«Last One»

On 3 January 2009 the first block of the bitcoin blockchain was created. Its creator tucked a newspaper headline into it, a line from The Times about a second bank bailout. A new kind of money was born with a news clipping stuck to it.

That headline and the code under it are the starting point of Last One, a piece of bitcoin wall art.

A figure in a black hoodie stands against a yellow background packed with lines of programming code and currency tickers. The face is a white smiling mask with a moustache, cut across the middle and slightly shifted, with a small black square on the forehead. A jewelled dagger is stuck into one shoulder, and a gold triangle emblem with an eye sits on the chest. Thin price-chart lines run across the yellow. The figure holds an old television, and inside the screen I painted a vaccine vial, a recycle bin icon, rockets and tanks, rows of binary digits with the year 2012 in red, and a circle of open hands reaching toward the middle.

Warhol repeated car crashes and electric chairs in his Death and Disasters series of 1962 and 1963, turning news images into wallpaper. Nam June Paik built art out of television sets and made TV Buddha in 1974. I wanted that conversation again as contemporary pop art, now with a feed that never stops. As bitcoin wall art, I like that the person holding the screen stays anonymous; who is watching whom stays open. The small coloured blocks on the left are a nod to Mondrian.

Last One is a 2022 original pop art painting, 120x90 cm, oil and acrylic on canvas, and it works as art for an office with a tech-minded team.

Most of my original paintings are already in private collections, but I paint originals to order in any size. To ask about this one, message me on Instagram or by email. A hand-finished lithograph of this work exists too, and you can order it via Instagram or email.