NF: I’m in my friend’s home, so the internet connection is good here…no sirens now. I hope there won’t be any this hour, because life these days…sometimes we just stay in the basement, and you can’t do anything.

I’m on the border of Ukraine and Romania. It’s a safe place. I live and I was born in Kiev, but since February I couldn’t go back there, so I’ve been here.

RE: Have you been able to retrieve any of your canvases from Kiev?

NF: Sadly, no. I will not be able to return to my art studio…I lived on the 22nd floor in Kiev, and it’s really dangerous to be there right now.

RE: I’m so sorry that you had to leave your home and studio behind. How long have you been an artist?

NF: Since I was born I started to draw, so I’ve always been an artist. I’ve done some nameless work, I’ve worked in advertising and in traditional art, so I’ve done a lot of different projects over the years.

What I like is digital and traditional art together; I’m not going to split these. NFTs allowed me to be a digital artist. To me, that means that I create both physical painted canvases and unique NFT works, and I see it as a possibility for me to bring art to a new level.

It’s like music. We have traditional music, and then later we developed digital music. But when we unite them, we have something more unique, something special, and that’s what I do with visual art.

RE: So it sounds like you’re working to create a hybrid of the two styles.

NF: I’m here to engage the viewers, it’s how they participate and how they can take art in as an experience. I think about how visitors react in a gallery when they see a canvas versus how they react to digital art in a gallery.

I think in traditional, when you see a canvas, the viewer has to react to the canvas to understand it more. But when you see the digital form of art, there can be so much there: animation, music, sometimes you can touch and smell the exhibit…it’s easier to eat, is how I describe it!

What I’m investigating, these reactions: this is the way I move in art.

NF: For ideas [to make art], no. In my work, the most important thing is the human. I investigate the human, it’s what I’m interested in. So for me, there’s been no problem finding inspiration. It’s more an issue of time because I’m preparing documents, moving around, raising funds, helping others. You can’t avoid it now.

What I’m doing: I never ask people to hate other people…even if I don’t like what they’re doing, as is the case with this war. When people look at my art, I ask them to look at the humanity at the heart of a situation. It’s harder painting canvasses right now of course; it’s not possible to have paint delivered currently.

The most important thing right now is resuming the profession, finding work wherever I can. 

RE: It’s interesting that you say that, because I was struck by the amount of color and hope that I saw in the work you have posted on SuperRare. It seems as though your work has not shifted so much stylistically, would you say that’s true?

NF: I’ve had different experiences in my life. Hope and belief and positivity can create miracles. That’s my relative experience; I’m a positive person. And sometimes a situation is really hard and people say ‘this is too bad, I can’t possibly hold all this,’ but we have to. We have to live, we have to believe.

It’s the core of my energy, the well and source of what I’m doing. No matter what happens, I will be who I am, I’m fighting for it and yes, it’s really hard. It’s exhausting, really.

But no one promises that it will be easy.

RE: I’d like to talk a little about your work with NFTs now; I understand you were minting them before the war. When did you start minting your art as NFTs?

NF: Since 2020. I got an invitation and for me, it was a unique experience.

For me, the NFT is the possibility to create canvasses that exist in another dimension: a digital dimension in its original form. It was a blow-up for my digital art so I was ready to take it and go on, it’s a new step!

I think there was a step to the moon, and now here’s a step to the digital, for us artists. It’s just such a powerful form, I think you could argue that it’s the most powerful thing that has happened to the art world since the Renaissance.

I’ve been in an exhibition in London. They took twenty-one of my painted canvasses and twenty-one NFTs. So it was a canvas, and then a screen, canvas, screen, and people could interact with both forms of art at once. 

People were saying ‘wow!’ It’s so unusual to see digital that you could see and touch, and smell, it was something people didn’t expect. This is the way I want to move: to make more interesting things that viewers can interact with in more powerful ways. That’s what I’m doing with NFTs.

That was in London, it was February 2022 and as soon as I got back the war started.

I’d been organizing it for two years, to get the canvasses together, to put everything in the right place. It was a great event and then I was back to this—horrible situation.

RE: So how long does it take for you to create a piece of artwork that you’ll mint as an NFT?

NF: Usually I have albums, sketchbooks, and each day, I create an idea in sketches. But I’m not usually satisfied with them, for one project I might make ten sketches, all different forms. For me, to create a high-quality NFT, that usually takes three weeks. Three weeks until I’m satisfied with the quality that I have. I know some artists can create them in two or three days, much faster. But I’m not satisfied with the result and the clarity of the idea. I’m looking at clear form: an idea that can be absolutely understandable for viewers. 

