Spotlight: Artists Imagine Variable Futures on the Blockchain in the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech exhibition

Each month, hundreds of galleries add newly available works by thousands of artists to the Artnet Gallery Network – and each week we spotlight one artist or exhibition you should know about. Check out what we have in store, and ask for more with a simple click.

What you need to know: Launched in 2017, the Hyundai Blue Prize by Hyundai Motor Company and Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing is an annual award that promotes and promotes curators and their visions. The award consists of two categories, the Hyundai Blue Prize Design in Busan, which focuses on curators working with design, and the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech in Beijing, which awards new Chinese art curators. Xin Bi was awarded the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech in the 2022 edition, whose theme, “Disruptive Futures”, sought to investigate technologies that disrupt the status quo and imagine possible horizons. The exhibition Bi has curated, “Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain,” is currently on display at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing and, according to the space’s Art Director, DooEun Choi, “asks us to engage in a dialogue about various aspects of time and forms of technology to ensure a more just, healthy and robust future.” The exhibition showcases a diverse range of artists and projects engaging with three parallel networks of time: “Chimera Time”, involving natural probabilities in blockchains; “Energy Time,” focusing on technological interdependencies and balance; and “Spime,” a neologism referring to intersections of the physical and digital worlds.

About the curator: Based in Shanghai, curator, researcher and translator Xin Bi (Milia) focuses on decentralized technologies as well as the social aspect of culture and subculture in our contemporary political and economic environment. She received her BA in Art History from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China, and her MA in Curating from the Chelsea College of Art and Design at the University of the Arts, London. The material and temporal elements of modern technology and its aftermath are her current focus. In addition to this, she has also explored the aesthetics and social implications of ever-evolving decentralized technological and social digital spaces. She is the executive director of Chronus Art Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to media-based art.

Why we like it: The exhibition shows a diverse selection of artists and projects displayed in thought-provoking vignettes. Included in the show is a collaboration between Simon Denny and Guile Twardowski, Dotcom Séance (2022), a multimedia work that refers to the dotcom crash of 2011, and imagines how companies that failed then could be reimagined within the context of Web 3.0. Elsewhere, Economic orangery (2021), created by the artist duo eeefff (consisting of Nikolay Spesivtsev and Dzina Zhuk), is an initiative that promotes interpersonal connection and is captured by a collective narrative. In Ruini Shi’s LoveCounter, a fictional online platform seeks to provide an autonomous area within Web 3.0 for lovers and offers smart contract services for marriage. In each of these exciting and often playful projects, the human element in new technology and imagined futures is at the center.

See inside the exhibition below.

Installation view of “Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain” (2022–23). Courtesy of Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.

Installation view of “Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain” (2022–23). Courtesy of Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.

Installation view, Simon Denny in collaboration with Guile Twardowski and Cosmographia, Dotcom Séance (2022). Courtesy of Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.

Ruini Shi, LoveCounter (2022). Courtesy of Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.

Helen Knowles, Trickle Down – A new vertical sovereignty (2020). Courtesy of Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.

“Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain” is on view at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing through March 31, 2023.

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:


Do you want to be at the forefront of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest news, eye-opening interviews and sharp critiques that drive the conversation forward.