Caio Alvarez, known as GrotesqueChiq, is a Brazilian artist and self-described “4D painter” based in Curitiba, after dropping out of art school in Florianópolis. His NFT projects circle around the exploration of abandonware, both aesthetically and philosophically. He is drawn to the dichotomy of working with janky, forgotten and overly simplistic old software inside a tech and art world that prizes speed and being cutting edge.
One example is digital_underground, described in the artist's words as “between the sound of static and high voltage hardware”, a 1600 by 1068 pixel bitmap mouse-drawn in Deluxe Paint 2 and released as a 1/1 on the Ethereum blockchain. His work has been shown in exhibitions in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Brazil, each focused on emerging digital artists. Of the collectors he has found through his work, he has said “you don't find your audience, but your audience finds you”.
