Eye to Eye With Art History: The Legacy of Peer to Peer
The rapid rise of the NFT market in 2021 created an unusual situation where relatively unknown digital artists were selling works at or near the prices of the most significant names in art history. This was in large part due to the speculative bubble of crypto, but it also gave more urgency to the question of how to gauge the art historical significance of burgeoning NFT artists by metrics other than sale prices. Validation by museums and art historians is what typically separates capital A art from other luxury commodities. NFTs had historic sale prices, but they lacked historic validation. Artists and collectors quickly become keen to win a seal of approval from art museums, art historians, and traditional art world press. With the exception of the auction houses and a few galleries, the art world was wary of NFTs. Perhaps the most significant validation of NFTs by the old guard came in late 2022, when Buffalo AKG Museum presented Peer to Peer, an NFT exhibition and fundraiser in conjunction with Feral File.
Peer to Peer was curated by Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan, then a curator at Buffalo AKG Museum, and an expert in digital art. The venerable museum, having recently changed its name from The Albright Knox Gallery, was undergoing a major restoration, which meant that an entirely online exhibition was a smart way to continue programming. Ryan invited thirteen artists and collectives to create new work in response to works from the Buffalo AKG collection. The artists included LaTurbo Avedon, Mitchell F. Chan, Entangled Others, Simon Denny, Amir H. Fallah, Sarah Friend, Auriea Harvey, Rhea Myers, Osinachi, Casey REAS, Anne Spalter, Ix Shells, and Sarah Zucker. The artists responded to a wide range of work from the collection, from Joseph Kosuth to Winslow Homer to sculptural columns integrated into the museum building itself.
The exhibition was structured as a fundraiser for the museum, so that 50% of the initial sales and 5% of secondary sales went to support future museum programming. Structuring the show as a fundraiser was a way to bridge a critical gap between the museum art world and the NFT art world. Museum exhibitions and acquisitions have a positive effect on an artist’s sale prices, but museums take great pains not to be seen as market manipulators, and they strenuously avoid anything that might look like flipping, and sales from permanent collections are quite rare. The NFT corner of the artworld embraces all the thrills and vulgarities of the market, which is part of why institutional acceptance of NFTs has been so difficult. The compromise with Peer to Peer was to use the transparency of the blockchain to communicate in advance exactly how much the museum would benefit from sales and resales. That way, if the artworks instigated bidding wars, or were flipped, the museum could receive financial support without having to directly meddle in speculative market activity.
The collecting period for the exhibition kicked off with a reception at Art Basel Miami Beach on November 29, 2022. The event took place at the Mondrian South Beach Hotel and featured a pop-up exhibition of some of the works in the show, curated by Ryan and Sofia Garcia of ARTXCODE. The reception garnered press coverage and featured a panel discussion. The collecting period continued through December 2, 2022.
Peer to Peer received positive press coverage. Writing in The Brooklyn Rail, critic Charlotte Kent observed, “We need shows like Peer to Peer where the curator engages meaningfully with the values that crypto art has tried to espouse, like equitable market participation, as well as those exhaustively expressed by art historians, like a rigorous tie between design and concept.” Artnet News covered Peer to Peer twice, once with a news story, and with an interview with Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan, where she remarked on the historical significance of putting these artists in dialogue with the Buffalo AKG collection, saying, “I have always seen digital art as an extension of modern and contemporary art history. When I look at digital art, I’m not just seeing the technology but a lineage of artists who have been asking the same kind of questions that others have been asking for the last 150 years.” The exhibition also received coverage in Artdaily and MutualArt, among others.
When asked to reflect on the highlights of the experience of Peer to Peer, many of the artists spoke about how honored they were to work with Ryan as a curator. Mitchell F. Chan remarked that, “She was really trying to champion this work … on one hand, that really motivated me to do something great, but on the other hand, it freed me to try something completely crazy.” Chan’s NFT projects before Peer to Peer dealt very directly with conceptual art predecessors Yves Klien and Sol LeWitt. With Ryan’s guidance and confidence, Chan used Peer to Peer as a way to pivot to making playable video games as artworks, and chose to reference Winslow Homer’s The Croquet Players, 1865, rather than the many examples of conceptual art in the Buffalo AKG collection. Rhea Myers, in making Titled (Information as Property as Art) [Ethereum Null Address] (2022)–a stark and conceptual reference to Joseph Kosuth–presented Ryan with several concepts for the work. Through their exchange, Myers ultimately felt empowered to pursue the simplest and most impactful concept, a meditation on nothingness that pulls Kosuth's line of thinking into the 21st century.
