Acclaimed digital artist & Beeple collaborator Alberto Mielgo announces NFT drop
Known for his work with the Gorillaz, Spider-Man, and LOVE DEATH AND ROBOTS, the Emmy award-winning artist is preparing a NFT drop
You might not know his name, but you’ve probably seen his work.
For years Alberto Mielgo has been producing digital art for movies, television, and commercials. Notable works include an episode of Netflixâs LOVE DEATH AND ROBOTSÂ (for which he and his 70-plus man team won multiple Emmys), music videos for The Gorillaz, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, where he collaborated with NFT digital-art-turn-high art sensation Beeple.
Given the success of his former colleague and the lofty prices NFTs are routinely fetching, Mielgo could well be the next commercially popular digital artist to use blockchain tech as means of both reaching a wider audience and attracting the attention of the fine art world.
Nerds taking power
While he said heâll be revealing more of his philosophy regarding the drop as the date of the auction approaches, Mielgo did share that he finds NFTs as a production and distribution medium to be a natural fit for his work, as well as a democratizing force.Â
âAs a digital artist, I always struggled to find the right format to show my work. And I felt that the âart elite,â which is very much this 2% or like 3% of the human population which have access to the big galleries or art fairs, they never treat digital art as art — they always thought weâre for working on movies and commercials.â
The irony there, he says, is that digital artists largely love movies, commercials, and popular culture â theyâre nerds. But now, âthe nerds are taking the power.âÂ
âThe nerds are thinking about crypto, about these abstract concepts that are so beautiful. I think that only our generation, or people have been working in tech or in the cloud for so long, we really get it. Most of the people they need the physical thing, they need the item, for them itâs almost impossible to think about owning something that isnât physical. I think weâre gravitating towards that world.â
Itâs a shift that the art world is struggling to keep up with, he said â after ignoring work like his for so long, now theyâre caught flat-footed. The new effort to make space for his work is not getting to his head, however.Â
âI think itâs validating for sure, but not myself personally, itâs more the digital art world. I think that Beeple got into the art world, but itâs the people who already liked him who got him there.â
He said he suspects itâs the âcrypto-people, the young generations, the new brains, the new thinkers⌠they are like ‘hey this is OUR art.’â
Ultimately itâs Christieâs knocking on the door of crypto, asking to play in âourâ world and not the other way around.
Melting faces
The corporate world could do with some catching-up too, says Mielgo.Â
He bemoans the current, âbullshitâ contractual culture around digital art, requiring artists to sign over their âsoul.â Itâs a landscape ripe for a revolution: the art world is âbehind,â the major studios are âbehind,â and NFTs are opening up an alternative, âparallel world.â
He recounted a story from when he and Beeple were working on Spider Man: Intro the Spider-Verse, where Beeple would submit fast-paced, explosive, âsuper-psycadelicâ clips with âhardcore technoâ music. Mielgo showed the clips to Sony producers, delighting as their eyes popped and jaws dropped.
âThey couldnât even process,â he said, laughing. âEverything was so fresh, like âoh my god.ââ
It was a completely new world for the producers, âwho drive up to the studios in limoâ, who âdo not connect with the real people.â
NFTs are a way to do it all over again, but just at a larger scale.
âItâs a real slap in their face, all these dinosaurs.âÂ
The auction will take place on Makersplace on April 14th