The famous NFT artist Mike Winkelmann aka Beeple opened their own studios last Friday in Charleston, South Carolina.
Beeple opened his studios in order to share its success with other digital artists.
The artist officially founded Beeple Studios in 2021, right after selling his artwork “Everydays: The first 5,000 days” in a historic auction at Christie’s. Beeple chose to locate them in Charleston because it is the city where he lives with his family and created his works. The venue extends over 50,000 m2, with a 13,000 m2 exhibition gallery and an experience space. Beeple Studios also offers workspaces for artists.
“This space was designed to be used by the Community”, as explained on Beeple’s website. “We wanted to build a space where we could plan and set up various possibilities for exhibitions for artists and experimental gathering events for the Community” The aim of Beeple Studios is to bring together the Web3 community and beyond around education and a love of Digital Art.
For the grand opening, an impressive list of digital artists’ works was on display. XCopy, FVCKRENDER, Refik Anadol, Pak, Dee Kay Motion, Joshua Davis, and others, were some of the household names. Hundreds of guests, all owning at least one artwork of Beeple, attended the event.
Numerous happenings took place during the opening: actors dressed like mark Zuckerberg, Andy Warhol, and other personalities were walking around in the middle of the visitors. On top of that, Beeple created no less than 51 new artworks over the course of one hour.
Beeple became world famous on March 11, 2021. On this day, Christie’s sold its artwork Everydays: The First 5,000 Days (2021) for $69.3 million. An absolute record for an NFT, but also for digital artwork.
Born in 1981, Mike Winkelmann is a digital artist, graphic designer, and animator. He started experimenting with NFTs in 2020. The first two Beeple NFTs were sold at an auction at ETHDenver and on Nifty Gateway. One of these NFTs, Crossroad, was sold for $66,666.66 and resold for $6.7 million in February 2021.
When Beeple sold the NFT associated with “Everydays: the First 5000 Days”, it was the first time that a legacy auction house sold an NFT. Moreover, Christie’s accepted payments in Ether, which was also a first. One physical print of the artwork was on display during the opening of Beeple Studios.
Sometimes wrongly presented as “an overnight success”, Beeple worked for more than 13 years in order to achieve its actual success. A few months before the historic “Everydays…” NFT sale, he never sold artwork for more than 100$. But he kept growing his online reputation, attracting millions of followers on Instagram and other social networks.
“Something that people maybe don’t really understand with NFTs is this is not some magic bullet where you’re suddenly going to start selling stuff”, said Beeple to NFT Evening. “If you do not have a built-in audience and you have not built a community around your work, then it is going to be very hard to sell stuff—NFTs, canvas, photography, sculpture, whatever.”
With Beeple Studios, Mike Winkelmann wants to share a bit of its success by helping other artists to gain visibility. The artist is putting the city of Charleston on the map as a hub for digital and NFT artists.
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