Glitch Artist Patrick Amadon Launches “404 Art Catalog”

Glitch artist Patrick Amadon recently announced the launch of his “404 August 2023 Art Catalog,” a monthly decentralized chain and agnostic art exhibition to highlight the latest digital art – by artists, for artists. The Catalog will be hosted on the creative platform Joyn.xyz.

For the August issue, Amadon will be acquiring $3,500 worth of submitted art, in addition to collectors such as Art Blocks’ Snowfro, Proof’s Head of Art Eli Scheinman, Cozomo Medici, and seven others. 

“The 404 August Catalog was the second of the catalogs, and featured ten collectors who generously decided to match my commitment to buy submitted works,” Amadon said in an interview with nft now. “I wanted to create something that would be chain and platform agnostic, and just put art and artist together without regard for social media clout — just an equal opportunity for every artist to be seen on the same level.”

What is “Glitch Art?”

Over the years, the emergence of “glitch art” has become increasingly popular as a visual style that is distinctive in its use of intentionally curated digital distortions. 

Think about those brief interruptions to our films, TV shows, or video games that quickly resolve themselves and eventually disappear from the screen. Glitch Art explores what it looks like when those glitches don’t “self-correct,” creating a unique, futuristic design style. 

Calling Out Sotheby’s “Glitch-ism” Collection

Amadon first made headlines back in March after he announced that he would be withdrawing his art from Sotheby’s then latest NFT glitch art auction, “Natively Digital: Glitch-ism.”

The glitch artist called out Sotheby’s “Glitch-ism” collection for its lack of representation of “female-identifying artists” who he believes have played a major role in the emergence and overall growth of the glitch movement.

The first-of-its-kind online auction was preparing to showcase 17 artists from the glitch art world, ranging from static images in the form of JPEGs to MP4s and GIFs. However, Sotheby’s quickly came under fire from many in the Web3 community for not featuring a single woman artist in the auction’s roster. 

A number of female and nonbinary artists initially excluded from the show also expressed their insult by their exclusion, emphasizing the pivotal role they’ve played in the development of Glitch art. 

As a result, Sotheby’s made the decision to pause its auction, only to relaunch it two weeks later on April 19, titled “Glitch: Beyond Binary,” which featured artist communities that “do not just identify as male or female but consist of people from every gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, language, neuro-type, size, ability, class, religion, culture, subculture, political opinion, age, skill level, occupation, and background.”

“No Rioters” in Hong Kong

During the same window in which Amadon brought light to the lack of representation in Sotheby’s originally planned “Glitch-ism” auction, he also made headlines after his digital billboard piece entitled “No Rioters” had been removed by Hong Kong authorities.

Having already been displayed for a week on the side of a department store in central Hong Kong, Amadon had revealed that the glitch art actually had a secret political message that was invisible to the naked eye – the names of jailed activists in flashing text, as well as a 24-second video that included the details of jailed pro-democracy protesters that could be seen in photographs of the artwork. 

Amadon told BBC News that the artwork’s removal “completed” its political message about the crackdown on the city’s civil freedoms. 

What’s Next for 404?

According to the announcement, interested artists and collectors are able to only submit one submission directly into Amadon’s “X” (formerly Twitter) thread before the submission process closes on July 31 at 12am PST.

Amadon also told nft now that the space will go either one of two directions and he wants to be on the right side of history.

“Either we’ll create an inclusive and accessible art movement that can support artists at the margins and grow into the transformative movement we can be,” He shared. “Otherwise, we’ll end up consolidating to a handful of artists and end up as a blip on the art historical timeline – that time when art was created around blockchain and ultimately be lost to history.”

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