[Gallery Walk] Hello Kitty NFT Mined from Son's Drawing 24 Years Ago

Twenty-four years ago, artist Cody Choi (62), who introduced database painting to the world, said, "Data self-proliferation through algorithms will become the creative act of artists." After a quarter of a century, non-fungible token (NFT) paintings emerged as the main players in the art world, and his pioneering works began to attract public attention.

Cody Choi, Database Painting Animal Totem Hello Kitty, 2022-2023 [Photo by PKM Gallery]

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His digital work originated from his son's play. In 1999, the artist said he was inspired by his son Joy, who was then a kindergartener, creating digital images using the computer drawing program '3D Coloring Book.' He focused on how his son accumulated digital image data in virtual space through the computer, creating digital images that were either realistic or completely different from imagination, and identified those images without any sense of dissonance from real images.

Mining his son's image work created not with a brush but a mouse, and composed more by combining templates than by figurative drawing, the artist amplified and fragmented it to realize his own 'genesis data.' He rhizomed this data (rhizome refers to a horizontally spreading root stem that grows freely without hierarchy or dualism, creating new things) stacking it from as few as 400 times to thousands of times. Thus, the artist's first database painting series introduced in 1999, 'Animal Totem,' came to the public long before NFT art swept the world.

The artist explains his work as "Database painting is a method of self-proliferating data through my own algorithm, completely different from digital art drawn with a digital pen." He predicted in the past, "The source of creation in the 21st century begins with databases, and data self-proliferation through algorithms will become the creative act of artists," which proved effective. He then laughed and said, "Looking back, my work is similar to blockchain techniques but was ten years ahead."

Artist Cody Choi.
[Photo by PKM Gallery]

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Returning with 'Hello Kitty,' he is holding a solo exhibition titled 'Hello Kitty Database Painting Totem + NFT' at PKM Gallery in Samcheong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul. The exhibition, featuring 33 new paintings and 9 NFTs, is titled 'Hello Kitty,' a name given by artist John Miller, who wrote the exhibition preface after seeing his work. Regarding 'Hello Kitty,' the first animal character to appear in Asia in 1974, the artist explained, "Totems are not mysterious superstitions but a process where communities use animals around them as symbols to create social cohesion centered on animals, forming the culture of a society." He added, "For Generation X, Hello Kitty functions as a symbolic animal totem like Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck in the West."

In the 1990s, the artist used to carry files on floppy disks around New York City to amplify images drawn by his son. Although he found answers at a computer lab, it took nearly a week to amplify a single image. Through such persistent efforts, the artist was able to 'mine' hundreds of digital images. Referring to a statement by art critic Craig Owens, who was active in New York in the late 1990s, he said, "Owens said if a person could become smaller than a pixel, humans could beat computers. I thought that if I couldn't become smaller than a pixel, I could dominate pixels through the streets." Indeed, his works encountered at the exhibition became clearer the farther the audience viewed them from a distance.

Cody Choi_HELLO KITTY Database Painting Totem + NFT. Exhibition view
Photo by PKM Gallery

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Notably, the nine NFT works presented at this exhibition are currently on sale on the NFT platform OpenSea for 20 Ethereum (approximately 50 million KRW), but they are produced as non-sale items and shown to the audience. Previously, one of the 'Animal Totem' works featuring a tiger, introduced in 1999, was exhibited at Art Basel Hong Kong in 2021 for 175 billion KRW, attracting attention.

The artist studied sociology at Korea University and majored in design and fine arts at the Art Center College of Design in the United States. As a visual artist and cultural theorist active since the mid-1980s, he gained international fame through solo exhibitions such as the 1996 Daichi Project in New York and group exhibitions commemorating the opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Marseille in 1996. From 2015 to 2017, under the curation of art historian John C. Welchman, he held touring retrospectives at Kunsthalle D?sseldorf, the Museum of Contemporary Art Marseille, and the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in Germany. In 2017, he was selected as the representative artist for the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, solidifying his name among domestic audiences.

He said, "(NFT art) will go through a period of confusion, misunderstanding, and mixed acceptance, just as the recognition shift that accepted modern abstraction as art did, but eventually it will be embraced." He added, "I hope young generations will be inspired by my work." He continued, "The information underlying my work is from 1999, but if the young generation now utilizes the infinite information they have, they can create something more interesting and amazing." The exhibition runs until May 17 at PKM Gallery.

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