One of the world's richest artists, Damien Hirst, began producing 10,000 unique images of colored dots in 2016 and is now burning a portion as part of the body of work in an exhibition in London. The burned artworks continue to exist digitally as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Hirst's latest art installation consists of 10,000 handmade sheets of A4 paper covered with similar, but not identical, dots of color. Each piece is numbered and signed by the artist on the back, along with an artistic title. The physical works are watermarked like real banknotes, with a microdot and a hologram to make them difficult to counterfeit. Hirst has turned this into an experiment with the irrational dynamics of collectors and blockchain technology.
Rising relevance of digital art
Top prices are still paid on the art market for the works of the British artist, who has been known since the 1990s. In July 2021, Damien Hirst offered the 10,000 digitized paintings in an NFT marketplace for USD 2,000 each. Today, the cheapest editions can be had for 5'000 USD. This is in stark contrast to the purchase prices of his other works, the most expensive of which sold for over $19.2 million in 2007, according to Heritage Auctions.
Owners were given a year to decide whether they wanted the physical painting or to keep its digital twin. More than half of the buyers want the intricately created and refined original in their hands. 4,851 people want their unique piece as an NFT and thus released their original for incineration.
Physical images are burned
This crowning achievement of the complete work "The Currency" will be broadcast live from the Newport Street Gallery. The first 1,000 images were destroyed this week. The Turner Prize winner and his assistants used tongs to place individual works piled in stacks into the gallery's chimneys while viewers watched the event via livestream.
"A lot of people think I burn millions of dollars worth of artwork, but I don't. I complete the transformation of these physical artworks into NFTs by burning the physical versions. [...] Instinctively, I feel that it is not right to burn a work of art. But when I think about it, I know I have to burn it because it's part of the process I'm in." - Damien Hirst
