Disruption – W1 Curates

Disruption was an exhibition organized in London by W1 Curates, a platform that presents contemporary and digital art to a wide public in the city's West End. For this project W1 Curates joined forces with two prominent collectors of crypto art: 33NFT, an anonymous collector said to own more than a thousand rare digital works, and the pseudonymous Cozomo de' Medici, with the stated aim of presenting some of the most sought-after pieces of the crypto and digital art movement from their collections.

A work by Federico Clapis was part of the selection. The installation views show a darkened hall with exposed ceiling trusses and a glossy floor that doubles every image. Clapis' Babydrone animation, here in a pink-toned version, was shown on a long row of tall vertical screens standing in a line: on each, a drone lifts a heavy pale bundle that hangs from it like a cloth sack, a contemporary echo of the stork carrying a newborn. Repeated screen after screen, the figure reads as a procession, while columns with the W1 Curates Disruption texts and QR codes stand among the displays. Elsewhere in the space, visitors move in silhouette in front of large projections of an ornate, gilded interior.

The presentation matters less as a solo moment than as a sign of reception: Clapis' digital work appearing among the pieces that leading collectors chose to represent the movement, in a London venue dedicated to screen-based art. It also shows how his tokenized animations can be staged physically, multiplied across screens to occupy an entire room.

Sources

• Disruption — W1 Curates (archived page)
• Disruption – W1 Curates — Federico Clapis