The NFT art market is exploding right now. And in the case of one digital artist, quite literally.
Shl0ms, with the help of an artificer, blew up a Lamborghini Huracan and turned it into a 999-piece NFT collection. All in the name of art, or, in his case, protest.
The good, the, bad and the ugly of NFTs and digital art
βNFT technology is incredibly promising, there are so many good things we could do with it but there are so many terrible things being done with it,β Shl0ms told The Block.
βThe Lambo is a pretty powerful representation of people who are just getting into crypto because itβs a way for them to make money with other people as quickly as possible,β he added. .
Shl0ms paid just shy of $250,000 for the Lamborghini, a brand he hates. βThe Lambo is a pretty potent representation of people simply engaging with crypto because itβs a way for them to make money off other people as quickly as possible,β he said.
It took a team of technicians, including a federally licensed explosives engineer, two weeks to set up the stunt.
The resultant pieces of supercar were then shot in 4k definition and the clips minted as NFTs.
The collection goes up for auction on Friday (February 25). Of the total number of NFTs, 888 will be sold and the remaining 111 reserved for the artist, his team and the initial investor.
In a press release, the pseudonymous artist says blowing up the car marks the intersection between physical and digital worlds. βThe destruction-as-creation motif is pretty common in the traditional art world. But not as common in the crypto art world.β
Would you like your Lambo to be chaotically destroyed or methodically dismantled?
Shl0ms originally floated the idea on Twitter last September, asking his 24,000 followers if theyβd prefer the βLambo chaotically destroyed or methodically dismantled?β
Of course, Shl0ms is not the first artist to βrecycleβ destroyed art.
In March last year, an original copy of Banksy was burned and broadcast live, then sold as NFT for $380,000.
Morons was a critique by the pseudonymous British street artist, depicting a Christieβs auctioneer.
Next to the auctioneer is a framed painting with the phrase, βI canβt believe you morons are actually buying this.β
The reason for burning the work, according to a spokesman, was to move the value of the physical work to the NFT. But if the value of the work is in the physical piece, its destruction and replacement by a smart contract token will shift the value to the NFT.
