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World's first NFT art gallery opens in NY

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Superchief Gallery, a physical gallery dedicated exclusively to NFT art, has opened in New York.
Camera IconSuperchief Gallery, a physical gallery dedicated exclusively to NFT art, has opened in New York. Credit: EPA

New York City's Superchief Gallery has become the first physical space in the world to dedicate itself to the exhibition of works in NFT, a digital format that has reached stratospheric popularity in recent months.

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are collectible digital assets that, thanks to blockchain technology, are registered as unique and irreplaceable and have a transaction history that can be followed from the origin of the work.

This application of blockchain has been a revolution in digital art, since a creator can register their work as unique and a buyer can certify both its authenticity and ownership.

NFTs open the door to an infinity of applications in the creation, exchange and transfer of unique digital content and collection of assets worldwide with a relatively low cost (minting works and closing transactions in blockchain have a variable computational cost and in emissions).

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"Since we opened our first digital art gallery in Soho back in 2016, Superchief has held the belief that digital-native artwork was an essential art form to include as part of the larger art movement of our era," gallery co-founder Ed Zipco said in a statement.

Zipco also said that they have known for years that there wasn't a clear way to monetise digital art, aside from commercial projects, but they were determined that these artists should be part of the art community.

"These are artists we feel are brilliant and exciting, and should be part of the cultural exchange," he added.

In the first exhibition, titled Season 1 Starter Pack, the gallery is showing the works of 300 artists that will rotate daily and displayed on high resolution 4K screens.

Among the pieces that stand out are the stop motion animation Mask Splitting by the American Swoon (Caledonia Curry), who is known for being the first woman street artist to achieve international fame, and NFTesla, by Mashkow (Alexey Mashkov) from Moscow, Russia.

On March 11, Christie's auctioned for the first time an entirely digital artwork, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, a JPEG by Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) that reached $US69.3 million ($A91.3 million), the highest price paid for an NFT and third-most expensive work by a living artist.

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