Kevin Abosch knows his way around words and takes precautions to not define himself (and to not let the Press define him) as a Crypto Artist: “I wouldn’t want somebody to say ‘That’s Kevin the crypto artist.’ I’m a conceptual artist who works with a number of different media, including photography and blockchain.”
But this is something we already knew: Kevin Abosch is an Outsider, not a native Crypto Artist. It is immediately obvious, to anyone who has any kind of familiarity with the NFT sector, that his work doesn’t carry the weight of Crypto Art’s visual signature, a common visual language evidenced by Tanya4D’s joyful exuberance or Xcopy’s raw primitivism, for example.
But perhaps a taste of the Outside is exactly what the NFT sector needs at the moment. Perhaps it is exactly what the doctor ordered.
As an Outsider, Kevin Abosch brings the Ethos and Praxis of Conceptual Art to the NFT sector: a relentless focus on process and meaning. We are taken aback as this is something we are not accustomed to.
Initially, we get the sense that Kevin Abosch’s NFT Art comes in direct conflict with the very nature of Crypto Art, which favors a time and capital intensive form of Blender/C4D powered, in-your-face visual expression, without long-winded explanations: “shiny” pieces are “thrown” in the attention economy, “premiered” on Crypto Twitter or Discord and presented as is for immediate consumption without artist statements and convoluted socio-philosophical commentary.
Kevin Abosch’s process
Conceptual Art, which Kevin Abosch practices, is the expression of a civilization that favors discourse and the discursive concept above all else. Conceptual Art has come to put the discursive above the purely Aesthetic, and a symptom of this are the artist statements that unavoidably accompany the works that are pushed towards a sometimes, shall we say, reluctant public.
The value of conceptual art then has to be derived from: 1. the discourse that the artists themselves offer about their own work, and 2. the process which is inseparable from this discourse and which is, for all intents and purposes, a material expression of this discourse. Conceptual Art’s focus on discursive concepts and process is facilitated, and funded, by an institutional environment that enables and encourages the prevalence of verbosity and conceptualism over pure, substantial and naive execution – over the purely Aesthetic.
This is why we feel Kevin Abosch’s practice of NFT Art is immanently conflictual – and eminently disruptive. Perhaps this is intentional. We are taken aback and dragged out, feet first, out of our comfort zone, populated with Moon Cats, shiny Blender renders and Futuristic Sneakers. His approach brings along an alien element of verbosity, and a calculated focus on patient Craft and Process.
Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Perhaps it would be better here to put our biases and opinions in brackets, avoid easy condemnations, and in a kind of “Phenomenological Epoche” let Market Data do the talking.
The Data speaks volumes – it appears that collectors and “flippers” (short-term NFT traders) are hungry for a touch of conceptual Art in the NFT sector.
Take Abosch’s 888 series for example, the 8th series in terms of volume on NFT Stats.
Kevin Abosch’s 888 series, the output, as per the author, of “Deep-Learning algorithms trained on billions of data points pertaining to global sociologic dilemmas” is in the crosshairs of collectors and flippers. The most expensive 888 to date was 888 #97, which was sold for 59K the 24th of August 2021.
In terms of volume, 123 888 (2.87 million US dollars) were sold in the past 30 days. The median price for the past 30 days for an 888 is 17.8K. These are excellent figures and denote an appetite among investors for Kevin Abosch’s careful and patient approach to building NFT series.
Kevin Abosch’s 1111 series, which dropped in March 2021 on OpenSea, is also proving to be quite popular among collectors. 15 of them were sold in the past 7 days (that is 180K in dollar terms) and 75 in the past 30 days. The most expensive 1111 sold was #1072 at 45.K. The median price for an 1111 was 10K in the past 30 days.
As can be seen in the charts below, Kevin Abosch’s 1111 series fetches excellent prices on marketplaces such as Opensea and are bought and sold in decent volume.
The data for his 888 series tells a similar story.
We need to read between the lines, but the charts above do suggest a strategy: since the market seems to be so hungry at the moment for conceptual NFT Art, collectors might be well advised to purchase Kevin Abosch pieces near or at the time of their “drop”, and sell them a few days later, for a quick profit. To help with the execution of this strategy, we suggest using tools such as NFT Calendar, which keeps track of NFT drops on various marketplaces.
Or even better: holding Abosch pieces long term is possibly an excellent way to increase the value of an entire portfolio and hedge against the declining value of other pieces within a portfolio. Abosch benefits from excellent press as per his own website and Wikipedia. In the past 5 years, search trends suggest there has been steady interest globally for his work, as can be seen on the charts below.
In the first chart, a value of 100 means “peak popularity” for the search term “Kevin Abosch”. A value of 50 means the term is half as popular, and finally a value of 0 means there was not enough data for this search term. Kevin Abosch’s popularity across regions is consistently above the 15 mark, with strong peaks that perhaps coincide with a new exhibition or news coverage.
Collectors would be well advised to keep an eye on Kevin Abosch’s work. He benefits from consistent and powerful press coverage, and search trends indicate there is a persistent, steady interest for his work across a wide array of regions.
Our Preferred NFT Strategy: Buy and Hold, Long-Term
Personal Website: https://kevinabosch.com
Kevin Abosch on Social media:
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- Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevinabosch
- Medium: https://kevinabosch.medium.com/
- Telegram: https://t.me/nft1111
- Open Sea collection: https://opensea.io/collection/1111-by-kevin-abosch
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinabosch
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinabosch
DYOR: Not financial advice (disclaimer). If you enjoyed this post, consider becoming a keyholder for members-only exclusives.
