Brady Walker: Can you please introduce yourself to our readers?
Andrea Crespi: I am an Italian visual artist in the continuous investigation of different media, juggling both physical and digital art, and exploring themes including optical illusion, social transformation, the digital revolution, and contemporary cultural changes.
BW: Tell me about the piece you’re bringing to Miami with MakersPlace & Transient Labs.
AC: I won’t bring a physical piece. I’ll create it LIVE! I’m very glad to be the only artist of this cool exhibition to have the chance to do a live performance during the event. I love the interaction with people and the atmosphere that is used to generate the creation of an artwork in front of the viewers. It’s magic.
BW: Is there anything special about this piece in the context of your body of work?
AC: Regarding the subject of the creation, I think it’s important to give you the context and the background!
Last year, during Art Basel Miami, I created a mural in the Wynwood Walls design district that paid homage to an icon of American pop art, Keith Haring, portraying a building facade with his face and a famous phrase against drug dealing. Just two days after its creation, someone during the night, probably annoyed by the message it was conveying, thought about completely deleting this work.
So, now, one year later, I decided to return to Art Basel Miami recreating this work that no one will ever be able to erase thanks to blockchain. It’s a reflection on how the physicality of the real wall can be destroyed while the immaterial side of the digital art can stay forever. At the end the question is, “What is real?”
The digital artwork will be a super limited edition of 7 NFTs. And during the live performance I’ll create a special physical artwork on canvas that will be assigned to one lucky winner among the NFT collectors in a super meritocratic way.
BW: Can you share any specific rituals or practices that help you maintain your creative momentum?
AC: The creative contamination that arises from meeting others, from knowing how to enhance our diversity, is certainly one of my primary sources of inspiration and stimulus in creating.
BW: How much planning or preliminary thought goes into each painting?
AC: I give great importance to the study and creation of each of my works since not everything that my mind develops can be replicated 😁. I have to give priority to what really has an urgent and necessary creative meaning for me.
BW: How would you describe how your work is currently evolving?
AC: I try to evolve constantly but always keeping a coherent path with my style and my imagination. The diversification of the media I use to create my artworks is becoming an increasingly relevant aspect in my artistic process. I love to experiment.
BW: What do you hope people feel when they look at your art?
AC: I would like to reawaken that sense of wonder and amazement that children felt when seeing something new and unknown for the first time. We need magic in our life.
BW: What role does physical art play in the broader web3 art ecosystem?
AC: Although the world of physical art and the digital NFT world are apparently distant, I believe that today more than ever it is necessary to create a dialogue between two realities to make the most of the potential that technology can give to traditional art. Those are just two different mediums that can express the same creative energy
BW: Who or what else excites you in the art world (web3 or trad) right now?
AC: Art doesn’t excite me but artists do
