Part of my thesis for the Executive Master in Art Market Studies 2023-25 at the University of Zurich.

Mitchell F. Chan is a conceptual artist born in 1982 in Canada, currently based in Toronto. He has been involved in the art world with new media installations and exhibitions across North America since 2006. Chan studied architecture and a lot of his early career was dedicated to public art, making large scale sculptures in parks and plazas. [1]

Over time his art progressively dematerialized – evolving from architecture and large scale sculptures to technology-infused gallery installations. His 2016 solo debut, Something Something National Conversation (In 2 Characters or Less) at Toronto's Angel Gallery, exemplified this transformation. The exhibition featured an installation where two clouds of water vapor emerged from opposite walls, floated toward each other, collided briefly, and then dissolved into nothingness.  Created just one month after Donald Trump's presidential election, the work explored "a sense of powerlessness and puzzlement over the state of our current public discourse." [2]

Given Chan's fascination with dematerialization, blockchain technology represented a natural evolution for his artistic practice. His 2017 work Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility marked his foray to NFTs — an important moment that distinguished him as one of the first artists to exhibit and mint blockchain-based artwork within a traditional gallery setting (InterAccess in Toronto). [3]

More significantly, Digital Zones explored blockchain's unique capacity to separate an artwork's commodity form from its experiential essence. The piece deliberately echoes French avant-garde artist Yves Klein's conceptual masterwork, Zone de sensibilité picturale immatérielle (Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility), reimagining Klein's radical explorations of immateriality through the lens of blockchain technology.

From 1959 to 1962, Klein executed Zone de sensibilité picturale immatérielle across multiple series, selling "immaterial zones" — essentially nothing material — in exchange for pure gold, with the required payment progressively doubling across successive series. Upon transaction, collectors received a receipt documenting their ownership of this invisible artwork. To complete the conceptual exchange, Klein invited collectors to participate in a transformative ritual: burning their receipt while Klein ceremonially cast half the gold payment into the Seine River, returning it to nature, while retaining the remainder. Through this elaborate performance of exchange and immateriality, Klein challenged conventional notions of artistic value and ownership, demonstrating that profound aesthetic experiences could transcend physical objects—a radical concept at the time that presciently anticipated today's digital art discourse.

In Chan's contemporary reinterpretation, Ethereum blockchain technology replaces Klein's paper receipts, with digital tokens serving as certificates of ownership. Chan’s version of an immaterial zone was a blank screen that each token linked to. The financial mechanism was reimagined by accepting Ethereum's native cryptocurrency (ETH) as payment, automatically retaining half while algorithmically "burning" the remainder when collectors destroy their digital receipts. This technological approach echoes Klein's Seine River ritual. Finally, a bonding curve pricing mechanism was used, ensuring that each subsequent token in the limited edition of 101 receipts commanded a progressively higher price in order to recreate Klein’s value escalation model.

Digital Zones reached its market apex in October 2021, when in Chan’s first auction house appearance at Sotheby’s, one of the receipt sold for $1,532,500. [4] Since the project’s release, prominent crypto figures such as Justin Sun [5] and organizations like FingerprintsDAO [6] have added Digital Zones in their collections. In the current market climate, the collection floor price has stabilized at valuations ranging around $20,000, demonstrating enduring collector interest.

2022 was an important year in Chan’s oeuvre as he started building games as artworks. Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge is a digital game that can be played by anyone on the internet or by collectors as an application on their computer. The game reenacts Winslow Homer’s painting The Croquet Players (1865), in which the player uses characters modeled after the figures in the painting to play croquet within a recreation of the painting’s gilded frame. The game is a reminder that art — like games or politics or war — takes place within a defined arena according to a set of rules, and that certain ideas, facts, or people must be included or excluded for this arena to be maintained. It also touches on the sexual politics of this era, which saw the birth of the women’s suffrage movement. [7] Buffalo AKG Art Museum owns the original painting by Winslow Homer and as part of their first retrospective on blockchain artists in December 2022, they acquired Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge and sold NFT editions of the work to the public.

Chan continued launching games in 2023 and exhibited in various museums such as ArtScience Museum in Singapore or HEK in Basel. He entered the PFP bandwagon with his game The Boys of Summer [8] but this game was unlike any other PFP project. “The Boys of Summer is inspired by the idea that statistics and numbers are the tools we use to tell very complicated stories” the artist says. The game is centered around a baseball player. Initially as you play the game, you get to manage baseball-specific attributes of the player but soon you are faced with unrelated aspects of the player’s social life, time spent studying in school, sex life, bank financials, and other mundane concerns. The game degenerates to absurdity until the player dies, serving as a stark critique of the quantification of self and the commodification of data.

