The auction by WorldArt gallery, a Cape Town-based art gallery of a non-fungible token (NFT) artwork by South African artist, Norman O’Flynn, is now live!
The auction is hosted by OpenSea, a peer-to-peer marketplace for rare digital items and crypto collectibles. It was listed on 26 March 2021 and the auction will be live for 21 days. Interested bidders can place their bids until 16 April 2021 at 10:00pm CAT. The reserve price is set at 3.14 ETH ($5,139.14) and is yet to be met.
The artwork, entitled ‘Da Bomb’, is in the form of a GIF file, based on the latest painting from O’Flynn’s esteemed Timekeeper series. O’Flynn painted the first Timekeeper portrait in 2015. It started as an impromptu portrait of a friend, but soon became much more as he added tattoo-like sketches and slogans relevant to this person’s life. He has created various other paintings in a similar style, later realising that these images and slogans had less to do with the subject in the portrait than it had with the world in which they live.
“I realised that what came out was just me observing the glitch. I wasn’t trying to tell anyone what to do or what I think. I just showed them what I saw,” said O’Flynn.
The figure in the artwork wears a mask. “It’s a filter. It protects us from what we take in and what we release, germs, words – all of it” he says.
The highest bidder will not only be the proud owner of the NFT, but will also receive the original painting – a 150cm X 100cm Timekeeper portrait painted on plexi-glass. This portrait currently retails for $5,000 in the ‘real world’ gallery. The owner of the digital work will be free to offer it for resale on the secondary market whenever they feel the time is right.
If you like to bid on the artwork please follow the link: ‘Da Bomb’
Feature image by wei zhu from Pixabay
