Ringers by Dmitri Cherniak

Released on January 31st before NFT mania had properly taken hold, this iconic project would go on to be acquired by LACMA, sold at Sotheby’s and cemented in history as the crown jewel in one of the most notorious former collections. This Art Blocks Curated project stands as a massively significant part of a span that saw long-form generative art’s best-known releases, from Snowfro’s Chromie Squiggle in November 2020 through Tyler Hobbs’s Fidenza in June 2021. The collection helped establish the Canadian Cherniak as one of generative art’s rising superstars, propelling him to collaborations with MoMA on their postcards project and one of the most recognizable pieces in generative art: The Goose. While the project’s aesthetics on an individual level may not be universally considered innovative, the power of Ringers—and all generative systems—was in its ability to create a system that could produce 1,000 outputs. Taken as a whole, Ringers demonstrates, like Sol LeWitt and many others, the power of simplicity executed masterfully and thoughtfully.