Damien Hirst and The Currency
Cue entrance from the king of controversial contemporary art, Damien Hirst. No stranger to creating works that encapsulate the interconnected relationship between currency and physical art - see, for example, For The Love of God, - it is unsurprising that he has thrown himself headfirst into the world of NFTs. His first and most important contribution: The Currency.
Originally conceived in 2016, Hirst created 10,000 individual physical prints for this project, each comprising his signature multi-coloured dots. Published by HENI editions, every print, or Tender, was then made available to buy during the week of July 14th-21st 2021 for $2,000. Each print has its own individual microdot, hologram and watermark of the artist’s head to make it harder to forge, and to directly reference a banknote. During this period, 32,472 people applied for a total of 67,023 NFTs.
Key to this project is that Hirst asks the buyer to decide whether the NFT or physical print has more value. As of August 2022, 4,851 people have decided to keep the NFT version of the print they purchased and 5,149 have traded their digital tokens for the physical artworks, according to HENI.
The sticking point here is that whichever version of The Currency is not chosen is then destroyed - the disposed-of prints in a ceremonial burning. In the wake of the recent NFT market crash, most buyers have opted to keep their physical work of art. Buyers who decided to buy the Tender in the whirlwind of the NFT hype six months ago, have now redeemed their old-school physical print instead.
Hirst has announced that the burning of the over 5,000 physical artworks will take place during an exhibition at Newport Street Gallery in London, also titled 'The Currency', starting in September 2022.
