XCOPY

Minted by the artist

Acquired from above

XCOPY’s style, which has come to define the aesthetic of NFT art today, most commonly sees bright, glitchy illustration set against dark backdrops. Both XCOPY’s subject matter and style heavily align with crypto culture itself, resulting in his work being viewed as the jewel in the crown of the world's most eminent crypto art collections.

Since joining Tumblr during its golden age in 2010, XCOPY has been sharing art online, winning a loyal and indeed fervent following. Tumblr’s dashboard setup and file size limits influenced XCOPY’s signature creations, consisting of short, abstract GIFs with a limited colour palette. In 2017, the artist discovered crypto. He began creating artwork in 2018, producing 72 pieces in that year alone. Through Twitter, he connected with other enthusiasts and sold his first piece, DE$CENT, which was collected by Artnome’s Jason Bailey, an early leader in NFTs. His prolific workrate has seen the production of over 140 unique editioned works over a four year period, with crypto becoming an “integral part” of the artists’ life; he is now recognised as a progenitor, pioneer and part of the great flowering of the crypto art movement.

Over the years, XCOPY has succeeded in remaining anonymous. This has been maintained whilst achieving record breaking sales volumes and being one of the top five highest selling NFT artists of all time. In a similar vein to fellow artist PAK, it seems that hidden identity has meant highly visible commercial success. Pseudonymity is of course a signal feature of the foundations of crypto itself; Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, arguably stands as the twentieth and twenty first centuries’ most enigmatic presence.

On August 1, 2022, XCOPY made his oeuvre CC0, relinquishing all copyrights and dedicating those rights to the public domain. The flood gates opened, and a stream of artists scrambled to be associated through their own creativity. In the example of the epochal work Right Click and Save As guy, notable derivative works include: Kirsty Glass’s Right Click Save Copy Cat, Jake The Degen’s Cultish Tbh, and Claire Silver’s Flowers for ACK/The Muse. This series of creations, or perhaps ‘iterations’, further highlights the diversity afforded by digital art mediums. The original work has since appeared on digital displays and murals globally, including in Times Square and in Melbourne, as well as being featured at the launch of the Right Click Share collection this year in collaboration with Deca Art.

Grifters are characterized by their dark, dystopian aesthetic and their subversive commentary on the nature of greed and corruption. The Grifters collection was inspired by the works of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.