In January 2024, Chan made his second appearance at a major auction house with the primary sale of Web3 Buddha at Christie's. This digital artwork, conceptualized as an interactive game exploring self-discovery and meditation within our accelerating media landscape, sold for $10,671. [9]

Mitchell F. Chan’s career traces a compelling arc from materiality to immateriality, with blockchain emerging as both a medium and a catalyst for this evolution. His works reveal how blockchain can expand the possibilities of art, offering new ways to explore ownership, value, and participation beyond the physical object. Chan’s adoption of blockchain is not merely technological but conceptual — aligning with his long-standing interests in dematerialization, public discourse, and the systems that shape our lives. In his hands, blockchain becomes more than a tool: it is a philosophical platform, inviting artists and audiences alike to rethink how art is created, shared, and understood in an increasingly digital world.

[1] Art NFT Linz - Anika Meier in Conversation with Mitchell F. Chan, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR9PTxS6a7c.

[2] “Mitchell Chan: Something... | Exhibitions | MutualArt,” accessed April 9, 2024, http://www.angellgallery.com/exhibitions/upcoming.

[3] “Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Conceptual Art | InterAccess,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://interaccess.org/event/2017/bitcoin-ethereum-and-conceptual-art.

[4] Sotheby’s Metaverse [@Sothebysverse], “#AuctionUpdate Digital Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility Sells for $1,532,500 USD. It Is One of the First Blockchain-Based Artworks to Situate the Technology within a Longer History of Conceptual Art and Its Discourse of Dematerialization. #NativelyDigital Https://T.Co/c8DAVz0HzF,” Tweet, Twitter, October 26, 2021, https://x.com/Sothebysverse/status/1453077485101350913.

[5] “Justin Sun Acquired NFTs of Digital Zones, One of the Earliest NFT Projects, for $2 Million,” Yahoo Finance, October 11, 2021, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/justin-sun-acquired-nfts-digital-121500771.html.

[6] Fingerprints DAO, “‘Mitchell Sells Broken Link!’. Why Fingerprints Acquired An Empty NFT,” Medium (blog), May 15, 2021, https://fingerprintsdao.medium.com/mitchell-sells-broken-link-why-fingerprints-acquired-an-empty-nft-770d502795a7.

[7] “Winslow Homer’s Croquet Challenge,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://chan.gallery/croquetchallenge/.

[8] “The Boys of Summer,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://chan.gallery/boysofsummer/.

[9] “Digital Art Auction | Christie’s 3.0 | Web3 Buddha,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://nft.christies.com//nft/web3-buddha.

Part of my thesis for the Executive Master in Art Market Studies 2023-25 at the University of Zurich.

Mitchell F. Chan is a conceptual artist born in 1982 in Canada, currently based in Toronto. He has been involved in the art world with new media installations and exhibitions across North America since 2006. Chan studied architecture and a lot of his early career was dedicated to public art, making large scale sculptures in parks and plazas. [1]

Over time his art progressively dematerialized – evolving from architecture and large scale sculptures to technology-infused gallery installations. His 2016 solo debut, Something Something National Conversation (In 2 Characters or Less) at Toronto's Angel Gallery, exemplified this transformation. The exhibition featured an installation where two clouds of water vapor emerged from opposite walls, floated toward each other, collided briefly, and then dissolved into nothingness.  Created just one month after Donald Trump's presidential election, the work explored "a sense of powerlessness and puzzlement over the state of our current public discourse." [2]

Given Chan's fascination with dematerialization, blockchain technology represented a natural evolution for his artistic practice. His 2017 work Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility marked his foray to NFTs — an important moment that distinguished him as one of the first artists to exhibit and mint blockchain-based artwork within a traditional gallery setting (InterAccess in Toronto). [3]

More significantly, Digital Zones explored blockchain's unique capacity to separate an artwork's commodity form from its experiential essence. The piece deliberately echoes French avant-garde artist Yves Klein's conceptual masterwork, Zone de sensibilité picturale immatérielle (Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility), reimagining Klein's radical explorations of immateriality through the lens of blockchain technology.

From 1959 to 1962, Klein executed Zone de sensibilité picturale immatérielle across multiple series, selling "immaterial zones" — essentially nothing material — in exchange for pure gold, with the required payment progressively doubling across successive series. Upon transaction, collectors received a receipt documenting their ownership of this invisible artwork. To complete the conceptual exchange, Klein invited collectors to participate in a transformative ritual: burning their receipt while Klein ceremonially cast half the gold payment into the Seine River, returning it to nature, while retaining the remainder. Through this elaborate performance of exchange and immateriality, Klein challenged conventional notions of artistic value and ownership, demonstrating that profound aesthetic experiences could transcend physical objects—a radical concept at the time that presciently anticipated today's digital art discourse.