Peer to Peer succeeded in contextualizing leading NFT artists within the broader narrative of art history by putting artists in dialogue across media and across time. This was taken a step further when the Buffalo AKG Museum acquired one edition of every piece in the show, meaning that the artists truly became peers with their historical forbearers, sharing a place in an esteemed institutional collection.
Peer to Peer was a significant moment for all involved, and the artists and curators continue to produce remarkable work. Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan left Buffalo AKG Museum in order to accept the role of Editor in Chief of Artforum. Before leaving the museum she curated Electric Op, an exhibition drawing together Op Art from the 1960s with more recent examples of artists using abstraction to push the bounds of perception. The exhibition included Peer to Peer artists Rhea Myers, Casey REAS, and Ix Shells.
The exhibitions and projects pursued by the artists in Peer to Peer since the exhibition are too many to list, but here are a few notable examples:
LaTurbo Avedon and Auriea Harvey are both featured in UNA, DOPPIA, COLLETTIVA (ONE, DOUBLE, COLLECTIVE): Identity in the Time of the Metaverse, from February to May, 2025 in Bologna, Italy.
In May, 2025, Mitchell F. Chan presented Insert Coin(s), a collection of video game artworks at Nguyen Wahed Gallery in New York.
Entangled Others presented Liquid Strata in 2024, a sculptural installation with video at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona.
Entangled Others, along with Casey REAS, are also featured in the upcoming group exhibition Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms, at the Toledo Museum of Art, curated by Julia Kaganskiy and running from July to November, 2025.
Simon Denny continued his exploration of virtual property with Metaverse Landscapes, an exhibition of paintings paired with digital property deeds, at Kunstverein Hannover in 2023.
Amir H. Fallah recently opened Silent Revelations, an exhibition of paintings and sculptures at Galerie Droste Paris.
In 2024 Sarah Friend launched Prompt Baby, a project that allows collectors to purchase an NFT which enables them to submit a NSFW prompt to create a unique image of the artist.
Auriea Harvey had her first solo museum show titled My Veins Are the Wires, My Body Is Your Keyboard at Museum of the Moving Image in New York from February to December, 2024.
Rhea Myers has since had two solo shows at Nagel & Draxler Gallery in Berlin: The Ego, And It’s 0wned and The Fractionalized Phallus.
Osinachi was the 2023 artist in residence at the Toledo Museum of Art.
Casey REAS presented It Doesn’t Exist (In Any Other Form) at bitforms gallery in New York, between November 2023 and January 2024.
Anne Spalter, in collaboration with The Josh Craig, presented Future Trains, a series of videos created with AI at Bang & Olufsen’s SoHo NYC showroom in January, 2025.
Ix Shells was included in Against All Odds - Historical Women and New Algorithms at SMK The National Gallery of Denmark in 2024.
Sarah Zucker was included in In Medias Res, a group exhibition presented by Feral File and FEMMEBIT that was also presented at the Torrance Art Museum.
The title Peer to Peer is of course a double entendre, referencing on one hand peer to peer file sharing networks, and on the other hand making the case that these crypto artists are peers with older, more established artists in the art historical canon. Peer to Peer carries a third meaning, however, which is the opportunity it created for these artists and the curator to benefit from being peers with one another. Faced with the same challenge of responding to a work from the Buffalo AKG collection, these thirteen artists produced an exhibition that proves that NFTs deserve a place in art history.
Timeline
November 21, 2022 - Peer to Peer launches on Feral File
November 29, 2022 - Kick off event at Art Basel Miami Beach, collecting period begins
December 2, 2022 - Collecting period ends
December, 2022 - Buffalo AKG acquires one edition of all the work in Peer to Peer