TENDER Insights #14

Letter from the Editor

Especially as the market slows, how do you decide what to collect?

This week, Adam takes the reins in Movements and urges us to stop and consider exactly why we’re collecting each new piece we acquire.

Given our space’s inherent obsession with the latest works from the highest-profile artists, it’s a message worth hearing. A sort of complement to our last Movements – which stressed community curation and consensus – this week’s piece encourages us to let our individual tastes amplify the long-term vibrancy of this art world that we love.

All the best, Stephen Stanwood (sandcat)

One small correction: our last newsletter referred to Kim Asendorf as a digital artist “based in Berlin.” But as one astute reader noted, he is not: Kim is based in Bremen. Thanks for the catch; we apologize for the error! 🫡

Movements

I’m proud of the strong stances we’ve taken on hot topics in these Insights Newsletters – from curation, to participation, to market dynamics – and while this following perspective might sound obvious, it’s also quite different than a lot of the collecting dialogue that floats around:

I collect artworks, not artists.

Don't get me wrong, I very much support artists. I have deep relationships with artists. I believe that artists inspire us and change our world for the better.

But I don’t collect people, and I don’t hang them in my home. I want art, and that’s what I collect.

Will I spend extra time with – and give extra consideration to – artworks by artists whose approach I admire, whose demeanor I appreciate, and whose dedication is palpable?

Yes!

Will I not collect from artists who have unsavory practices with the community of curators, collectors, and other artists? Also yes!

So the artist does influence my collecting decisions. But those considerations are always secondary to the art itself. Outside opinions also influence my collecting decisions – and I feel it’s best to actively recognize that, while funneling those inputs into my perspective on the art itself. We've talked about the importance of consensus and curation’s influence in the previous issue of Movements, but curation based too heavily on artists rather than artworks quickly becomes “gatekeeping.” And by Gatekeeping, I always mean access control done with negative impact and egregiously unfair practices (either for artists or collectors), and not simply about the existence of access control mechanisms at all (of which price, technology, locations, and more can also be controlling / barriers).

Curators and tastemakers in the larger art world have played games of nepotism and picking favorite people over favorite art for far too long (not all of course, but too many), and to me, that’s the most critical thing that this digital and generative art community can help overcome. I have loved art my whole life, and started as a collector and artist of paintings, photographs, and prints… so when I use the phrase “traditional art” with a little hint of disdain, this level of favoritism is the reason, not the art or art world itself.

Why, when I walk through Chelsea – one of the best art neighborhoods in the world! – and go into thirty galleries, can I only find one or two new shows that really interest me? I don’t claim to have the “right” taste, but in a world with so many artists struggling to have great work seen, can’t we post a higher batting average than that for everyone looking for art that’s new and interesting and appealing?

Since we now have unprecedented access to viewing and evaluating the world of new generative works, and don’t have to rely on the massive gallerist-filtering of works that occurred in the last generations of art, let’s use this dynamic to change the game for all Art – it starts with the actions of collectors and curators here.

One of the best ways we can all grow as collectors is to focus on the quality of the art and where our love for it comes from. Often this means admiring works from an artist I’ve never heard of, or sometimes feeling unmoved by work from an artist whose previous projects I’ve loved. So, with limited funds, which of those two hypothetical artist’s work do I collect? I’m never comfortable claiming that any particular artist deserves more recognition than another – despite how friendly they might be, how social or communicative they are with collectors, who they know or have worked with, or even the struggles they’ve had. In this world of such expansive access to art, who am I to judge – with the use of my funds and voice – which human deserves attention more than another based on those factors, often when I have only ever see their online persona?

We have to recognize that online marketing and making great art are two very different skillsets. Many extraordinary generative artists put everything they have into creating amazing new work but aren’t very active or well-followed on Twitter and Discord – and their support (sales) suffer as a result. That doesn’t make me feel right. As a community of advocates and collectors, we need to do everything we can to keep great artists around, and new ones coming in, by authentically prioritizing the art that resonates with you.

