Kevin Abosch


Kevin Abosch is an Irish conceptual artist known for his works in photography, sculpture, installation, AI, blockchain and film. Abosch's work addresses the nature of identity, value and human currency and has been exhibited throughout the world, often in civic spaces, including The Hermitage Museum, The National Gallery of Ireland, The National Museum of China, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, The Bogotá Museum of Modern Art, ZKM, Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, and Dublin Airport.

Selected works and projects

Utopian Propagation

On October 28, 2016 Abosch installed a work entitled "Impossible Promises" consisting of 100 painted oil barrels in the Millennium Park at the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art

Potato #345

In 2015, Abosch's photographic work of a potato, "Potato #345" was reportedly sold to an unnamed businessman in Europe for a €1,000,000,. This would make it one of the most expensive photographs in the world.
The photo was taken in 2010 and is one of three versions of the print in existence.

I AM A COIN

In January 2018 Abosch created 10,000,000 virtual artworks consisting of crypto-tokens on the Ethereum Blockchain. The artist also had his blood drawn with which he made 100 physical artworks imprinted with a 42 alphanumeric blockchain address corresponding to the creation of his virtual works. The crypto-tokens are called IAMA Coins and are referenced by the symbol "IAMA" on the blockchain.

Forever Rose

On February 14, 2018 Abosch's virtual artwork "Forever Rose", consisting of a single ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, sold to a group of ten art collectors for a record-breaking USD$1 million.

Yellow Lambo

The artwork is composed of 42 inline alphanumerics in yellow neon representing the blockchain contract address for a crypto token called YLAMBO, which Abosch also created. Abosch named the artwork after the hashtag #lambo, which cryptocurrency enthusiasts often use in online forums. On April 26th at the "If so, What?" art fair in San Francisco, California Abosch's sculpture entitled "Yellow Lambo" was sold to former Skype COO Michael Jackson for US$400,000, more than the base price of a 2018 Lamborghini Aventador motor car.

PRICELESS

A collaboration between Abosch and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei primarily made up of two standard ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, called PRICELESS. One of these tokens is forever unavailable to anyone, but the other is meant for distribution and is divisible up to 18 decimal places, meaning it can be given away one quintillionth at a time. A nominal amount of the distributable token was “burned”, and these wallet addresses were printed on paper and sold to art buyers in a series of 12 physical works. Each wallet address alphanumeric is a proxy for a shared moment between Abosch and Ai.

National Gallery of Ireland

In December 2013 the National Gallery of Ireland acquired three photographic portraits by Abosch for inclusion in the permanent National Portrait Collection. The portraits are of Bob Geldof, Olwen Fouéré and Brian O'Driscoll.

Animoca

Kevin Abosch is creative director for Animoca.