PXL DEX by Kim Asendorf

The end of January saw one of the year’s strongest projects right off the bat. With PXL DEX, Kim Asendorf extends his experiments with pixels and blockchains by ratcheting up the complexity, treating the pixel as both material and asset.

This author, Peter Bauman, spoke with Asendorf about the work.

PXL DEX comprises 256 “Decks,” abstract 3D animations shown as an isometric matrix of colored points that pulse and warp without looping. Collectors can rotate and zoom each Deck, then tune its visual density by depositing PXL tokens upon purchase.

The work attempts to join ideas of scarcity and perception into linked considerations. By “tokenizing the pixel,” the work could only exist by taking advantage of blockchain-specific affordances. It’s a smart database entangled with cryptoculture, participation and further contestation of art’s objecthood.

Due to PXL DEX’s foregrounding of system mechanics, the work also plays with ideas of protocols in art, as popularized recently by Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon plus Primavera De Filippi.

The work was chose by Raoul Pal as his work of the year in our 2025 Favorites article.