Visionnaire debuts avant-garde inspired NFTs at Miart 2022

Italian luxury furnishing brand, Visionnaire, in keeping with its intent and motto to herald new creative journeys, will soon launch Visionnaire NFT at the 26th edition of Miart. This new initiative will not only serve as a step forward in the creative industry that can now see an increased presence of NFT works, but will also continue to express the brand’s ongoing relationship and dialogue with the Avant-garde movement. This project, initiated in partnership with internationally renowned visual artist, Jonathan Monaghan, is an attempt to investigate the flexibility and innovation granted by Non-Fungible Tokens in spaces of luxury design and interior spaces. Comprising Carrara marble sculptures and NFT videos, the collection serves to dabble in both the physical and virtual realm. “In relation to art, we explored the world of NFT and we are really excited to present to you this new project we worked on. This is the first Visionnaire NFT unveiled today in preview,” shared Eleonore Cavalli, Art Director of Visionnaire at the press conference held on 29 March 2022.

During the event, Visionnaire’s journey in conjunction with the Salone del Mobile.Milano was revisited and the importance of the new Visionnaire NFT platform was highlighted. “We are very proud to celebrate such a prestigious anniversary together: our 60th together with the fair," announced Cavalli at the conference. She retraced the last six decades of the Italian brand as part of one of the most famous trade fairs in the world. The brand’s parent company, IPE, which was born in 1959, took part in the inaugural edition of the Salone fair in 1961 with a revolutionary product for that time, namely the Mercury armchair. In the 70s, with a marked change in the social, cultural and economic realms, the brand showcased comfortable Italian furniture and other product designs with distinctive styles. The decades that followed saw a similar, if not improved range of offerings by IPE and later, by Visionnaire at the Milan-based design fair.

Visionnaire’s collaboration with American artist Jonathan Monaghan will serve to mark the initiation of this new project that will later witness the offerings of several creatives. Monaghan, known for his non-conformative work that utilises a fusion of physical sculptures and 3D animations to create designs and narratives that transcend the boundaries of conventional art forms, has created three videos of NFTs for this initial collection for Visionnaire. These designs draw inspiration from the much-celebrated classical marble sculptural art piece, Apollo del Belvedere, which currently adorns the spaces of the Vatican Museums in Rome.

Jonathan Monaghan, who adopted NFTs very early on, would use the bitcoin blockchain to authenticate his digital artworks from 2013 onwards. His experience as an artist in the cryptoart space is, thus, long-drawn. He has showcased his works at the Sundance Film Festival, the Hermitage Museum in St.Petersburg and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Monaghan’s collaboration with Visionnaire is born out of their mutual inclination towards beauty and shared values. It is this shared interest and harmonious coexistence that led to the choice of inspiration behind the soon to be launched NFTs.

In finding their inspiration in the Greek divine archer, Apollo, known as a symbol of aesthetic perfection from time immemorial until now, the designs strived to attain perfection as well. Thus, the Apollo figurine serves as the perfect source of inspiration for the inaugural collection of Visionnaire NFT, a project that will initiate the Italian brand into the spaces of artistic expression. The life-size bust, carved in Carrara marble, serves as an exploration of both the virtual and physical spaces. They appear soft in texture and are yet hard to touch. Additionally, they ascribe to both traditional and contemporary artistic sensibilities.

While the teasers of the three NFT videos were dropped on the marketplace Foundation on March 28th, 2022, the sculptures will be on display at the Wunderkammer Gallery Milano as part of the Milan Design Week in Italy, in June 2022. However, the Visionnaire NFT platform will be launched at the Milanese art fair, Miart, which is scheduled to take place from 14 to 16 April 2022.

We are excited to announce our very own STIR press booth at Salone del Mobile - Hall 5/7 S.14, Fiera Milano RHO. Click here to read all that's STIRring at Milan Design Week on the best of exhibits, moods, studios, events and conversations to look forward to.