British artistic genius Damien Hirst has always been full of ideas. Riding the wave of crypto art, he officially launched his first NFT series “The Currency” last year. This series consists of 10,000 NFTs, each corresponding to an original colored dot artwork. The artist requires buyers to choose between the NFT and the physical artwork, with the rejected ones being personally destroyed by the artist to ensure the uniqueness of the pieces.
Newport Street Gallery, the British gallery responsible for assisting in planning this project, has released buyer data. A total of 5,149 buyers chose original artworks, while 4,851 buyers chose NFTs, showing a slight preference for physical works. True to his word, Damien Hirst announced earlier this week on social media that he will be live streaming the burning of a multi-million dollar artwork at the gallery on Tuesday, October 12th at 12:30 pm UK time, welcoming NFT buyers to witness the event in person.
On the day of the event, Damien Hirst appeared in a silver metallic hooded shirt and pants, wearing fire safety gloves. After collecting the paintings with his assistant, he used pliers to burn each piece in the gallery fireplace. These colorful spot paintings were priced at £1,800 each (approximately HK$16,000), making them quite valuable. This bold “burning money” act attracted many netizens worldwide to watch the live broadcast.
When asked about the feeling of burning these works, Damien Hirst said, “It feels good, better than I expected. Many people think I am burning millions of dollars worth of art, but I am not. I am just completing the process of transforming these physical artworks into NFTs by burning the physical versions.” Some have calculated the value of the works to be burned to be as high as £10 million (approximately HK$89 million), but the artist believes that the value of art will not be lost, they are just changing the medium of presentation.
Before burning each piece of art, Damien Hirst displays it to the camera to record its unique code for buyers to track their collections. This large-scale burning operation will continue until the end of the “The Currency” exhibition on October 30th. Foreign netizens jokingly suggest that if you can’t turn on the heater at home, you can consider enjoying this expensive heating at the Newport Street Gallery!
Image source: twitter@ HENI
