Bologna-based luxury furniture company Visionnaire is entering the metaverse with the launch of the Visionnaire NFT. Set to be unveiled on 1 April 2022, to align with Milan’s modern and contemporary art fair, Miart, the NFT builds on the company’s traditions of championing innovative and avant-garde design.
With the piece, Visionnaire is adding a new dimension to its idiosyncratic brand of luxury Italian interior design. The NFT is produced in partnership with American artist Jonathan Monaghan, who tests the boundaries of physical sculpture with an exploration of 3D animation that places objects outside of their traditional narratives. Monaghan was quickly seduced by the possibilities of NFTs, embracing them as early as 2013, when he used bitcoin blockchains to authenticate digital artworks. Monaghan went on to exhibit at the Sundance Film Festival, St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, before being inspired to add his own contemporary spin to a traditional piece.
Now, he has rethought the exquisite artistry of the Apollo del Belvedere (c. 120 – 140 AD) – currently located in Rome’s Vatican Museums – in conjunction with Visionnaire. United by their shared interest in the flawless aesthetics and technical mastery of the piece, Monaghan and Visionnaire have worked together to bring the work to digital life.
Their creation is crafted from Carrara marble, with the life-size bust reminiscent of the tactile capitonné leather more commonly seen in furniture pieces. Embracing juxtaposition – the softness of the imagined leather, the cool hardness of the marble – as well as uniting the physical and the digital and the past with the present, the piece marks a new direction for Visionnaire.
The sculpture will go on sale with a dedicated NFT ‘plus’ to mark the 60th anniversary of Salone del Mobile in 2022.
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