28 Sep 2023/length unknown/Pepenardo
MLow X Pepenardo
A classically trained oil painter explains how one Mona Lisa frog pulled him into Fake Rares, and why memes are the art of the collective conscious.
The best origin story in the unpublished set. Pepenardo spent about twelve years working as an artist and for artists across Chicago, New York, and LA, then landed in a fast track nursing program where he made no work for two years and was, in his words, starving to do something. Watching the Rare Pepe revival on Twitter, for the heck of it, for the meme of it, he painted the Mona Lisa as a frog and posted it under the name Pepenardo, name and image arriving as a single thought. People immediately connected him to the Fake Rares chat, and he fell down the rabbit hole into what he calls the largest artist collective in the world, hundreds of artists from Alpha Centauri Kid to somebody's kid, owned by nobody.
The craft is the irony and the position: the most traditional possible practice feeding the most memetic corner of crypto. He builds his own stretchers (he once ran a stretcher bar company out of a garage), composes digital collages in Photoshop, paints them in oil over 60 to 90 hours, and has them scanned by the archival shop that serves his city's contemporary art museum. Physicals go to zero reserve auction on Scarce City with an OpenDime chip attached as certificate of authenticity, so the buyer gets painting and token together. Average sales run about 1.1 BTC; his homage to the Rare Pepe and Fake Rares curators, The Fake Scientists, sold for 4.02 BTC to one of the scientists depicted in it, with his wife beside him and fellow artists in the room.
Around the story he documents the whole Fake Rares world: the 2016 origin of the term (posting an uncertified Pepe got you called fake), Rare Scrilla's counter memetic ban that birthed the collective, the 400 by 560 pixel homage format, series of 50 cards now approaching series 16, the rule that sharing publicly before approval gets you rejected (which is why Beeple's Pepe was famously refused), guerrilla galleries rented beside major art fairs, and October's full Fake Rares festival in Paris with the NFT Factory. He closes with his meme theology: art should capture the collective conscious of its moment, memes done intentionally are absolutely art, and the traditional art world will take years to admit it.
What this episode teaches
- Post the joke; the collective finds you
Fake Rares recruitment is one good meme: he painted the Mona Lisa as a frog, posted it, and strangers routed him into the submission chat the same day. The lesson for artists is that a single authentic gesture in public beats years of positioning.
- Bring your most traditional skill to the least traditional space
Hand built stretchers, oil paint, 60 to 90 hours per piece, museum grade archival scans, all in service of frog memes on Counterparty. The collision of highest craft and lowest brow is the whole position, and it is what makes the work legible to both worlds.
- Zero reserve is market research
Auctioning at zero reserve on Scarce City lets the market set every price, gives new collectors an entry at any market temperature, and teaches the artist which symbols carry the strongest emotional charge, information a fixed price would hide.
- Rent the room next to the fair
Fake Rares shows run guerrilla style: find where the masses will be (Art Basel, the Bitcoin Conference in Miami), rent a nearby space, and pull foot traffic from the main event. Insiders get the memes; strangers walk in off the street and are converted.
- Attach the physical to the token
Each painting ships with an OpenDime chip holding the token's Bitcoin address, acting as certificate of authenticity and pointing to the on chain asset, so physical and digital sell as one object at auction.
- Strict rules make lore
The submission covenant (never share the work publicly before the scientists approve or deny it) is what got Beeple rejected, and that rejection is now beloved Fake Rares lore. Constraints enforced without exception become the culture.
- Anonymity can free the work
Working as Pepenardo stripped away the anxieties and perceptions of his known traditional career; he could see his work from outside his body and be unapologetic. Now the anonymous and real world practices inform each other and both have grown stronger.
- Anchor to the moment you created for free
His bear market defense is memory: returning to the nursing school moment when he made art with no thought of financial gain, because that is where the most genuine work comes from. His slogan, the memetic canal, means giving authenticity to the present meme rather than chasing the future one.
The conversation, topic by topic
Nursing school and the Mona Lisa frog
Two years into a fast track nursing program with no artwork made, he painted the Mona Lisa as a frog purely for the meme, posted it under Pepenardo, and was pulled into the Fake Rares chat the same day. He has since had the most fun of his art career, with 13 or 14 fake rares plus dozens of sub asset cards on Counterparty.
The craft behind the cards
Everything is made by hand: stretchers built in his wood shop (he co-owned a stretcher bar company), a Photoshop collage as the transfer image, then 60 to 90 hours of oil painting, then archival scanning at the shop that serves the contemporary art museum downtown, whose staff now ask what the green frog people are.
Guerrilla galleries and Scarce City
Fake Rares exhibitions piggyback on major events: New York, Miami multiple times, and a museum show in Zurich. Works launch as zero reserve auctions on Scarce City, the Bitcoin native auction site, letting the market decide everything.
