NFT digitized with pixel-art based on the "One-Dollar Bill" repeatedly created by American artist Andy Warhol throughout his life. During his lifetime, Warhol was encouraged by the gallery owner to draw what he liked best, and created a work of paper money.

Normally, digital data can be reproduced like silk screen printing, but crypto-art mint the non-fungible original. The gas prices unit of Ethereum, pixel-art of the near null "Greater America Zero-Shannon", will let us to reconsider the longing Warhol once had from today's perspective.

Greater America Zero-Shannon, G

The $100$ Million Ether Skull

The Ether Rembrandt (with a Rose Bouquet)

The Disasters of War

Catherine wheels

Music Room

Rendezvous

Anthropologically, the crypto world mostly consists of people who were culturally formed in the WEB 1.0 era (1990s). Therefore, MS DOS and Windows 3.11 aesthetics is present in visual elements of blockchain projects. At the same time, the high speed of the crypto world does not require long and detailed development of interface graphics. Thus, these two factors together gave a new impulse to this aesthetic. Being born within blockchain communities, NFT market has not been able to ignore this aesthetics, leading to numerous collections and drops actively using pixel art. This selection brings together not only works created in this nostalgic manner, but also those digital works that reference various iconic images and classical subjects from the art history. The Web 3 world only starts to understand that any image claiming any cultural significance cannot exist outside art history context.

WEB 1.0 Aesthetics and History of Art

History of art meets new old pixel aesthetics.

Greater America Zero-Shannon, G

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