Robert Montgomery, You are an Agent of Free Sunlight – Still from Video I, Courtesy the artist and Danysz Gallery
Danysz Gallery is pleased to announce New Pavilion’s inaugural project: an exclusive NFT release from acclaimed contemporary artist Robert Montgomery. “You are an Agent of Free Sunlight” is a hard-hitting critique of the digital world of today. On view at Danysz gallery - Paris as part of a solo show titled “Salvage Paradise,” this video piece, which uses the artist's signature poetic prose will be offered as 100 NFTs on KnownOrigin, on January 28, 2022.
"I think my NFT work is the first NFT work to critique the digital world that NFTs live within. Possibly it's the first anti-digital world NFT. This artwork is a manifesto against the digital space of today."
- Robert Montgomery
Robert Montgomery, You are an Agent of Free Sunlight – Still from Video I, Courtesy the artist and Danysz Gallery
ARTIST STATEMENT
I think we are all in a state of collective emotional trauma. I feel the encroachment of the digital world into our psyche over the last decade has pushed us all to the edge of insanity and we don't yet have the emotional tools to deal with it.
The internet has in a way become our primary reality, but what we have to remember is that the Internet is predominantly an advertising medium. The internet's success is largely based on spiking engagement- it has found that the best way to spike engagement is to engineer argument and social conflict. Process that sentence one more time- the Internet is an advertising medium that is geared to create social conflict in order to sell us things. That is frightening when you stop to think about it for just a moment. This "digital space" has increasingly come to define our reality and today we are now wandering in this digital space where our behaviour is also more closely analysed and tracked than human beings ever have been in any human society in history. Where do freedom and nature fit within this picture? What is freedom and where is our relationship with the natural world?
I didn't want to make a digital work or an NFT unless it confronted these questions. I think my NFT work is the first NFT work to critique the digital world that NFTs live within. Possibly it's the first anti-digital world NFT. This artwork is a manifesto against the digital space of today.
Robert Montgomery, You are an Agent of Free Sunlight – Still from Video I, Courtesy the artist and Danysz Gallery
A DIGITAL WORK CRITIQUING THE DIGITAL SPACE
Critiquing the very medium the work is hosted on, Montgomery explores the existential sphere of the digital world we have created. It looks at how digital communication and devices have become the managers of our time; tracks how our own biographies are now reflected back to us within advertising media ("social media"), and asks what that means for questions of intellectual and emotional freedom and our connection to the natural world.
"You are an Agent of Free Sunlight" references our reliance on smartphones “ Like a witch’s cat, it is your primary familiar, a little illuminated window with fire from the inside, and a little box of ghosts, exactly tailored for you.” Defining our reality, this digital space has the ability to analyse and track humanity, more invasive than any time in our history. Montgomery notes our resistance to any barriers to our screens, how the digital world works to discord with nature, “you are annoyed when the sunlight kills it”. Prose spirals and zigzags, crashes and disintegrates into the darkness, in the poetic final sentences the artist invites viewers to leave their screens and realise the magic of the natural world.
About the artist
Robert Montgomery (b.1972, Scotland) is a British contemporary artist well known for his work in public space and guerilla billboard poems. He makes billboard poems, light works, fire poems, woodcuts, paintings and watercolours. His work brings text art closer to the language of poetry. He represented the UK in the 2012 Kochi Biennale and the 2016 Yinchuan Biennale. His work is in museum collections across the world including the Albright Knox in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. He has had solo museum projects at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, Oklahoma Contemporary in Oklahoma City, and the Cer Modern Museum in Ankara. His work is hugely popular on the internet, the piece “The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You” has been shared online more than 20 million times. Montgomery has worked with low consumption LED lighting and solar power since 2010 and was one of the official artists for both ArtCOP21 (Paris 2015) and ArtCOP26 (Glasgow, 2021).
NEW PAVILLION
New Pavilion is an innovative consultancy developing authorised non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and digital artworks, in collaboration with some of the world’s most celebrated artists' estates, contemporary creators, arts foundations, and cultural institutions. New Pavilion enables collaborators to effectively utilize evolving digital architectures and technologies, with an emphasis on blockchain and non-fungible tokenization. And to facilitate symbiotic collaborator participation within these transformational new ecosystems. New Pavilion evolves iconic creators’ works into Ethereum-based NFTs for acquisition by individual and institutional collectors, without technical complexity. Preserving renowned creators’ original visions while offering substantial new revenue opportunities, and new audience engagement, New Pavilion facilitates the evolution of material works into highly desirable digital assets.
Courtesy the artist and Danysz Gallery.
