"A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, and infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” - James P. Carse
Nguyen Wahed is pleased to present Infinite Garden, a solo exhibition by Leander Herzog in New York. For two months, beginning March 17, the standalone installation transforms the concept of digital materiality through an ever-shifting botanical ecosystem on blockchain where no single moment repeats itself.
At the heart of this exhibition is a radical proposition: every collector becomes a gardener in Herzog's digital series through assembling gardens that keep evolving in complexity, existing in perpetual flux. Herzog's new work employs blockchain affordances as a creative medium, building a space where collectors become active participants in the cultivation of living digital flora - works conceived collectively through a blockchain network. Collectors acquire not static images but generative flowers that may be assembled, merged, and shared through blockchain protocol on Ethereum layer 2. This composability allows for numerous arrangements as individual elements recognise and interact with one another through smart contracts. Herzog's practice consequentially emerges twofold: blockchain as programmable medium and browser-based rendering as formal artistic gesture, embracing the inherent qualities of on-chain logic and browser capabilities. Unlike conventional 3D content built from triangles, Herzog works with the equivalent of digital mark-making – creating a digital sculpture where lines maintain a consistent 1-pixel width and points remain square, always facing the viewer. This deliberate constraint embraces the fundamental nature of computer graphics without skeuomorphic mimicry of traditional media. The resulting aesthetic recalls the pointillist traditions of Seurat and Monet, yet remains distinctly digital – a direct conversation with the machine that outpaces of its constraints whilst capturing tactile quality of organic surfaces.
Infinite Garden spans across a towering physical installation, that renders in real-time, with a call-and-response with the audience to involve a myth-making digital space: visual parameters continually adjusting to environmental and chronological inputs as compositions evolve through minutes, hours, and seasons. The show invites the audience to root for blockchain not merely as a transactional framework but as an expressive medium with distinct properties for generative art. Through this new body of work, Herzog examines unfolding interrelated cultural and technological embodiments with collective creativity.
Collect here: https://www.infinite-garden.xyz/
Presented in partnership with Shape, and supported by OpenSea. 50% of the proceeds are donated to Protocol Guild, a collective funding mechanism for Ethereum core protocol maintainers.