Yet meanwhile they should have perfect composition, perfect shape, so I can’t make it in a few minutes. It might not be great for popularity because I don’t have a huge quantity, but I prefer to have an image that I’m really happy with when I upload it and when a collector buys it, I’m sure they can estimate what it’s worth.

NF: Firstly we organized a public fund. We sold several NFTs through Solana currency. We sent some of the money to a maternity hospital because there were newborn infants living in the basement there.

With my sales, I’ve been sharing the profits since then. You’re around so many homeless people that have nothing—I’m ten kilometers from Bucha. They have nothing there, just clothes, what they fled in.

So we provide them with bread, food, clothes. I always share when I make sales. These aren’t just strangers, they are families that you know, members from your community and their children. So I always share some part of my profits to people who need it.

I have a soul, so I have to share.

You understand that you could be in their place—they lived like you down the street, and now they need clothes. It’s not possible to avoid this in these times.

The problems in Ukraine, there’s a lot of corruption now, some groups have organized funds and collected money—and then they don’t share it with those who need it; they buy things for their own purposes. So I have found that it’s better to buy food and medicine directly so the money doesn’t ‘fly away.’

RE: How do you choose where to send the funds to? GoFundMe, or through PayPal, or do you just bring funds directly?

NF: All of those. For example, my friend called and said a family with three kids she knew, they were trying to travel somewhere more safe, they had no gas in the tank of their car, no food. So she asked me to bring them what I could; bring them food, give them some money for gas. Necessary, emergency things. If somebody needs you, you go!

RE: What an amazing unity you’re describing amongst the refugees and civilians from Kiev.

NF: Yes, you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who could use some help, so everyone comes together.

RE: Have you worked with other artists to raise funds?

NF: I’ve helped some Ukrainian artists, explaining what freelance is. Many people have lost their jobs and are now turning attention to their hobbies, so if they’ve always liked art, they want to try and create some to sell. So I’ve explained in free lectures, people can show up, or tune in online and I explain how to create NFTs, how to get signed up.

Everyone now has the Internet. Even if it’s hard, I really try to work with a schedule. I decided to just make a free lecture so people could access this information for those who have jobs and don’t. I explain the risks, scams online, I get it. I was hacked several times. I explain how to avoid it, how to be careful, how to create work that can be sold in the future.

RE: Tell me more about the challenge of ‘remaining human,’ as you described it.

NF: When it happened first, of course, I was in shock. Everyone was in shock. For a week, I was in shock, it was not possible to deal with, it sounded like a washing machine, it was a scary sound, hearing too many ‘booms.’

Then I realized, you have to work. It’s really helpful when you dive into the work, when  you communicate, for example, like the SuperRare community, a lot of them have been asking how I’ve been doing, they’ve organized a workspace. It’s really good to dive into.

Because the news around you, it’s absolutely horrible. You hear every day that people are dying, bombs are going off. In this case, the work has really helped me to stay alive. To be human. To concentrate. Even when you’re working with a digital template, you’re able to forget for just a little bit what’s going on around you. So thank god I’m fortunate enough to work, it’s been great.

NF: Of course it’s changing; it’s changing and the humanity in my work, I go on with it. I want people to understand each other through the visual. Nowadays, people dread what you’re going to say about the world, nobody has time to themselves, no one wants to concentrate, because there’s too much information, that’s normal today. But I think that people need to hear each other.

Try to understand, we’re in a different mentality. Just trying to understand what another person is going to say: that’s much more important. Biologically, when there are a lot of species in one place, we get angry, it’s normal.

But I believe that we’re not just creatures, we have something that can’t control us, something that we can call human. I’m going to emphasize in my work more and more that we are not just a crowd; we have a point of view and we have to listen to each other because that can prevent more war in the future. That’s my standpoint and I want to make brighter things in my work, make things bright like they were before the war. 

RE: What is next for you? Do you plan to continue working primarily in digital art and NFTs?

NF: Yes, I’ll go on my way with digital art. I want to continue to create NFTs to sell on SuperRare.

