Gae Aulenti Square

NFT. Digital Art Exhibition was a public show organised by Art Innovation Gallery in Piazza Gae Aulenti, the square at the centre of Milan's Porta Nuova district, during Milano Art Week. Art Innovation Gallery, founded by Francesca Boffetti, has no permanent space and presents itself as a "non-fungible gallery", staging shows in city centres during art weeks. For three days, from early morning until late at night, works by more than fifty digital artists from over fifteen countries ran on the square's LED walls and on its large curved LED sails, each about seven metres high. A QR code next to every work linked to information on the NFT. The artists included XCopy, Trevor Jones, Dangiuz, Skygolpe, Fabio Giampietro, Coldie and Federico Clapis.

Clapis showed Concrete Babydrone, one of the works in his Babydrone cycle, in which a drone carries a newborn in a cloth sling, a contemporary version of the stork. Here the sculpture appears in a weathered, concrete-like finish, marked with graffiti and set in an industrial courtyard. The images show it on one of the LED sails, with Stefano Boeri's Bosco Verticale towers in the background, and on the illuminated walls of the passages around the square, where large captions give the title of the show, the artist's name and the work.

The format took crypto art out of screens and online marketplaces and into one of the busiest public spaces in Milan, in front of commuters and passers-by rather than a specialised audience. For Clapis, whose Babydrone reflects on technology taking over care and birth, the setting among the glass towers of Porta Nuova suited the subject.

Sources

• NFT. Digital Art Exhibition — Artribune
• Digital Art Exhibition: Milan – press release — Disiva (formerly Art Innovation Gallery)