By Pak • 12- 14 April • A novel collection of digital art redefining our understanding of value

NEW YORK, 6 April 2021 – Sotheby’s embarks on its debut NFT partnership with Pak, one of the foremost digital creators, to bring their novel works to collectors through a unique sale that will explore the possibilities of crypto technology through the lens of art. ‘The Fungible’ Collection by Pak will be released over a three day period taking place 12 – 14 April, in collaboration with Sotheby’s and exclusively on Nifty Gateway.

Pak is an enigmatic creator at the forefront of digital art and crypto media. An anonymous designer, Pak has been active in the world of digital art for over two decades, leveraging evolving technology to create boundary-pushing artwork. Pak is the creator of Archillect, an AI built to discover and share stimulating visual media. In December of 2020, Pak became the first NFT artist to earn $1 million for their work. In the burgeoning NFT space, Pak has established themselves as a leader of striking creations, novel token mechanisms, and evolving media. With the arrival of ‘The Fungible’ Collection, Pak will push the boundaries of what is possible.

‘The Fungible’ Collection will leverage blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which is a unique digital asset that proves verifiable ownership of the artwork. ‘The Fungible’ Collection not only provides collectors with novel assurances of scarcity and ownership but exposes them to the unique features with which technology can endow artwork. Through this collection, Pak scrutinizes our understanding of value. What does value mean, and from where does it derive authority? Core to the collection are the Open Editions, a set of NFTs that can be bought infinitely by collectors during the time of the sale, questioning our understanding of the relationship between scarcity and value. As the collection reveals itself over the course of three days, Pak will challenge the community with this question of value while simultaneously providing a unique journey into and through digital art.

‘The Fungible’ Collection will consist of multiple distinct parts that will be distributed over the course of three days. Today, we are announcing the first aspect of the sale, Fungible Open Editions, which will be available for purchase starting at 1PM ET on Tuesday, 12 April. In the days leading up to the sale, Pak will reveal the six other works including “one-of-one” NFTs, that make up ‘The Fungible’ Collection.

Fungible Open Editions
Fungible Open Editions is Pak’s further investigation of our understanding of value. Fungible Open Editions will enable collectors to purchase as many fungible cubes as they wish during the sale period for a starting price of $500. These fungible cubes can be purchased individually or many at a time and will deliver its collector a different set of NFTs based on the total cubes they own.

The individual NFTs are: A Cube (1), Five Cubes (5), Ten Cubes (10), Twenty Cubes (20), Fifty Cubes (50), Hundred Cubes (100), Five Hundred Cubes (500), Thousand Cubes (1,000).

For example, if a collector purchases one cube ($500), they will receive a single NFT containing Pak’s artwork “A Cube”. If a collector purchases six cubes ($3,000), they will receive two NFTs: “Five Cubes” and “A Cube”, summing up to 6 cubes in fungible value.

Sotheby’s will honor the democratic spirit of the decentralized technology upon which the collection is built by offering a diverse set of collectors the opportunity to participate in the sale with a starting price of $500. ‘The Fungible’ Collection will engage new audiences and challenge existing paradigms through subversion and the unfamiliar.

Pak states on the collaboration with Sotheby’s: “I see this collection as the first digitally native mindset of works that's presented to the traditional art world through a global auction house. With this kind of a scale, I expect it to play a major cultural role in telling the narrative of the digital world to the traditional world in terms of the medium definition and value creation. People may be able to right click save as a "jpeg" but how would they save as a digital performance?”

Max Moore, Co-Head of Sotheby's Contemporary Art Day Sales in New York added: “It was important that our first collaboration with an NFT artist was with a digital and crypto native creator who is known for bringing ingenuity and technological sophistication to the emergent artform. Pak has amassed a devoted following and has a track record of creating NFTs that playfully challenge accepted ideas about art and offer poignant social commentary. Working in the lineage of esteemed minimalist and conceptual artists whose practices radically altered our understanding of what art is, ‘The Fungible’ Collection will challenge us to rethink what we know about digital art and ownership. As more and more of our lives are lived digitally, there is a much higher comfort level with a purely digital experience. We are excited to welcome the digital art and crypto communities as well as traditional art collectors, to this special collaboration, as this important shift from physical to digital ownership will open up endless possibilities for the art world.”