The Crypt Gallery Opening

The Crypt Gallery opened at Dream Hollywood, the West Coast flagship of Dream Hotels in Los Angeles, as a space dedicated to NFTs inside a hotel, presented by the press as the first of its kind in the United States. The project was founded by Vasia and the collector Athanasios Polihronopoylos, known as King of Midtown, who curated the exhibition. Free and open to the public, it occupied the lobby and the lounge: the lobby gathered photography, 3D animation, painting and digital sculpture, while the lounge focused on marketplaces, with live auctions streamed from online platforms, raffles for hotel guests and QR codes leading to each work.

Federico Clapis was part of the marketplace section. The footage he published shows a wall in the lounge with two vertical screens in white frames, set above a printed panel that defines the word marketplace and the Dream Los Angeles Hollywood logo. On the left, under his name, is Babydrone in Space, edition 206 of 324: the drone carrying a newborn floats in orbit above the Earth among other objects adrift in space. On the right is Body by Raf Grassetti, a classical marble figure revealing an inner anatomy, and a small display between the two carries the King of Midtown label.

The pairing placed Clapis' digital sculpture next to another artist who works with the codes of classical statuary, in a setting designed to bring collectible digital art to a general public outside the usual gallery circuit.

Sources

• In Partnership With The Crypt Gallery, Dream Hotels Welcome A New Guest: NFTs — Jing Daily Culture
• The Dream Hollywood hotel opened an NFT art gallery in its lobby. Here's a look at what it's like. — Business Insider (via Yahoo Finance)
• The Crypt Gallery: Pioneering NFT Art in the Hospitality Industry — NFT Culture