Ephemera
July 2022 ––In July 2022, GMUNK was invited to Christie’s third offering of Trespassing, a groundbreaking online sale curated together with Ronnie K. Pirovino, the Prints and Multiples and Post-War and Contemporary Art departments. The sale traced graffiti’s influence on contemporary art and embraced the energy and humor of artists inspired by the medium.
This edition of Trespassing also featured works across collecting categories by leading names such as KAWS, Banksy, and Invader and also juxtaposed works by Hajime Sorayama, Javier Calleja, Shantell Martin and Roby Dwi Antono that share the same dynamic spirit. Munky’s involvement was in the NFT portion of the sale, featuring 1/1 NFTs by Skygolpe, Joshua Davis, Blake Kathryn, FVCKRENDER, Victor Mosquera, Andre O’Shea and Shantell Martin.
For his submission Ephemera, Munky pushed into dynamic NFTs by creating a generative playback system with code genius Dyske. The concept and premise of the piece was to create a Ephemeral viewing portal into a specific moment in time, a fleeting plea by a beautiful subject, entrapped in a genie in a bottle type story, the movements her plea for salvation, the cosmic light her shrine. As a result, a unique piece of digital art was created where every viewing was a different variation, pulling from a library of footage to present the story in the most compelling way possible, a diopter of time folding back on itself.
This edition of Trespassing also featured works across collecting categories by leading names such as KAWS, Banksy, and Invader and also juxtaposed works by Hajime Sorayama, Javier Calleja, Shantell Martin and Roby Dwi Antono that share the same dynamic spirit. Munky’s involvement was in the NFT portion of the sale, featuring 1/1 NFTs by Skygolpe, Joshua Davis, Blake Kathryn, FVCKRENDER, Victor Mosquera, Andre O’Shea and Shantell Martin.
For his submission Ephemera, Munky pushed into dynamic NFTs by creating a generative playback system with code genius Dyske. The concept and premise of the piece was to create a Ephemeral viewing portal into a specific moment in time, a fleeting plea by a beautiful subject, entrapped in a genie in a bottle type story, the movements her plea for salvation, the cosmic light her shrine. As a result, a unique piece of digital art was created where every viewing was a different variation, pulling from a library of footage to present the story in the most compelling way possible, a diopter of time folding back on itself.
The Series
–– 01
Artist: GMUNK (b. 1975)
Title: Ephemera
Type: born-digital, single-channel digital video
Varying lengths (3840 x 2160 pixels)
Auctioneer: Christie’s
Curator: Ronnie K. Pirovino
Collector: Triple X
Price Realized: $18,900
Executed in 2022. This work is unique and is accompanied by a non-fungible token.
Title: Ephemera
Type: born-digital, single-channel digital video
Varying lengths (3840 x 2160 pixels)
Auctioneer: Christie’s
Curator: Ronnie K. Pirovino
Collector: Triple X
Price Realized: $18,900
Executed in 2022. This work is unique and is accompanied by a non-fungible token.
Lot Essay
–– 02In Ephemera, we explore the landscape of the human form casting silhouettes, as if the rotational pull and axis of infinite space and ever-stretching light are the puppet strings.
There is a singular entity, caught, trapped between celestial bodies and writhing to be set free, liberated, and met with salvation. In this process of escape, Ephemera moves with a consciousness deeper or perhaps more outwardly distant than itself… And what is avoided in this consciousness is ultimately expressed in the fate of the body in motion.
The strength exhibited here and on display through fluid motion is simultaneously powerful and fragile. It can never be recreated or destroyed; it exists in the fleeting moment of the soul’s desire for a dance partner across the volumetric landscape of the empty elliptical galaxy. A random feedback loop here draws us into conversation with expanse, grace, and a thundering godliness – the way science is godliness, the way the body is godliness, the way nothingness is godliness; the way that transformation is perhaps the highest form of divinity.
Each viewing of the piece is completely unique, a different moment in the time continuum. As the experience resets we are witness to a different prayer for liberation, one that uses the celestial range of Ephemera’s emotion and movement to plead her case.
Like the unlimited, ever transient combinations of a cosmic padlock, Ephemera invites the viewer with volatility and gentleness to drown in the volumes of light and skin, of the organic and the industrial, the fluid and the static, to be, yourself, a conduit for the malleable thrash of being.
There is a singular entity, caught, trapped between celestial bodies and writhing to be set free, liberated, and met with salvation. In this process of escape, Ephemera moves with a consciousness deeper or perhaps more outwardly distant than itself… And what is avoided in this consciousness is ultimately expressed in the fate of the body in motion.
The strength exhibited here and on display through fluid motion is simultaneously powerful and fragile. It can never be recreated or destroyed; it exists in the fleeting moment of the soul’s desire for a dance partner across the volumetric landscape of the empty elliptical galaxy. A random feedback loop here draws us into conversation with expanse, grace, and a thundering godliness – the way science is godliness, the way the body is godliness, the way nothingness is godliness; the way that transformation is perhaps the highest form of divinity.
Each viewing of the piece is completely unique, a different moment in the time continuum. As the experience resets we are witness to a different prayer for liberation, one that uses the celestial range of Ephemera’s emotion and movement to plead her case.
Like the unlimited, ever transient combinations of a cosmic padlock, Ephemera invites the viewer with volatility and gentleness to drown in the volumes of light and skin, of the organic and the industrial, the fluid and the static, to be, yourself, a conduit for the malleable thrash of being.
–– 02
Credit List
Digital Artist: GMUNK
Director: GMUNK
Assistant Director: Derek Jaeschke
Executive Producer: Adam Baskin
Producer: Max Knies
Cinematographer: Joe Picard
Lighting: Matt Ardine
Choreography: Kitty Mcnamee
Movement: Lisa Sainvil
Color Grade: Billy Hobson
Composer: Keith Ruggiero
Code: Dyske
Digital Artist: GMUNK
Director: GMUNK
Assistant Director: Derek Jaeschke
Executive Producer: Adam Baskin
Producer: Max Knies
Cinematographer: Joe Picard
Lighting: Matt Ardine
Choreography: Kitty Mcnamee
Movement: Lisa Sainvil
Color Grade: Billy Hobson
Composer: Keith Ruggiero
Code: Dyske