The Paris festival
October brings a full Fake Rares festival in Paris organized by Rare Scrilla and the collective's curators with Eleonora Brizi and original Rare Pepe scientists including Joe Looney: live music, art, and museum style presentation with the NFT Factory, intended to become annual. His latest fake rare will simultaneously appear on the cover of NFT Magazine via a Nifty Gateway drop.
Submission rules and the Beeple rejection
Cards honor the original Rare Pepe guidelines: the 400 by 560 pixel ratio, Pepe imagery or memetics (even just the red white and green), and absolute secrecy until the scientists approve. Beeple is one of the major rejections because he shared his Pepe publicly first, now cherished lore; Pepenardo jokes he will figure out how to properly submit eventually.
Fake Rares lore
The term dates to 2016, when posting an uncertified card in the Rare Pepe world branded it a fake rare. After the Emblem Vault surge revived Rare Pepe access on OpenSea, Rare Scrilla posted an uncertified fake in the rare chat as a counter memetic joke, got banned, opened a Fake Rares telegram, and recruited everyone to spam the old chat until they were banned too: the Immaculate Conception of the movement. Now hundreds of artists, 50 cards per series, approaching series 16.
The name and the meme of names
Crypto art identities fuse people with images, so he took the most prominent name in art history and butchered it with Pepe, whom Vincent Van Dough calls the Mickey Mouse of the internet: everybody knows Pepe even if they do not know Pepe. Increasingly he signs works simply Nardo, with an X factor motif standing in for Pepe.
Prices and The Fake Scientists
Physicals with OpenDime certificates average about 1.1 BTC at auction over the last two years. His record, 4.02 BTC, came for The Fake Scientists: an alchemical scene of an anonymous masked figure over a bottled frog, with the names of every Rare Pepe and Fake Rares scientist inscribed on the books behind him. One of those scientists won the auction. His first born son arrived around the same time.
Favorite artists and collecting
In the traditional world he studies Matt Hansel's contemporary Renaissance painting. In crypto he collected on fxhash, including early generative work, admires Zancan's garden monolith pieces (MLow supplies the name he blanks on), and points to the whole pepe.wtf directory of Counterparty artists.
Ordinals, B6, and the multichain pipeline
He has already inscribed 1/1s on Ordinals, including an early inscription he cherishes, and co-founded B6, a small collective of Counterparty friends holding unreleased Ordinals collections because things will age like fine wine there. On Ethereum: a past Nifty Gateway drop, experiments on OpenSea and Manifold, a long gestating first SuperRare piece, and unannounced projects that are tangible, tactile, and accessible.
Notable Pepes
Vincent Van Dough made the collection's first two cards, then asked Pepenardo directly for the third: the first artist card, Notemoto, a hyper rendered Satoshi Nakamoto paying respects to rares and fakes. MLow remembers it as the most coveted card at mint. His series two card, President Homer, honors the maker of the original Homer Pepe.
Anonymity as freedom
Going anonymous stripped away the perceptions attached to his known career and let him be unapologetic; the Pepenardo work and his real world practice now inform each other like two levels of the same person. Ahead: a solo exhibition in Chicago next year, a group show, and a dream of showing in Marfa.
Easter eggs and the revolutionary Renaissance
Every painting is loaded with hidden symbols and homages: the new Paris piece contains a master copy of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People inside the composition, casting crypto artists as revolutionaries in a new renaissance. Commercialization he accepts only as message spreading, as with prints of Fake Genesis, his anonymous rider on horseback.
Memes as art and the ZeroOne close
His thesis: art captures the collective conscious of its time, memes are that conscious confronted daily, so intentional memes are absolutely art; Wojak has already slipped into blue chip contexts while Pepe stays exiled for its controversial past. His favorite: withered Wojak asking Chad Jesus why he keeps losing heart, answered with put down your phone and go outside. They end trading notes on ZeroOne, the new free minting platform on Avalanche that MLow credits to one of his first interviewees, where Pepenardo has already quietly minted two pieces; both agree the mission is making crypto art fun again.
In their words
“For the heck of it, for the meme of it, I painted the Mona Lisa as a frog.”
Pepenardo“I call it the largest artist collective in the world right now, just because it's not really owned by anybody.”
Pepenardo“Everybody knows Pepe, even if they don't know Pepe.”
Pepenardo“If done intentionally, memes are absolutely art, because it's everything that we are confronted with online every single day.”
Pepenardo“I didn't have any sense of financial gain on my mind. I literally just wanted to have fun and create something that made me happy.”
Pepenardo“I definitely think we got to make crypto art more fun again.”
MLowCite this conversation
Pepenardo in conversation with MLow, "MLow X Pepenardo," The MLow Show, unaired recording, 28 Sep 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-09-28-mlow-x-pepenardo.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.