Dmitri Cherniak Unveils ‘Ringers’ in Collaboration with Avant Arte & LACMA
Avant Arte, a curated art marketplace known for making art more accessible, has unveiled its latest collaboration with Canadian artist and coder Dmitri Cherniak and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
Cherniak’s algorithmic art has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and exhibitions around the world, utilizing automation as his primary artistic medium. He is best known for his seminal Ringers series, which consists of 1,000 generative artworks that utilize different combinations of string and peg layouts to create geometric works of art without human interaction.
In June, Cherniak’s “Ringers #879“, better known as “The Goose,” sold for $6.2 million at auction.
LACMA is considered to be the largest art museum in the western U.S., with a collection of nearly 152,000 objects that illuminate 6,000 years of artistic expression across the globe. Together, Cherniak and LACMA will release a new time-limited silkscreen print edition with an accompanying NFT edition, Ringers #962: The LACMA Iterations, according to the press release shared with nft now.
“We now have several of Dmitri Cherniak’s works in our collection, an artist whose practice is very much in the spirit of LACMA’s original Art and Technology program. LACMA is delighted to be receiving support from this print collaboration between Dmitri and Avant Arte that is derived from our recent acquisition of Ringers #962 making this already well-known work more broadly accessible,” shared LACMA Director Michael Govan.
From Nina Chanel Abney and Ai Weiwei to Jenny Holzer and FUTURA, Avant Arte works with leading contemporary artists to create limited edition works, from sculpture editions and NFTs to works on paper and hand-finished screenprints.
This unique artwork will be available for a brief 24-hour period starting on September 28 via Avant Arte’s website. Ringers #962: The LACMA Iterations draws inspiration from Cherniak’s original work, Ringers #962, which is now part of LACMA’s permanent collection. This was donated to LACMA earlier this year as part of a historic contribution of blockchain-minted artworks by pseudonymous patron of digital art, Cozomo de’ Medici. Avant Arte and Cozomo de’ Medici released their first artist project on July 25.
The new iteration of “Ringers #962” is a 9-piece parameter sweep presented in a 3×3 grid. It explores variations by changing the percentage of pegs sampled from 10% to 100%, while the signature yellow peg remains consistent in each composition.
“I am so pleased with the opportunity to highlight an important part of my practice, known as parameterization. By changing one variable in the program, in this case the percentage of pegs to be wrapped by a string, we are able to see how the original artwork, Ringers #962, evolves over the course of 9 frames arranged in a grid. This process is what I call a “parameter sweep” and it’s an honor to present the combined works as the LACMA Iterations,” said Cherniak.
Cherniak added that as the artist who coded the algorithm, he had no explicit control over how the artwork would develop, and instead, chose to rely on randomization and a deep familiarity of the aesthetic form to help guide the output through code.
The physical print edition of Ringers #962: The LACMA Iterations is a 3-color silkscreen print featuring 7 layers and embossing. Each print measures 50cm x 50cm and will be signed by the artist. Collectors will also receive an email after purchase to claim the accompanying ERC-1155 NFT, which will feature the same image as the print edition.
Cherniak and Avant Arte have also created a special print edition of 5 XL prints measuring 120cm x 120cm that will be gifted to 5 lucky collectors of the main print edition at random. Winners will be announced after the 24 hour window has closed.
“This collaboration marks an exciting next step in Avant Arte’s journey to making great art more accessible by democratizing access for collectors and supporting public institutions like LACMA,” said Christian Luiten, Co-founder and Head of Artist Community at Avant Arte.
Ringers #962: The LACMA Iterations will be available to everyone on avantarte.com for 24 hours, beginning September 28 at 11:00am ET. Notably, 50% of the profits from the sale of Ringers #962: The LACMA Iterations will be donated to LACMA, continuing the collaboration’s mission to raise significant funds for the museum.
Editor’s note: This article was written by an nft now staff member in collaboration with OpenAI’s GPT-3.5.