Again, I do want to have an appreciation for the artist behind each new work I collect – even if it's a newfound connection, or even if it's not that deep. But there's just so much good art out there by so many talented people, that I can make my acquisitions based purely on what resonates for me. Along the way, that helps me build the discipline to be honest with myself and evaluate why I buy what I buy. Do I really think the latest sketch by a well-known, active-on-Twitter, high-floor-price artist is better than a strong work by a "mid tier" artist – or am I only tempted to buy because of the financial potential of that sketch? Perhaps either is fine, but knowing the difference is essential for every collector.

Personally, I’m not interested in buying art based on the potential market value of an artist, and then trying to convince myself (or certainly not others) that I’m bought-in for the love of their works. Placing my judgements of new artworks on past qualities like price history or an artist's stature in the community would require me to ignore the fundamental reason I collect, and would veer into an overtly-speculative game that is antithetical to my love for art. I just won't do that – AND I don’t think that it’s necessary to grow a valuable collection.

Have I lost out on some gains, by using the above perspective? Yes, none of this is financial advice 😂. Would I love for my art acquisitions to increase in value? Absolutely – often that’s what allows me to keep collecting. But whenever I look at a new work, I start with the question of whether I love it rather than the question of whether it might be sellable down the road. I stay out of the game of collecting artworks I don’t admire by artists that I do.

So next time you're considering adding a new work to your collection, take the metaphorical name plate off and just look at it. Do you truly love what you see? Does it have a deeper meaning or connection to you?

If the answer isn’t clear but you admire the artist, perhaps go invest in something you do love instead – either by that same artist, or by someone entirely new.

You know we’d love to hear about it. 🙂

Project Love

Sparkling Goodbye by Licia He (Bright Moments)

Goodbyes are complicated, and Licie He understands this well.

Earlier this year, the newly-London-based artist left her emerging career in academia to focus on creating art full-time. In her own words, she "quit a job that [she] spent years preparing for, left a country after calling it home for more than a decade, and moved to a city [she] had never visited" all so she could live her dream.

Sparkling Goodbye, her contribution to this month's Bright Moments event in Tokyo, draws upon that combination of excitement and uncertainty that comes with saying goodbye to what we know. The result is an explosion of color and geometry that the artist breaks down in meticulous detail on her website:

Browsing the outputs, we're invited to explore the "chaotic blend of happiness, sadness, serenity, and anxiety" packed into each one of these Sparkling Goodbyes. As we do, we reflect on the goodbyes in our own lives: who have we said farewell to – and who has that allowed us to meet?

Bright Moments must prepare for its own sort of goodbye too. After a few final stops culminating in Venice, Italy next year, the organization will wind down its unbelievable globetrotting tour that founder Seth Goldstein once referred to “Cirque du Soleil meets Coinbase.” Seth spoke with Will and Trinity on Waiting To Be Signed recently about what's next: while the organization isn't going anywhere, it was never designed to stay on the road forever.

In a sense, we’re all in some form of perpetual goodbye as something ending draws nearer – which invites the complementary perspective that also everything is always new and fresh, when seen clearly. Each goodbye can even add a sparkle to what comes next. We think this project is the perfect expression of that dichotomy by simultaneously depicting calmness, explosiveness, and sheer vibrancy throughout.

CHRONOPHOTOGRAPH by 0xDEAFBEEF
(LACMA + Cactoid Labs)

One thing that can make this space overwhelming for newcomers is the number of labels we throw around as we try to describe exactly what our favorite artists are up to.

Generative art?
Code-based art?
Blockchain art?
Plain old digital art?
Or even just "art"?

Keeping things simple seems inherently appealing: after all, we want to help people understand what's going on here, right? But then you come across something like CHRONOPHOTOGRAPH by 0xDEAFBEEF, and wow: that is truly work that is hard to define.

