Most digital art is displayed in the space which it is created: the metaverse. That makes the Digital Art Fair Xperience is a bit of an anomaly: a physical space showing digital and NFT fine art.
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But for collectors wanting to diversify, the high-tech fair helps them take their first steps into this brave new virtual world.
Running until November 6 at Asia Standard Tower in Central, this year's fair will showcase more than 400 digital artworks worth over HK$30 million from 150 galleries and other partners.
Among the 70-plus world class artists featured are Beeple, Damien Hirst, Refik Anadol, Pak, Yuga Labs, Daniel Canogar and Wing Shya.
Chinese contemporary pop artist Jacky Tsai has been named Digital Artist of the Year. Said founder Gillian Howard: "It is our great honor to present such a unique multidimensional artist like Jacky whose work preserves the best of traditional art techniques while staying on top of the art-tech trend telling the East-meets-West cultural story. We are sure the audience will enjoy this journey into Chinese art of the past, present and future by Jacky Tsai."
The artist is bringing Jacky Tsai's Golden 10 years to the fair. His first-ever immersive room, which combines the best of his works in the past decade, was created in collaboration with award-winning visual effects director Victor Wong with soundtrack by "King of Mandopop" Jay Chou and renowned Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Tsai called the collaboration with the fair "a breakthrough of my career as a London-based Chinese contemporary artist."
"My hope is to create some genuinely Chinese digital artworks with unique East-meets-West cultural elements, style, logic, value and thoughts. I look forward to meeting and exchanging ideas with the audience," he added.
Alongside the fair's signature immersive zone, he is also showing his innovative blend of traditional Eastern art techniques and Western pop art references with both physical and digital artworks - from wood carving and silk embroidery to holograms.
Another artist to look forward to is surrealist meta-human artist MonoC, who is unveiling her Corona Florella series - marking the first virtual human participation at the fair.
The innovative collection consists of six generative artworks that record and reimagine the global battle against Covid-19. Two of the pieces will be auctioned by Sotheby's.
This is the second year the fair is partnering with the auction house. A total of 21 lots will go under the hammer, including six by Tsai.
Some of the artists are participating in the auction for the first time. They include local visual designer and artist anothermountainman (Stanley Wong), photographer and filmmaker Wing Shya and new media artist Henry Chu.
Visitors can look forward to a unique piece of digital art by Index Game supported by metaverse leader Sandbox. They can take part in a Web3.0 time travel, flying through 1960s Hong Kong to the present and onto the future.
Index Game will debut its two key NFT voxel art collections, celebrating a cultural combination of Chinese and Western styles, Hong Kong's cha chaan teng culture and a rhapsody of old Hong Kong items in voxelized robots.
One of the NFTs, Kowloon Walled City - Character Collage, will be auctioned by Sotheby's in the first-ever metaverse art international auction. The historic work will comes with a piece of 2x1 virtual land by Sandbox located in its Mega City 2, as well as a 1x1 Index Game metaverse experience.
Tickets (from HK$280) are available on Klook. Ticketholders to the new family morning session can also register for weekend kids workshops.
