Artie Handz, known by the handle punk7635, is a pseudonymous digital art collector and curator active across the Tezos and Ethereum NFT ecosystems.,,Trained as a lawyer, he began collecting NFTs in January 2021 through NBA Top Shot.,Soon he shifted into Tezos digital art through the early platform Hicetnunc.He later founded Artie Galerie, a curatorial gallery on Verse.He also took on a marketing role with the platform.
He has said his personal collection includes roughly 3,600 pieces from the Tezos ecosystem.In his second year of collecting he shifted focus toward generative art on platforms such as fx(hash) and Art Blocks. Around October 2022 he began researching AI art specifically, drawn to the uncanny quality of early AI-generated work from artists on Fellowship.
After Verse's CEO invited him to curate for the platform, he opened Artie Galerie there. He chose Frank Manzano as the gallery's first artist because Manzano's work confronted difficult subjects rather than aiming for easy beauty. Through the gallery he presented “ScheduledProgramming”, thirty AI-generated video works by Frank Manzano sold in individual auctions.The gallery also released “Proof of Form”, fifty Frank Manzano works exploring debris and post-functional architecture, in partnership with Verse.,He also worked with the Spanish artist gozo on a second joint exhibition, “an improbable thread”, presented with the curatorial platform SOLOS.,Other gallery presentations included Kevin Esherick's “Sky World”, offered through Verse in partnership with Artie Galerie.
Independent of his curatorial work, Handz has released his own artwork.,In October 2024 he minted the deviates, an eighteen-character collection sold through a 24-hour ranked auction on the Highlight platform.The following April the project expanded into a 969-piece collection released through Verse Works, with an initial airdrop followed by a public sale.
