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Crypto AM shines its Spotlight on Portraits of a Mind – the world’s largest blockchain art project

By: Crypto AM: Spotlight

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Block 21, holding 322,048 of Satoshi Nakamoto’s original code (v0.1.0) (left) Detail of the codebase (right)

In just 24 hours time, BLOCK 21 from Portraits of a Mind will make history as the first artwork and NFT of our culture to be sold at Christie’s New York. Just eleven years on from its inception, Satoshi’s codebase currently hangs alongside masterpieces by Picasso, Cezanne, Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Warhol. It is a major moment for our culture on the global stage and a moment to reflect on how deeply this codebase has ingrained inself into contemporary society in such a short space of time.

The first work of art exploring blockchain to be exhibited and sold at Christie’s, Block 21 is just one fragment Portraits of a Mind, a global art project to decentralise the founding code behind Bitcoin into forty fragments. 

The project is the largest work of art in the history of blockchain technology, with forty paintings stretching more than 50 meters long and forming a complete hand painted transcription of the 12.8 million digits of code (v0.1.0) that launched Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency. It took over three years to paint each of the 12.8 million digits of code. 

Installation View of the Project at a private view in London, 2019.

A symbolic expression of decentralisation, once globally distributed, the project will draw up a global network of 40 collectors where no one individual will hold all the code. A digital fingerprint carved out of paint, Portraits of a Mind is a global portrait of Satoshi Nakamoto, answering the question of how to make a portrait of an unknown identity with another question – ‘what did they leave behind?’.

Part of Block 21 includes a unique NFT (Non-Fungible Token) of the work. Functioning as both the work’s authenticity structure and a core part of the artwork, the NFT draws the physical work into the digital realm. It will be the first NFT to be sold by the world’s most prestigious auction house and presents a landmark moment for the NFT community. 

The NFT has two states as 24 time zones, programmed to fall into light and dark dependent on the timezone of the physical work.

Offered privately in early 2020 to select collectors, the first half of Satoshi’s codebase (Blocks 0 -20), now lie decentralised across the world, with works placed in important private collections in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, London, Paris, Gibraltar, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo. The full map of the locations of the codebase can be found here. The global reach across these three continents and fourteen cities stands testament to both Satoshi’s vision and the truly globalised nature of the blockchain community. 

Collectors and custodians of this historic codebase include some of the most important thought leaders in the blockchain space as well as a number of highly regarded art collectors, including CZ (CEO, Binance); Matthew Roszak, (Chairman, Bloq); Jehan Chu (Founder, Kenetic; Director’s Circle, SFMOMA; Board of Directors, Para/Site), Shaun Djie (Founder, Digix), Paul Gordon (Founder, Coinscrum), Bong Lee (Seoul Auction Blue) and other notable collectors who have requested anonymity. 

Detail of Block 21

Vivian Brodie, a specialist at the auction house, who has been leading the project, commented: 

“Christie’s and I are thrilled to be supporting this landmark blockchain art project with the sale of Block 21 from Portraits of a Mind in our October Day Sale in New York. This is Christie’s first time presenting a work that explores crypto culture at auction and, as ever, we are very excited to welcome new audiences and collecting communities across the globe to Christie’s. 

While Bitcoin, decentralization and cryptocurrency contribute in defining our contemporary landscape and future society, they deserve a stronger visibility and exploration in art history.  Portraits of a Mind also intrigued us with its reference and reframing of both conceptual artists Roman Opalka and On Kawara, artists engaged in practices that mirrored the qualities and structures of blockchain technologies some 40 years before Satoshi’s founding code came into being.”

Block 21 is the first work from the project to be exhibited and offered publicly for sale. As one of the most important works in the series, 21 represents an iconic number in Bitcoin’s history, referencing the total supply of the iconic cryptocurrency (21m). 

The moment the auction hammer falls on Wednesday, it will disappear into a private collection somewhere around the world, not to be seen for a long time. 

From New York, it will join its global counterparts – the twenty other fragments of Satoshi’s codebase decentralised across three continents and fourteen cities from San Francisco to Tokyo. 

Whoever becomes the custodian of Block 21; Matthew Roszak, CZ, Jehan Chu and l, alongside all twenty collectors, are looking forward to welcoming you to our network. 

Robert Alice and Portraits of a Mind
The Robert Alice project was founded by Benjamin Gentilli, a London-based artist in 2018, to promote blockchain culture within the visual arts. Ben has worked across the art world internationally in London, Hong Kong and Vancouver, most recently at Sotheby’s, where he left to focus his energy more creatively on developing blockchain’s visual culture. Portraits of a Mind is the first work of art from the project and was made solely by Gentilli over the course of a three year period. Following on from Portraits of a Mind, collaboration with fellow artists and creative developers will see Robert Alice become a decentralised collective.