As Part of His NFT Debut, Jeff Koons Will Launch Sculptures Into Space and Place Them Permanently on the Moon

Jeff Koons is already the costliest dwelling artist on Earth. Now he’s setting his sights even greater and sending his artwork to the moon.

In a brand new challenge titled “Jeff Koons: Moon Phases,” the 67-year-old artist will current his first-ever NFT assortment with Tempo Verso—the gallery’s Web3 platform—of paintings impressed by the technological developments of people and their infinite fascination with the moon. Koons first teased his entry into NFTs again in 2021, quickly after he minimize ties with Gagosian and David Zwirner to work solely with Tempo.

Every distinctive digital work from the “Moon Phases” collection will correspond to a bodily sculpture. Later this yr, a bunch of the sculptures can be launched into area from pad 39A on the Kennedy House Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the US’s final crewed journey to the moon on Apollo 17. The challenge goals to do some terrestrial good, too; a restricted variety of NFTs can be bought by way of Tempo, and proceeds from among the first gross sales can be donated to Medical doctors With out Borders.

“I wished to create a traditionally significant NFT challenge rooted in humanistic and philosophical thought. Our achievements in area characterize the limitless potential of humanity,” Koons stated in a press release. “House explorations have given us a perspective of our capacity to transcend worldly constraints. These concepts are central to my NFT challenge, which might be understood as a continuation and celebration of humanity’s aspirational accomplishments inside and past our personal planet.”

The challenge is a collaboration between Koons and Tempo Verso; NFMoon, a digital artwork and expertise firm based by Patrick Colangelo; and 4Space, which was based by Chantelle Baier as the primary female-owned area firm going to the moon, and is concerned with Intuitive Machines, which designed the Nova-C lunar lander that may carry Koons’s work.

The sculptures would be the first-ever licensed artworks to be positioned on the floor of the moon—particularly within the Oceanus Procellarum, an space that stretches throughout greater than 1,600 miles throughout the moon’s north-south axis—the place they are going to stay in perpetuity, saved in a clear and thermally coated miniature satellite tv for pc often known as a CubeSat, as Jack Fischer, vp of Intuitive Machines and a former NASA astronaut, defined.

There aren’t any particulars simply but on what Koons’s artworks will seem like or what they are going to include. In August 2021, a trio of work by Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo took flight on one in all Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket ships, and the artist had to make use of particular supplies to make sure their security upon returning to the ambiance.

“This moon-based NFT challenge, the size of which aligns with Jeff’s monumental profession and impression within the arts, confirms his legacy as one of many world’s biggest artistic visionaries,” stated Tempo president and CEO Marc Glimcher.

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