KEVIN ABOSCH
I AM A COIN, 2018
Signed in marker on front by the artist
Mylar foil pouch, marker, artist's blood, cotton cloth
Size: 12 x 22 cm
Exhibited at “Perfect and Priceless” show, Zürich, Kate Vass Galerie, 2018-2019
Description:
In the aftermath of the sale of photograph “Potato #345” in 2015 for €1 million conceptual artist Kevin Abosch found the attention migrating from the artistic value of his work to the monetary value. In response to feeling like he was being treated like a commodity, Abosch decided to tokenize himself on the Ethereum blockchain, effectively creating 10 million virtual artworks entitled IAMACOIN. He also made 100 physical works on paper stamped using the artist's own blood, with the IAMACOIN contract address comprised of 42 alphanumerics, corresponding to the creation of the the 10 million virtual works.
The virtual works are standard ERC-20 tokens and token owners are free to share these artworks and even divide them into smaller pieces before sharing. Indeed, they are divisible to 18 decimal places.
Abosch says, “While the virtual work could exist without the creation of the physical work, the physical artworks could not have a meaningful existence were it not for the creation of the virtual artworks. In this sense, the work mirrors the unidirectional mechanism of a cryptographic algorithm — With a private key you can deduce the wallet address, but with the wallet address you cannot deduce the private key.”
In 2018, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia showed Abosch’s installation “Personal Effects”, five canvas sacs imprinted with blockchain wallet addresses, each containing a quantity of IAMA Coins but because the private keys to these wallets have not been saved, they are virtually dead. Abosch sees these virtual artworks as pieces of himself and therefore exist as relics or personal effects.
In “Perfect & Priceless” Abosch presents a Mylar-foil pouch containing a piece of cotton cloth impregnated with the artist’s own blood. The declaration “I AM A COIN” is written on the front of the pouch along with the blockchain contract address for IAMACOIN.