One of the first of its kind in Europe - and the first in the UK’s capital - the female-founded and female-first NFT Gallery in Mayfair has now opened its doors to the public in London. The NFT Gallery was founded by Lynn Rosenberger and Lilien Hornung-Mary as an exciting new physical space for art collectors and creators alike to purchase, produce and learn about NFTs and digital art. Perfectly situated in the heart of London’s flourishing art scene, the NFT Gallery is the conduit between the legacy art collecting world and the new digital era of creative expression. The NFT Gallery has opened with inaugural exhibition ‘Surface Tension’, showcasing solely female artists working in the digital sphere.
Paulina Almira
Paulina moved from the Philippines to USA in high school. She is a graphic designer and digital illustrator combining elements of technology fashion and the natural world to build surreal compositions. As a child Paulina played with Barbies and Bratz dolls, the Powerpuff Girls was her favourite TV show and she loved anything sparkly. She also read horror, fantasy and steampunk novels and was fascinated by anything gory or morbid. These contrasts have endured and her work presents a seductive, candy coloured view of the world, infiltrated by the macabre. Her commercial partnerships include: Times Square Arts, Vogue Singapore, Nike and Vice Magazine.
Image: Seasonal Fruit
Traditionally, women have been underrepresented in the worlds of art, technology and investing, and so the NFT Gallery seeks to be an important space for female participants to showcase their talent and work more broadly in the digital art sector.
Aitana Basquiat
Aitana studied Art History and is currently working in Madrid. Aitana Basquiat is a digital artist with a variety of skills and tools. Her works revolve around fields such as Digital Fashion, CGI Beauty Photography, Music, Videos and Editorials. Creating designs around each of these domains have made her a master at configuring digital renderings which jump out at the viewer with their trippy, yet life-like and tactile presences. She focuses mainly on 3D art, as she believes that it is the perfect medium to combine her various artistic disciplines. The work she presents in the show Nosce Te Ipsum translates as ‘know thyself’, is offered with the description ‘Face your lights and shadows’. A figure with an elaborate horned mask wearing a dress that blows in the breeze. Her works have been included in several international exhibitions and events such as The Garden of Virtual Utopias - Art Night (London, 2017), Light Year 45: Post vision (Manhattan Bridge, New York, 2019) and Digital Art Exhibition Braw Haus x Ep7 (Paris, 2021), among others.
Image: Spring Square
With a 270 square-metre gallery on Dover Street in Mayfair, The NFT Gallery is the go-to destination for NFTs and digital art. Set out across two floors, the ground floor exhibition space provides a place for viewing carefully curated NFTs exhibitions of the highest standard. The first floor is dedicated to learning through delivering a series of panel discussions, workshops and events in conjunction with our ed-hub partners and collaborators. Moreover, it's a meeting point for collectors, enthusiasts, artists and gallerists.
Postwook
Natasha Chomko is the real name of the artist known as Postwook. She is self-taught, having used collage since childhood (sitting at home with J Crew catalogues and Nylon magazine) as a form of therapy. She has honed her skills over time and migrated to making digital collages. Pre pandemic she became a full-time artist, before which she has worked in politics and aspired to becoming a lawyer. Her works are dreamlike landscapes with an ethereal quality evoking a spirit of fantasy and adventure. They often depict roads in the foreground, which she likes as a compositional tool but also for her, standing in the middle of an empty road out in nature makes her feel connected to the universe; communion with nature or mastery over it are called into question. She sees the road as an emblem for life, a continuation of a journey rather than escapism; life will never stay constant, there will always be a new place to travel to. One should stop and look around sometimes, but the goal is to keep moving forward. Her commercial partnerships have included Chase Bank, Club Med, Sony Music and Toyota.
Image: Roadtrip
The NFT Gallery is partnering with internationally renowned creators of NFTs and digital art to provide collectors with access to exclusive artworks and collections. Collectors have the ability to purchase NFTs with ease; payment is accepted in both crypto and fiat currencies with proof of purchase recorded on a blockchain, collectors then have the option to purchase a TokenFrame at the time of buying artworks to display NFTs in their own space.
