How bewildering can a digital environment be? Very, if Berlin-based Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan (b. 1996) has any say about it.

Leveraging tools like Blender and Zbrush, the artist’s work spans video art, 3D sculptures, single-player games and more, where his rubbery, organic-feeling, moss-like creatures come together to make up eerie and fantastical compositions.

He studied video art at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, but quickly set off to Europe in 2019 as a resident artist at the ETOPIA Center for Art and Technology in Zaragoza, Spain.

Massan has collaborated with his fair share of major brands, including Facebook, Red Bull, Glamour, ELLE Brasil, Melissa and Bombay Sapphire in a young but fast-paced career.

He has also dabbled in fashion with “digital explosion” textile prints for the Brazilian fashion brand Lucas Leao, which was presented at Sao Paulo Fashion Week.

Using the open-source blockchain Tezos, Massan is currently developing a new world-building game project as a 2022-23 Serpentine Arts Technologies Digital Commission artist under their new Artist Worlds programme, the series of commissions that supports artists who “engage with simulated realities, immersive story-telling, and virtual world-building”.

With his work THIRD WORLD: THE BOTTOM DIMENSION (2022), the artist was recently part of “WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age”, a group show celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Julia Stoschek Collection in Dusseldorf, Germany.

“This possibility of anonymity delights me,” he says about NFTs. We caught up with Gabriel Massan to discuss the early days of his practice, the art market, and his future plans.

Images courtesy of Gabriel Massan

If you had to pin it down to one, what would you say was the turning point in your practice? That hallelujah moment that pivoted everything?

When I understood my research as an archaeological project and made it public, I integrated each piece into a universe, a collection that continues to develop and distribute itself through the spaces being influenced by the perception of all those who access it.

You’ve collaborated in one form or another with brands like Bershka and Budweiser. Is there any company you’d be ecstatic to receive a call from?

I have a few. I would like to be closer to technology and game companies like Meta, Google, Rockstar Games and EA. I believe it would be a great opportunity to expand my world and exchange knowledge and experience.

Images courtesy of Gabriel Massan

On that note, is there a specific type of audience that your work addresses?

I dialogue with different audiences, different genres, and ages and have received messages from different kinds of people and collectives. 

As a digital artist, do you find the traditional art market or the NFT one to be more rewarding? I’d love to hear about your experiences with both.

I believe that the traditional art market is antiquated and still seeks to apply the same guidelines to digital art, but there is more room for exchanges that start from research and references. NFTs guarantee me a clearer and less hierarchical negotiation. It is a direct connection with the work, not influenced by the image of the artist – and this possibility of anonymity delights me. Time also operates in different ways in both.

Images courtesy of Gabriel Massan

You’re participating at the Bangkok Art Biennale with Don’t Say Goodbye To Earth. Can you tell us a bit about the work?

My work is a tribute to the departure of my family and friends during the last years, an attempt to reconstruct farewell memories in order to provide less traumatic and more lucid ceremonies. It is an exercise to distinguish violence and inequality as pillars of the right to live.

What’s coming up for you over the next year?

This year, I will be presenting a new body of work during my residency at FACT. Between February and March 2023, I will launch “Third World” with Serpentine Galleries and Tezos.

Continue exploring:

• Iterations and Improvisation: An Interview with MSHR
• Art Or Sound | Ryoji Ikeda’s Data-Centric Pursuits
• Exploring Carsten Nicolai’s Audiovisual Work
• Leaping Into The Metaverse: The 3 IRL Art Galleries Pioneering NFTs
• Bioart: The Discipline Of Straddling Art And Science
• Seeing is Revealing: In Conversation with Emmanuel Van der Auwera

Cover Credit: Gabriel Massan

Writer | Bana Bissat

Bana Bissat is a Milan-based writer who reports on sound art for Sound of Life. She has written for Flash Art, Lampoon, and Cultured. @banabissat

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