All my life, before NFTs, the galleries would plead with me. I worked with galleries that worked only with canvasses, and I’ve worked with galleries that only did digital forms. I want to show that nowadays, an artist can exist in a unique form and those styles shouldn’t be divided. We’re contemporary! If you’re a contemporary artist, you can be in both dimensions—in reality with canvasses and oil or acrylic, and also with animation and superimposed music that can exist as a core of this metaverse.

RE: Do you have any advice for other creators out there who are trying to break through into NFTs, or just to create new art in general?

NF: I don’t think I have anything new to say that artists haven’t heard before, but I’ll try to extract from my experience. Firstly, never give up. Learn, and learn the new.

These days, there are so many new computer programs. They have so many new opportunities to work with 3D sculptures, animation, try everything that you like! Try and complete something, don’t just try. Even if it’s hard, you fear you’ll have no time—see a project to the end. I really believe that creating is making you better.

Thirdly, read about, and go to exhibitions. When you see these works, you’re immersed and involved in it, you digest it a little, and that’s how a new idea is born. I’m not saying it’s copying what you’re seeing at exhibits, just that new ideas get you moving forward and creating better as an artist.

That’s my way, and this formula is working. 

This week in Toronto, new murals and mysterious shipping containers spring up as part of Yorkville Murals, an annual open air celebration of the city’s culture, taking place this year from August 20 through 28.

There, SuperRare has partnered with fest founder Taglialatella Galleries to present NFTs for the first time in event history, constructing an otherworldly portal accessible from street level. The “guerrilla style” show highlights eight artists, curated by Taglialatella and SuperRare: Joe Iurato, Logan Hicks, Zoe Osborne, Guy Bourdin, Untitled Army, Omar Z. Robles, Raylivez and The French Kiss Lab. They span NFT superstars, the gallery’s regular roster, and rising local artists.

Materially disparate but both equally disruptive, street art and NFTs make a surprisingly natural fit.

This partnership between Taglialatella and SuperRare follows previous collaborations like an NFT exhibition at the fine art gallery’s Chelsea, NYC location earlier this year called “Digital Pioneers,” featuring three artists from the gallery’s roster and several blue chip artists from SuperRare’s NFT platform. This is where Joe Iurato and Logan Hicks actually made their NFT debuts.

Yorkville Murals has celebrated culture through public art every year since Taglialatella Toronto leader Alan Ganev founded the fest in 2019. Curated with a contemporary fine art bent, this year’s lineup of nine outdoor artists includes Fidia Falaschetti’s shiny pop cultural cynicism and semi-abstract portraitist Florence Solis—building on the legacy of previous highlights like a floor mural by mega gallery darling Nina Chanel Abney and a 2020 appearance by international muralist Emmanuel Jarus.

The event doesn’t stop at visual art. When he spoke to me, Ganev cited partnerships as a driving force behind Yorkville Murals. STOCKX, the W Hotel, and Hennessey have also come on board to create their own experiences this year. Cafe Artois is providing music, food, and drinks for revelers strolling Yorkville Avenue, closed to traffic just for the event. They’re also staging cultural activations like sculptures and art installations.

Ganev relocated to Toronto to help build and oversee Tagliatalatella’s fourth location. He started the Yorkville Murals program about a year and a half after they opened. Once he got the business up and running, Ganev started seeing resources at his disposal—particularly festival partner Ink Entertainment, who already had experience planning events that pop off, powered by their various restaurant and hotel properties.

“Yorkville Murals is a way to work beyond the scope of the gallery program,” Ganev said. “Yorkville Murals allows the gallery to be in constant communication with new talent, collaborate with that talent, collaborate with brands, collaborate with the city.” Some galleries transacting on the level Taglialatella does just set up shop and clock their sales. Through Yorkville Murals, this branch of their operations talks with the city itself.

The more he learned about Toronto, the more Ganev fell for the place and felt inspired to get involved with it. Toronto is Canada’s largest city—and the fourth largest in North America, after Mexico City, New York, and Los Angeles.

“It’s a city that has been growing at such an incredible rate, but its culture is barely catching up,” Ganev said. “It’s a very fertile ground for opportunity.” Besides, Montreal and Vancouver each had their own internationally acclaimed mural fest. Toronto was overdue.

Yorkville felt like prime real estate. Since Ganev spends so much time there, he’s built relationships critical to an event requiring big resources like walls to paint and power for permits. What’s more, the fashionable neighborhood (Chanel and Balenciaga are on the same block as Taglialatella’s spot) holds a deeply bohemian past—think Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Margaret Atwood smoking weed outside a cafe, talking art and ideas. Literally.