Unlike many other generative artists, 0xDEAFBEEF has made sure to keep the "blockchain" in "blockchain art" front-and-center creating work that literally could not exist without this new technology. In CHRONOPHOTOGRAPH – his new project created in partnership with Los Angeles County Museum of Art's (LACMA's) Art and Technology Lab and Cactoid Labs – the artist allows collectors to "capture" observations from his previous project, NOUMENON: a series of works that look and sound like this, and create something entirely new from it.

The result is a series of black-and-white photographs capturing a moment in time. Specifically, it might be – for instance – a falling object…

…or a walking person.

Through these static images of moving subjects, 0xDEAFBEEF urges us to “reflect on the perception of time, consensus reality, photography and blockchain as sources of objective truth, and the limitations thereof.” He has also stated that his work operates in dialogue with the chronophotopgraphic work of Eadweard Muybridge available in the LACMA archives, whose work is regarded as the first complete photographic studies. We can’t but help see how this early photography reference serves as an embedded commentary about introducing a “new” medium to a wider audience.

This collaboration between a traditional museum and a blockchain artist highlights the growing recognition from institutions for generative art, and also how established institutions might learn from the more fluid roles of web3 to evolve the way they engage contemporary artists.

Whenever you as a collector come across a project this ambitious and conceptual, we encourage you to stay open-minded and follow the trail of any part of the work that speaks to you.

And as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts along the way.

Tender’s community-based editorials on iconic generative art projects add rich context to those incredible works. If you’d like to write about a Tender Icon that doesn’t have an editorial yet, DM Adam (@ajberni) or Stephen (@sandcathype) on Twitter or Discord and we'll make it happen. 🙌

Don’t Miss This

• Apr 26: Poems in the Public Domain - The Marianne Moore Edit by Ana Maria Caballero x Hieroglyphica (Verse; secondary: 0.1 eth). The artists bring their generative-poetry-annotation collaboration to Verse and shift their focus to American modernist poet Marianne Moore. Prefer Gertrude Stein, Walt Whitman, Homer, or Shakespeare? Catch up with their October 2022 fxhash release!

• May 3: SCULPT by Evan Greene x Ken Wiatrek (Foundation; minting: 0.05 eth). What do you get when you take two beloved TENDER community members and combine years of handmade drawings with some serious AI art skills? This colorful collaboration! As we browse the new forms that these old drawings have taken on, we’re reminded of just how superficial the distinction between “traditional” art and “AI art” can be.

• May 5: Undercurrents by Melissa Wiederrecht (Bright Moments; secondary: 0.9 eth). Released as part of Bright Moments Tokyo, "the collection attempts to capture the essence of Tokyo's multifaceted character and the unseen layers beneath the surface of the city's dynamic urban landscape."

• May 5: Margaret by qubibi (Bright Moments; secondary: 2.69 eth). Also released as part of Bright Moments Tokyo, Kazumasa Teshigawara's cryptically titled collection invites us to question what exactly we're seeing in these pared-down black-and-white version of some of his signature shapes and patterns.

• May 5: Photon resonator n°5 by HAL09999 (fxhash; secondary: 16 tez). HAL's set of ninety-nine new animated works draws us in to watch as stars in his signature spacescapes explode into colorful waves of light, over and over again.

• May 8: Pensado a mano by Alejandro (fxhash; secondary: 5 tez). In one of the most innovative uses of fx(params) to-date, Alejandro invites us to hand-draw patterns of our choosing and feed them to his algorithm. Community members and artists from Lisa Orth to Yazid to Evan Greene have all tried their hand, and the results are as diverse as they are delightful.

• May 10: Waiting To Be Signed Interview Episode: Will and Trinity chat with artist Cory Haber ahead of his recent release on Verse.

• May 11: Arbitrarily Deterministic #32: Ken talks with Danielle King “about her process, working with the Vertical Crypto Art residency, Expanded.art, her EmProps drop "The Muses", AI's interpretation of the female gaze, the exhibition she is curating for NFT Europe 2023 called Embodied and how she juggles all her various roles in life.”

