CryptoWiener is a Vienna-based artist collective formed in 2018 that uses blockchain technology to record Austrian, and especially Viennese, culture through hand-pixelated 32×32 portraits.The collective depicts well-known local figures, among them Sigmund Freud, Niki Lauda and Michael Häupl, and has translated its digital portraits into larger-than-life physical figures for exhibition.
The group formed in Vienna out of “sheer curiosity and interest in Crypto, Blockchain and non fungible tokens”, rather than a shared background in art.Its output grew from the original CryptoWiener portraits into further series including PixelRebels, CryptoPersonalities and Proof of History, which renders episodes from blockchain history in the same pixel style,among them the founding of Bitcoin Suisse and the sale of a CryptoPunk for over a million dollars.The first sixteen images in the series were minted on the Ethereum blockchain, with further scenes added afterward.geVIENNAratives, released on Art Blocks, generates 32×32 pixel figures whose form is set by the hash of each token's minting transaction and is stored entirely on chain.
In September 2021 the collective contributed a pixel-art homage to Herbert W. Franke to “Math Goes Art” at Gerber & Stauffer Fine Arts in Zürich, curated by Georg Bak.Its solo exhibition “PIXELS by CryptoWiener” ran at the Offenes Kulturhaus in Linz from August 2022 to February 2023,,transferring the pixel portraits into larger-than-life figures inside the museumand linking the rooms to the collective's metaverse in Cryptovoxels through QR codes on visitors' phones.,A companion installation, MetaJump 2.0, streamed a live two-way view between that exhibition and the group show “DYOR” at Kunsthalle Zürich.In March 2023 the collective's generative artwork was included in “The Digital Collection - Part 1”, the OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH's first exhibition of its blockchain-based generative art collection, curated by Marcus Reindl and staged virtually at the Digital Francisco Carolinum on Voxels.The collective's work also appeared in “Art of Punk”, a 2024 exhibition at the Francisco Carolinum and in Voxels of works by CryptoPunk holders, curated by Julia Staudach, a co-founder of CryptoWiener.