Rebel Society
The faces behind Rebel Society: a husband-and-wife duo, are named Elric and Frida. With a background in design and project management, they started their NFT collection of limited- edition female characters, created from hand-drawn elements, stored as ERC-721 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. Passionate about social equality, their collection is a modern take inspired by all the women who rebelled against society’s demands. Silenced, prosecuted, stereotyped, burned as witches, sexualized, body shamed, abused, and discriminated for centuries, women are now writing their own history where the future is female. Through the Rebel Society initiative, the couple hopes to help other female artists bring their art to the world through the blockchain path. Owning a Rebel Society NFT also gives access to exclusive members only perks such as giveaways, voting rights, future drops and collabs. Silenced, prosecuted, stereotyped, burned as witches, sexualized, body shamed, abused, and discriminated for centuries, women are now writing their own history where the future is female. This collection is a modern take inspired by all the women who rebelled against society's demands, tore up every label, or stuck the middle finger up to anyone who told them to "smile".
Image: 6999
Exhibition Surface Tension
Surface Tension allows objects with a higher density than liquid to rest on its surface without becoming submerged, creating an impenetrable veneer. Human beings use masks in the same way. The mask, be it a physical barrier or disguise, allows its wearer to behave unexpectedly or in ways other than they would normally permit themselves without it. The mask allows for otherworldliness, for the transmission of hidden, or not-so-hidden messages. All the while the mask seduces with its beauty or disturbs with its unpleasantness, distracting the viewer from what lies beneath.
Women are sorely underrepresented in the NFT sphere and in the Art World in general, both as artists and collectors. For the inaugural show at The NFT Gallery we highlight female artists working in both arenas, unmasking the mystique around NFTs. We exhibit the work of NFT artists alongside the work of established, traditional artists who we have commissioned to create NFTs, so that each can learn from the other. The works and artist do not need to scream about feminism or femininity in order to be heard or equal the playing field, their physical and even virtual presence represents their value.
Paulina Almira, Silia Ka Tung and Postwook create their own worlds and narratives to help make sense of our own. Their colourful and playful imagery create a veil, drawing us in to discover the darker inner workings of the mind. Conversely Sarah Meyohas unmasks systems and technologies through her visual language, Bitchcoin, a cryptocurrency backed by physical artworks, questions the speculative value of cryptocurrency and the ineffable value of art. Aitana Basquiat works with the motif of a sculptural human to explore a surrealist vision questioning what it is that makes us human while Lili Eva Bartha’s experience allows clothes to grow on the virtual body of the viewer. Shadi Ghadirian, through her sepia toned photography challenges us to think about current gender roles and Rebel Society’s virtual portraits of imagined women, their faces disguised by make-up, sticking two fingers up at the patriarchy.
Exhibition | Surface Tension
9 June 2022 - 22 July 2022
5-7 Dover Street, London W1S 4LD, United Kingdom
THE FOUNDERS
Lynn Rosenberger
Lynn's passions lie in the art and fashion industry having founded two start-ups in the fashion-tech and art/web3 industries. She has gathered experience working for various companies such as Chocolate Films, Choice, Vetements and Subdued. During her stint at these companies, she has built and expanded upon her knowledge in marketing, PR, buying and sales. She is a passionate entrepreneur reflected in both of her companies' missions. Her goal is to ease consumers life and support women in the industry. She is a mentor at Instituto Marangoni where she graduated with Honours in Fashion Business.
Lilien Hornung-Mary
Lilien is an entrepreneur recently as Co-Founder of The NFT Gallery and Vite, two tech-enabled companies primarily focusing on Art/web3.0, fashion and consumer goods engaging the digital world to maximise client experience. She has worked in the fashion industry for companies such as Tomorrow, Wunderkind and Pepper across marketing, public relations, social media, sales and distribution. Lilien is a self-confessed tech geek with an insatiable interest in blockchain and its impact on fashion and the arts. As well as working on two recent start-ups, Lilien is part of the Dior Mentorship Program, a mentoring scheme for young women pursuing a career at the intersection of fashion and commerce. Lilien holds a Bachelor of Fashion Business with Honours from Instituto Marangoni, London. Leading with female power and driven by passion to create transformational change acro