• May 12: Tur by Ganchitecture x TENDER (Art Blocks Engine; minting: 0.08 eth). Over the course of many months, Ganchitecture and TENDER founder Adam Berninger worked through a process that involved over 100,000 (!) interim outputs. The final result is Tur: an imaginative collection of 444 glimpses into the architecture of a future where our technoculture has reached its tipping point and humans vie with artificial intelligence for survival.

• May 14: WTBS #71: In the latest episode of Waiting To Be Signed, Will and Trinity catch up on the week’s new projects and Verse and fxhash – and drop some tips about how to build a great little collection of pieces for the low, low price of 5 tez (!)

• May 15: Universal Rayhatcher by Piter Pasma. Piter Pasma has reimagined his signature rayhatcher framework as an fx(params) collaboration with other coder-artists. fxhash favorites like Claus Wilke, elsif, P1x3lboy, and itsgalo have all risen to the challenge of designing an SDF (Signed Distance Function) and running it through Piter's algorithm to generate a unique piece:

• May 17: Reunion by Tyler Boswell (fxhash; secondary: 88 tez). Tyler has given us occasional glimpses of his explorations into space over the past several months. The result is a brand new fx(params) release that gives each collector (wallet) a unique batch of twenty-five pieces to choose from.

• May 17: Waiting To Be Signed Interview Episode: Will and Trinity – working overtime this week! – chat with beloved community member ozzie about art, empathy, life on the fxhash team, and how he would spend time on a desert island.

• May 18: Generations by Anna Lucia x the quilters of Gee’s Bend (minting: 0.15 eth; full details about physicals, etc.). We are absolutely fascinated by what Arsnl Art describes as “a fusion of generative NFTs and physical quilting that spans generations.” By working side-by-side with a group based in a small town in Alabama that has been quilting for over a hundred years, Anna has taken her long-running obsession with the kinship between quilting and generative art further than ever before.

• May 25: ESCAPE by Iskra Velitchkova (TONIC). Art offers us mental freedom. Not convinced? Go lose yourself in Iskra’s new abstract structures for a while – then come back and tell us what you think. 😉

• As always, a quick reminder to go check on & use your fx(params) mint tickets before they expire!

Collector Spotlight: horndog!

Hey, thanks for chatting with us!

So, "horndog"—the people need to know: what's the story there? For those who have never seen my profile picture, it’s a blue Cool Cat with horns wearing a hotdog suit. Horns + dog = horndog. ☑️

I bought it a week or so after the Cool Cats minted in July 2021 and it has been my avatar and web3 pseudonym ever since. I did not, in fact, show up to web3 self-identifying as a horndog with the intention of finding an avatar to match.

It’s still a pretty entertaining name. But as I type this from NFT.NYC, I have to admit that it leads to some interesting introductions to those who have not already come across me on Discord or Twitter.

What’s your current state of mind? It’s a difficult time to be optimistic about prices but a really easy time to be excited about collecting. Price action might not be great, but there is still great art being produced almost weekly, often on sale for reasonable prices. Meanwhile, if you’re looking to collect with a long-term time horizon or by adding forever pieces to your collection, older gems are priced as reasonably as they have been since mint.

This period has given me a clearer direction in what I want to collect and what I want my collection to look like, which has given me greater appreciation and conviction in the pieces I have collected.

What is your most treasured piece in your collection?

(kinder)Garden, Monuments #270:

Zancan and Yazid are two of my favorite artists in any medium, and I revisit their collaboration almost daily. Zancan’s work is well-known for its sublime ruminations on man, machine, nature, and time. While many of his works like Garden, Monoliths challenge the viewer to reflect on the passage of time and the nature’s ambivalence to man’s place in it, (kinder)Garden, Monuments reminds us that gardens are also a place of play, growth, and discovery.

Yazid’s work is captivating for different reasons. I love his palette, especially as it has evolved over time. He has a great eye for geometry, brush-lines, and color combinations. Yazid has also managed to explore both digital work with a sense of physicality as well as work that could only be identified as digital.

