Tyler Hobbs unveils first physical QQLs as paintings
The Alpha:
- The contemporary art institution Pace Gallery will present a physical exhibition of new work from generative artists Tyler Hobbs at the gallery in New York from March 30 to April 22. This marks Pace’s first exhibition dedicated to a single artist’s Web3 project.
- Title QQL: Analogsthe exhibition will feature 12 large-scale works from Hobbs’ experiments with a new algorithm called QQL, which he developed together with other generative artists Dandelion Wist.
- The pieces – shared exclusively with nft now – were made using a subtractive process with a custom plotter and painted by hand. Speaking to nft now, Hobbs notes that these works reflect the influence of figures such as Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin, whose contributions to conceptualism and minimalism helped guide the rise of generative art in the mid-20th century.
Dive Deeper:
Tyler Hobbs’ June 2021 NFT drop, Fidenza, is considered a landmark generative art project due to the complexity of the code behind the work. Ultimately, Fidenza has become one of Art Block’s most successful and well-known releases to date and one of the most sought-after generative NFT projects in the Web3 community. With a current floor price of just 80 ETH, the project has seen more than 55,146 ETH in trading volume on the secondary market.
To this end, Hobbs is known for his innovative work in computational aesthetics, using a combination of algorithms, paint and mechanical plotters in his work. The pieces in QLL: Analogs follow in these footsteps.
The 12 large-scale works in the series are the result of the artist combining traditional painting techniques with robotic tools. After feeding code through a custom mechanical plotter, Hobbs then refined the paintings’ details by hand, resulting in physical manifestations of Hobbs’s own QQL outputs. All in all, QQL: Analogs is intended to be a collaborative project between creator and collector that reflects the often chaotic and unpredictable world of Web3.
“All the works in QQL: Analogs the exhibition encapsulates Tyler’s dual mastery of code and paint,” said Ariel Hudes, head of Pace Verso, in correspondence with nft now.
“The quiet undulations and textures reflected in minute details show that Tyler is as careful with a brush as he is with a line of code. This command of both vehicles of art production makes him a natural fit for Pace Verso’s first attempt to work with a artist that emerged from the Web3 space – continuing the gallery’s long history of championing artists at the forefront of art and technology,” she added.
The QLL: Analogs the series has roots going back to 2022. In September of that year, Hobbs launched a dedicated website for QQL, where visitors could experiment with NFT generation via Hobbs’ algorithm. The site and algorithm encourage an interweaving of randomness and control through a set of bespoke tools – density, scale and flow are just some of the properties users can manipulate.
Since its launch, the QQL website has produced 21.5 million outputs from people worldwide.
Hobbs described the nature of the project and what it’s like to engage with it to nft now, noting that “QQL: Analogs is both a celebration of the QQL algorithm and an exploration of how the systematic process can be extended to the physical world. There is a new richness in engaging with QQL through the experience of a large-format painting – the scale, texture, interactivity, and most of all, the infinite detail are all new elements.”
“This presentation can also help viewers consider the systematic elements of painters we know and love, even if we don’t classically think of them as generative artists,” Hobbs continued.
Ultimately, Hobbs claims that the processes he used to create these works are not really that different from the processes used by previous artists. “Piet Mondrian, Agnes Martin, Richard Diebenkorn, Bridget Riley, Brice Marden and even Mark Rothko spent years creating intuitive rulesets that precisely guided both their compositions and painting techniques. The algorithmic approach to QQL: Analogs can be much more explicit, but it’s just an extension of a rich line of artists who take a systematic approach to their work.”
What will be next?
The Pace Verso exhibition will be the latest high-profile exhibition of Hobbs’ work, which has been shown at NFT.NYC, Art Dubai, Unit London and several other international venues. Hobbs’ paintings have also been shown at auctions by Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
Can’t make it to New York for the show? An online exhibition will follow QQL: Analogs’ physical display, which brings together QQLs marked by other artists in the gallery’s program. QQL: Analogs also coincides with Hobbs’ debut UK exhibition, Mechanical Hand, which is on view at Unit London from 7 March to 6 April and features new paintings and drawings by Hobbs.