Now, maybe unsurprisingly, it’s one of the most affluent areas in all of Toronto.

While that’s great for the residents, businesses, and visitors, Ganev noted it’s not necessarily the greatest for cultural advancement. Bloated power gets complacent—isn’t that the appeal of the paradigm busting that Web3 and NFTs seek?

“A lot of these brands are just recycling designed campaigns that are created in New York, that are created in Paris—then, what you see in the neighborhood is that it lost its identity,” Ganev said of the fashion ads dominating Yorkville’s blocks. “There’s nothing that you’re bringing into the neighborhood, it’s just a repetition of something else that is happening somewhere else.”

While Yorkville Murals strategically empowers Taglialatella to partner with artists a bit above their weight class, they equally prioritize partnerships that elevate local artists. Pair that with the opportunities created when Yorkville Murals started bringing other companies into the fold.

“SuperRare is a great example of how you’re able to collaborate with a technology-oriented company, creating a very cool concept—like a shipping container—putting it on Yorkville Avenue, highlighting emerging talent,” Ganev said.

Ganev had no prior experience in Web3 when he started presenting NFTs through the gallery. He’s always been more interested in the tactility of painting and the art business. “I feel a high from seeing this container on the street, seeing the structure of the container, very industrial, very rough, with the doors open,” Ganev said of the Yorkville Murals project with SuperRare. “Then there’s screens inside playing amazing animations and beautiful art.”

“Capturing people’s attention these days is very hard, and to innovate is very hard,” Ganev said. “You have to care and try harder. For me, this container is caring.”

“SuperRare is going beyond their digital space to create this container, the gallery is going beyond its traditional program to create this container,” he mused. “Here we are in completely different contexts, collaborating and doing something that is very interesting.”

Ganev recounted how, upon moving to Toronto, he immediately also fell in love with nearby Detroit, jumping across the American border six times his first year there. “There’s a gallery called Library Street Collective,” he said. “They’ve done so many cool projects within that city, collaborating with Daniel Arsham and creating beautiful mural projects on alleyways or buildings or taking over abandoned buildings.”

“I went to that city, and I got so influenced by the work that they were doing,” Ganev continued.  “I’m sure they’re inspiring other galleries, other companies, other creators, other curators to think like this.”

Yorkville Murals and all its experiments—like this year’s shipping container NFT show—are simply a function of their desire to engage Toronto’s cultural community by doing something different: collecting big brands like Aston Martin and SuperRare alongside leading artists of our time and local artists studying at university. It’s a cross-circumstantial idea exchange harkening back to that bohemian Bob Dylan era—maybe better because it’s an evolution, rather than empty recreation. The high fashion advertisements have already co-opted yesteryear’s revolutions.

Doing things differently means doing away with art’s elitism. Gallery shows at SuperRare’s SoHo popup, for example, utilize blockchain’s unique provenance powers. Visitors can scan QR codes alongside each piece to access artwork details and even see the entire ownership history with sale dates and prices. They’re fascinating, like stats for your favorite sports team. They also lay bare the formerly secret machinations of deals made behind the scenes, reducing the intimidation power the art world wields.

And like street art introduces creativity into everyday life, NFTs can be viewed anywhere in the world—even multiple times at once—without compromising provenance. That means bringing out the vast majority of art in this world that’s traditionally languished in private and institutional storage.

Even though Toronto’s a world class city, the white walled gallery space can turn people off. I know thoroughly fashionable folk in NYC who have never been to a gallery opening because they’re a little scared.

“The reality is that there’s these stereotypes that just alienate people that, as you said, have the resources to participate in this market and be a part of it, but they just feel completely intimidated…,” he remarked. “It’s very important that if you do cross that door, you’re treated with respect and you’re treated warmly so you come back, you talk to your friends, and you start building community that way.”

The very nature of the shipping container NFT showcase even has potential to go nomadic, empowering other communities to start building their own relationships with art.

Doing things differently doesn’t mean doing away with the resources of the present. “I do think it’s important to involve galleries, because there’s a lot of ways of presenting art and understanding the market that technology peers are not aware of,” Ganev said. “Coming into this space in the spirit of collaboration is key, and creating experiences that are innovative, that are challenging intellectually, but also created as an environment that people feel good in.”

It’s all a matter of conversation—especially in Toronto right now, where Yorkville Murals runs through August 28.