Apollo Belvedere goes to Art Basel Miami

Launched in April 2022, Apollo Belvedere - the first #visionnaire NFT project - explores innovative art and #design languages in the era of Web3. The synergy between the Visionnaire’s expertise and the artist Jonathan Monaghan’s aesthetics has created a strong bond between craftsmanship traditions and the digital age. Imagination is the key element in Visionnaire’s act of transformation of precious materials into products for unique environments. This project expresses the brand’s ongoing relationship and dialogue with the Avant-garde.

Apollo Belvedere is both a marble sculpture and animation, uniquely bound together with NFT+ technology. The work is exhibited at Visionnaire’s Miami Embassy from November 28th to December 4th, 2022.

The project is an immersive installation, where meta-luxury and metaverse meet in one single place. Visionnaire’s Miami Embassy hosted during Art Basel Miami 2019 The Garden of Beauty in collaboration with Marc Ange, an ode to the romantic and enchanting beauty of the peacock: Il Pavone.

The installation is presented in an unique setting intertwining physical and digital experiences, an enveloping velour drape clouds the Apollo Belvedere in all of its forms showcasing the final NFT drop and the marble bust. The installation triggers visitors’ senses and transport them into the NFT world.

The first three NFT “teasers” dropped on March 28, 2022 on the Foundation Marketplace, one of the most important digital platforms for artists, curators and collectors in the new creative industries. Monaghan worked with #visionnaire to chose Apollo, the Greek holy archer, as a symbol of aesthetic perfection and vitality for the future.

On the occasion of the 60th edition of Salone del Mobile in Milan, #visionnaire featured the ‘Apollo Belvedere’ sculpture on June at the #visionnaire showroom gallery Wunderkammer. #jonathanmonaghan unveiled an exquisite Carrara marble bust accompanied by a one-ofa-kind 1/1 NFT.

The vision for the final drop was to create unique artworks that defy the ever-evolving, huge reproducible space of NFT art. Apollo Belvedere represents a dialogue between physical and digital worlds, demonstrating how the relationship between the two environments can bring new experiences to spectators and collectors.

The physical bust was made from marble sourced from Carrara in Tuscany, where stone has been sourced since the Roman Empire. Pieces of marble that were brought to northern Italy were cut, sculpted, and carved into busts of the god by Italian artisans. It took months of manual labor to achieve the idealistic vision of texture, detail and ethereal softness envisioned by #visionnaire and Monaghan. Combined with the marble sculpture, Monaghan created his video, a surreal 3D animation of an alien spaceship revealing a sculpture in a baroque setting. “The bust faces the fiery red panther, a symbol associated with the ancient Greek god Dionysus and the concept of chaos.

Minted on the sustainable side-chain of Ethereum, Palm Network, with near-zero carbon emission, “Apollo Belvedere” will be auctioned off the 4ART NFT + marketplace.

As a Benefit Company, Visionnaire’s top concern is to reduce the environmental impact in developing every project. #visionnaire partnered with Palm NFT Studio for its lower gas fees, fast transaction finality, and a 99.99% + reduction in energy consumption when compared to Proof of Work Systems. Ethereum mainnet is infamous for being carbon-intensive due to its “Proof of Work” consensus mechanism which requires a large amount of computing power for transactions. The Palm network’s “Proof of Authority” (iBFT2) consensus mechanism requires significantly less computing power. The amount of energy required to mint on the Palm network is equal to sending three emails. Moreover, #visionnaire partnered again with Rete Clima to cover the CO2 emissions caused by energy consumption. By overviewing the entire #design and production process, from the 3D rendering to the transportation of the finalized statue, the total amount of the energy consumed was accounted for by taking part in the project “Allain Duhangan Hydropower Plant in India”, which aims to reduce Southern India’s fossil fuel dependency.