In Chan's contemporary reinterpretation, Ethereum blockchain technology replaces Klein's paper receipts, with digital tokens serving as certificates of ownership. Chan’s version of an immaterial zone was a blank screen that each token linked to. The financial mechanism was reimagined by accepting Ethereum's native cryptocurrency (ETH) as payment, automatically retaining half while algorithmically "burning" the remainder when collectors destroy their digital receipts. This technological approach echoes Klein's Seine River ritual. Finally, a bonding curve pricing mechanism was used, ensuring that each subsequent token in the limited edition of 101 receipts commanded a progressively higher price in order to recreate Klein’s value escalation model.

Digital Zones reached its market apex in October 2021, when in Chan’s first auction house appearance at Sotheby’s, one of the receipt sold for $1,532,500. [4] Since the project’s release, prominent crypto figures such as Justin Sun [5] and organizations like FingerprintsDAO [6] have added Digital Zones in their collections. In the current market climate, the collection floor price has stabilized at valuations ranging around $20,000, demonstrating enduring collector interest.

2022 was an important year in Chan’s oeuvre as he started building games as artworks. Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge is a digital game that can be played by anyone on the internet or by collectors as an application on their computer. The game reenacts Winslow Homer’s painting The Croquet Players (1865), in which the player uses characters modeled after the figures in the painting to play croquet within a recreation of the painting’s gilded frame. The game is a reminder that art — like games or politics or war — takes place within a defined arena according to a set of rules, and that certain ideas, facts, or people must be included or excluded for this arena to be maintained. It also touches on the sexual politics of this era, which saw the birth of the women’s suffrage movement. [7] Buffalo AKG Art Museum owns the original painting by Winslow Homer and as part of their first retrospective on blockchain artists in December 2022, they acquired Winslow Homer's Croquet Challenge and sold NFT editions of the work to the public.

Chan continued launching games in 2023 and exhibited in various museums such as ArtScience Museum in Singapore or HEK in Basel. He entered the PFP bandwagon with his game The Boys of Summer [8] but this game was unlike any other PFP project. “The Boys of Summer is inspired by the idea that statistics and numbers are the tools we use to tell very complicated stories” the artist says. The game is centered around a baseball player. Initially as you play the game, you get to manage baseball-specific attributes of the player but soon you are faced with unrelated aspects of the player’s social life, time spent studying in school, sex life, bank financials, and other mundane concerns. The game degenerates to absurdity until the player dies, serving as a stark critique of the quantification of self and the commodification of data.

In January 2024, Chan made his second appearance at a major auction house with the primary sale of Web3 Buddha at Christie's. This digital artwork, conceptualized as an interactive game exploring self-discovery and meditation within our accelerating media landscape, sold for $10,671. [9]

Mitchell F. Chan’s career traces a compelling arc from materiality to immateriality, with blockchain emerging as both a medium and a catalyst for this evolution. His works reveal how blockchain can expand the possibilities of art, offering new ways to explore ownership, value, and participation beyond the physical object. Chan’s adoption of blockchain is not merely technological but conceptual — aligning with his long-standing interests in dematerialization, public discourse, and the systems that shape our lives. In his hands, blockchain becomes more than a tool: it is a philosophical platform, inviting artists and audiences alike to rethink how art is created, shared, and understood in an increasingly digital world.

[1] Art NFT Linz - Anika Meier in Conversation with Mitchell F. Chan, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR9PTxS6a7c.

[2] “Mitchell Chan: Something... | Exhibitions | MutualArt,” accessed April 9, 2024, http://www.angellgallery.com/exhibitions/upcoming.

[3] “Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Conceptual Art | InterAccess,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://interaccess.org/event/2017/bitcoin-ethereum-and-conceptual-art.

[4] Sotheby’s Metaverse [@Sothebysverse], “#AuctionUpdate Digital Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility Sells for $1,532,500 USD. It Is One of the First Blockchain-Based Artworks to Situate the Technology within a Longer History of Conceptual Art and Its Discourse of Dematerialization. #NativelyDigital Https://T.Co/c8DAVz0HzF,” Tweet, Twitter, October 26, 2021, https://x.com/Sothebysverse/status/1453077485101350913.

[5] “Justin Sun Acquired NFTs of Digital Zones, One of the Earliest NFT Projects, for $2 Million,” Yahoo Finance, October 11, 2021, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/justin-sun-acquired-nfts-digital-121500771.html.

[6] Fingerprints DAO, “‘Mitchell Sells Broken Link!’. Why Fingerprints Acquired An Empty NFT,” Medium (blog), May 15, 2021, https://fingerprintsdao.medium.com/mitchell-sells-broken-link-why-fingerprints-acquired-an-empty-nft-770d502795a7.

[7] “Winslow Homer’s Croquet Challenge,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://chan.gallery/croquetchallenge/.

[8] “The Boys of Summer,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://chan.gallery/boysofsummer/.

[9] “Digital Art Auction | Christie’s 3.0 | Web3 Buddha,” accessed April 9, 2024, https://nft.christies.com//nft/web3-buddha.