Smart­Stamp is the proud tech­nol­o­gy spon­sor for inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed artist Gor­don Che­ung’s debut exhi­bi­tion in Los Ange­les, Trans­fer of Pow­er — pre­sent­ed by Coates and Scar­ry and the Inter­na­tion­al Chi­nese Fine Arts Coun­cil, and cur­rent­ly on view at C‑Project through August 14, 2021.

What is a Print 4.0?

Using SmartStamp’s patent­ed com­put­er vision with inte­grat­ed blockchain, Che­ung can offer the world’s first phys­i­cal-to-dig­i­tal, blockchain and Ai authen­ti­cat­ed, unique­ly iden­ti­fi­able fin­ger­prints for his mul­ti­ples that can be includ­ed as part of the artist’s Cer­tifi­cate of Authen­tic­i­ty issued to col­lec­tors of the port­fo­lio. Cre­at­ed as a spe­cial project in advance of the Smart­Stamp App being released this year, the Smart­Stamp tech team is sav­ing the files for Cheung’s account.

Our same pro­pri­etary tech­nol­o­gy was also used to cre­ate the world’s first postage Stamp 4.0 for our ecosys­tem part­ner Post Licht­en­stein, who will release 45,000 unique­ly iden­ti­fi­able stamps on Sep­tem­ber 6, 2021.

Gor­don Cheung’s Trans­fer of Pow­er fea­tures new paint­ings, sculp­ture, and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty works togeth­er with a selec­tion of his most icon­ic paint­ings cre­at­ed over the last ten years. The wide-rang­ing exhi­bi­tion includes the British-born, Chi­nese artist’s ear­li­er works that vivid­ly probe geopo­lit­i­cal sys­tems and the inter­con­nec­tions between Chi­nese and British cul­tures, as well as Cheung’s more recent, com­plex amal­ga­ma­tions of tra­di­tion­al forms and advanced tech­nolo­gies that ana­lyze the forces behind glob­al finan­cial crises, the move­ment of cap­i­tal, and the demo­c­ra­t­ic rise of cyrp­tocur­ren­cy as both cri­tique and result of cen­tral­ized banks’ response to the COVID-19 reces­sion: to sim­ply print more money.

The Smart­Stamp case study with Che­ung focused on the artist’s 2021 lim­it­ed edi­tion print port­fo­lio Fear and Greed, that accom­pa­nies the exhi­bi­tion. This col­lec­tion of prints com­pris­es six sin­gle tulip images appro­pri­at­ed from Dutch Gold­en Age still life paint­ings and four con­tem­po­rary por­traits of blockchain indus­try lead­ers, trans­formed in Cheung’s icon­ic glitch tech­nique — a dig­i­tal sort­ing algo­rithm he uses to non-destruc­tive­ly reor­ga­nize pho­to­graph­ic pix­els to metaphor­i­cal­ly sug­gest rhyming his­to­ries that he calls visu­al ‘dig­i­tal sands of time.’ Each print is also ani­mat­ed via the artist’s AR App, avail­able to down­load in the App Store and GooglePlay.