Hybrids
When painting becomes NFT
When classical painting mixes with digital art, a completely astonishing mix appears. Associating the painting all in matter with an image in a smooth and inert screen leads to questioning this composed image. The eye is caught by this aesthetic form, even for the eye of a classic collector who loves painting. The artist thus leads the so-called "traditional" collector to question this digital insertion and on the subject of the certificates of ownership of a work.
All kinds of processes exist to certify a tangible object like a painting thanks to a certificate of ownership. The simplest is to associate a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist and printed on a simple sheet of paper. Other more technical processes exist, such as affixing a 2D code or an RFID/NFC tag to the back of a painting to host the information concerning it.
The information stored in the 2D code or RFID/NFC chip refers to a private or public and digital database such as the blockchain.
Some associate an NFT recorded in the blockchain and attach it to the painting via the RFID/NFC chip, acting as a certificate of ownership of the work.
More extreme, some artists permanently include the RFID/NFC chip in the painting material itself. The chip is then buried in the painting.
There is an even more radical gesture! And it is this gesture that Albertine produces on unsigned and anonymous paintings, which she finds by chance during her research.
To associate two objects, one tangible - the painting - and the other digital - the NFT, simply include the NFT in a screen showing the missing part of the painting itself. The missing part then becomes a digital object in its own right, authentic and certified through the image minted in the form of an NFT and hosted by the blockchain.
A radical, paradoxical, absurd gesture but where the painting and the NFT are completely intertwined and definitively linked.
Ps. As collectors, you buy the painting, you have the NFT, and vice versa
2025 – Albertine Meunier
