Clods, a living series or - depending on your perspective - an entire universe of art begun by Italian artist Fabiano Speziari back in 2018, have been on my mind.

At the same time, this thing of ours called cryptoart is in labor, trying to give birth to itself, again.

Or maybe, as I think the case may be, cryptoart was already born more fully into life.

Whereas cryptoart previously felt like a cohesive movement where everyone pretty much knew everyone else, this current phase, because it’s so much more than it ever was, feels fractured and fragmented. As if our whole world exploded out from under us.

That’s where Clods come in.

I can’t think of a better symbol for what cryptoart was, is, and - most importantly - will be, than Fabiano’s universe of Clods. It’s almost as if Fabiano saw the post-Eden future of cryptoart from within the early garden of cryptoart, and reflected it early and often in every one of the 400+ Clods he’s minted since September 16, 2018.

Clods

Like cryptoart, each unique floating Clod fragment was originally part of a single world. At some point that world exploded. The lives of its inhabitants all splintered off into space atop Clods - literal clumps of the old world - each with unique, random trajectories floating off into the cosmos. No longer a single community; all simply adrift. All alone.

Some clods are home to veritable cities. Others hold single occupants. Thriving clods exist, while others are barren, their inhabitants either long gone or never existed. Regardless, a profound sense of sadness saturates each and every Clod - a permanent reminder of what once was, and perhaps can be again. Perhaps.

Cryptoart

Like Clods, cryptoart changed always and forever when the tight-knit Eden-esque world of digital art exploded (in popularity, attention, and a massive influx of crypto capital) around the end of 2020. This monumental period of explosive growth created a constellation of self-sovereign artists and collectors that collectively comprise an emergent digital universe of space art. Each artist their own marketplace, inhabiting separate artful worlds.

There is no going back to what once was, because what was is simply no more.

Out of that single originating reality, now just a faint dream a lucky few remember, a wide range of realities have emerged that each contains an infinity of future potential and opportunity.

Cryptoart is now in the permanent collections of LACMA, The Guggenheim, MoMA, The Whitney, and the Centre de Pompidou to name a few.

Immutable rockstars like XCOPY, Pak, and Refik Anadol have attracted tens of thousands of passionate collectors who’ve injected hundreds of millions of dollars into the orbits of these artists.

Punk artists like Max Osiris, Miss Al Simpson, Norrie Harman, and Robness float on, make art, and give no fucks.

Pinder Van Arman and Matt Kane are pioneering art on and uniquely enabled by blockchains like Ethereum.

The American absurdist artist die with the most likes creates art and experiences that bridge the irl-url divide capturing the entirety of the American experience - the good, bad, and bizarre.

Fine artists like Skygolpe and Thankyoux curate their artistic worlds better than a well-manicured bonsai forest tended by the Buddha himself.

Video artists like Sarah Zucker mint dank digital art viewed billions of times.

Worlds created by artists like Alotta Money float on despite their originators passing on, ascending to the heavens beyond.

The artful worlds inhabited by Helena Sarin aka Neural Bricolage, Coldie, Hackatao, Emily Xie. Alimo, Bryan Brinkman - each indescribably unique and special - to name just a small handful of the enormous ocean of artists, to say nothing of the platforms and tool builders like SuperRare, Transient Labs, Manifold, Nifty Gateway, AsyncArt, KnownOrgin, Hic Et Nunc, Opensea and others are simply too numerous to list in one place now.

To be sure though, a ton of plots previously inhabited by grifters exist, leaving behind collectors holding bags of questionable art.

Many, many more artists & collectors float on in between. Their fates and fortunes TBD.

The opportunity for more to join and create artful worlds the size and scale of modern cities or single-occupant tents is literally just a couple of clicks away. We’re in the early years of this new universe of space art.

So, to wrap things up, Cryptoart lost everything that it once had. This cannot be denied. And yet, everything has been gained. That is the tragic beauty of profound change that Fabiano Speziari’s Clods & Cryptoart both serve to remind us of.

Cover image: “Lost Clod 049 - Multiverse #5” by Fabiano Speziari

Other images featured:

• Lost Clod 343 [2022]

• In the Clod 070 [2022]

• Clod 843 [2020]

• Clod 735 [2020]

• Traveling through the Clods #1 [2024]

• Clod 553 [2023]

• Lost Clod 404 [2022]

• Clod 365 - The Motel [2021]

• Small Clod PC662 [2021]

• Clod 130 - a place for lazy minds [2021]

• Small Clod PC704 [2021]

• Clod 318 - UncleSeize Rememed [2023]

• Our Life Is A Loop [2018]