ROBNESS

ROBNESS is one of the earliest crypto artists and the figure most associated with Trash Art. He started making digital work as a child, scanning Magic cards, and painted abstracts between band practices before he found crypto. He was living in his car in the years before he entered the space. He came in through Rare Pepe, contributing to the Rare Pepe Wallet directory on Bitcoin in 2016, then moved to Ethereum and minted a long run of vaporwave tinted, glitch heavy work on SuperRare through 2019. In January 2020 he minted 64 GALLON TOTER, a glitched GIF of a wheelie bin lifted from a retail website, and SuperRare suspended his account, citing that piece along with his tokenized Bitcoin and Ethereum logos. The removal became the founding argument of Trash Art, a movement that gathered on Rarible around artists who had been excluded elsewhere and that treated appropriation, low effort aesthetics and platform rules as the material. SuperRare reinstated the work at the end of 2021 after two years of public argument. He works under several personas, including V2, ZORRO and DIGITAL ART BITCH, and collaborates constantly, notably with Norman Harman on the Last Confirmation series. His work entered the Centre Pompidou collection in 2023 when the museum acquired its first group of NFTs.

Makes glitched GIFs, datamoshed images and vaporwave leaning digital painting, much of it built from found images, corporate logos and screenshots rather than original photography. Runs long series such as Virtual Skies, Virtual Photography, Abstract Pop, CONVERGENCE and the trash can GIFs. Treats appropriation and the platform's own rules as subject matter, and works in collaboration under rotating aliases.

• 64 GALLON TOTER, the trash can GIF that got him deplatformed from SuperRare in 2020 and reinstated in 2021
• Founding the Trash Art movement
• Early Rare Pepe artist on Counterparty
• Tokenizing the Bitcoin and Ethereum logos as artworks
• The Last Confirmation collaboration series with Norman Harman
• Work acquired by the Centre Pompidou in its first NFT acquisition

On the show