Add those together and you get (kinder)Garden, Monuments. My #270 specifically has what I view as an ideal composition with centered blocks, a variety of wild grass and flowers, and Yazid’s signature Mondrian palette. The pop of the colors from the blocks draws the viewer's eye in and helps one get fully lost in the garden.

If you could own any artwork, which would it be? Van Gogh’s Irises:

I have always loved post-impressionism and Van Gogh’s work in particular. His strokes bring a palpable movement to his work and his palettes – enabled by new molecular discoveries and compounds – are always captivating.

What I find even more interesting is that while I fell in love with Van Gogh’s palette, quite often the colors are much duller than when he originally painted them. The most vibrant paint colors available to him – so-called “fugitive red pigments” – degraded over time. These irises were originally purple and the white background used to be a soft pink. So both the subject and the object remind us of our own impermanence.

And also, it looks pretty. 😉

What is your idea of the perfect drop? Hot take: I kind of hate minting.

Mints always happen in the middle of the workday for me, the experience is anxiety-inducing and – in my opinion – is generally geared towards a rarity lottery that encourages flipping rather than buying what you like.

The drop mechanic I enjoy the most is Verse’s from their recent projects where a collector can generate outputs for a few days then mint the ones they like most. Melissa Wiederrecht’s Cosmic Rays is not only my favorite collection this year – it was by far my favorite drop because of that mechanic.

As a collector, what’s been your greatest success? My biggest monetary successes came from trading profile pictures (PFPs) which is fun, but ultimately pretty boring to recount. As a collector, my biggest successes have been doubling down on artists and collections I love with conviction. Going after what you consider grails with certainty can help guarantee you add exactly what you want to your collection regardless of market conditions.

What about your greatest regret? Easy: I regret not diving into Art Blocks and fxhash sooner. I was around and active enough in the web3 space in 2021 but wish I had spent more time exclusively on generative art much sooner.

What three artists, dead or alive, would you most want to have dinner with? I’m not sure who would actually be a great hang, but three of my favorite artists ever are Manet, Cezanne, and Matisse. Ideally I would learn French before this meal, because I would love to pick their brains on the pre- to post-impressionistic period that they all helped shape.

What’s the most important quality in an artwork to you? Palette. Regardless of the medium or style, the thing that consistently draws me in to artwork is the right color tone and balance of colors. It’s difficult for me to get too excited about work with drab colors.

How do you like to relax? By endlessly scrolling generative art collections, of course!

Thanks for chatting with us! Which two collectors should we talk to next? Motzko and DocSciFi have two of my favorite collections, so I have to nominate them.

Hot Picks of the Week

First, some iconic projects with very low amounts of listings:

Mazinaw by Eric De Giuli: 3/256 listed – 0.2 eth floor

Chimera by mpkoz: 8/986 listed – 1.074 eth floor

Primitives by Aranda\Lasch: 11/400 listed – 0.43 eth floor

Attraction by Jos Vromans: 6/444 listed – 0.1 eth floor

The Piece: Screens #131 by Thomas Lin Pedersen
The Price: 2 eth (above floor, standout balanced piece)

The Piece: JPEG #242 by Jan Robert Leegte
The Price: 1.29 eth (at ~floor)

The Piece: Himinn #293 by Sarah Ridgley
The Price: 0.3 eth (at floor, 5/536 listed)

The Piece: unbuilt #225 by mrkswcz
The Price: 460 tez (double floor, standout centered + warped piece)

The Piece: Astronomic Comics #137 by KilledByAPixel
The Price: 90 tez (at floor)

The Piece: Pensado a mano #323 by Alejandro (params by Greene)
The Price: 18 tez (above floor, standout piece)

The Piece: g l a s s #977 by punevyr
The Price: 20 tez (at floor)

The Piece: Triangular Subdivisions #586 by Jos Vromans
The Price: 7 tez (at floor, next piece 12 tez)

TTFN 👋

We’ll see you out there on Discord & Twitter and will be back in a few weeks with another issue of our TENDER Insights Newsletter. Feel free to reach out anytime with comments or suggestions. 🙂

— Adam, Stephen, and the whole TENDER family