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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
In briefBitcoin-themed artwork Block 21, from the series Portraits of a Mind, is being auctioned at Christie's New York.Block 21 is one of 40 artworks in the series, which depict the Bitcoin code.Other works in the series are owned by crypto enthusiasts such as Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.The walls of Christie’s auction house in New York have been graced by works from some of the greatest artists of all time: Monet, Picasso, Warhol, Pollock; the list goes on. Take a stroll through the galleries from October 1 and you’ll find yourself in the presence of something entirely new: a large, alluring disc that—at first glance—could be an ancient artifact.Portraits of a Mind, Block 21. Image: Robert Alice/Ben GentilliIts surface is inscribed with hundreds of thousands of digits of hexadecimal code—322,048, to be exact—some of which are highlighted in gold, radiating outwards from a central void. Its secrets aren’t immediately obvious; it gives little away. Peer closer, and you’ll read ‘Block 21’ on the inner rim.This mysterious circle is bound to 39 others around the world—a collection that stretches more than 50 meters long. And the hidden meaning behind the 12.3 million digits engraved on their surfaces? They’re a hand-crafted, precise transcription of the original digits of the historic v0.1.0 code that launched Bitcoin.A portrait of Satoshi Nakamoto, in 40 partsThe artist behind this painstaking process, Ben Gentilli of the Robert Alice project, has called this collective piece Portraits of a Mind. Described as a digital fingerprint carved out of paint, each of the 40 individual pieces contains a chunk of the original code. Taken together, they represent a global portrait of Satoshi Nakamoto—Bitcoin’s anonymous founder, who first released the cryptocurrency’s original code in January 2009.“Bitcoin’s original codebase is like a historical document, and I wanted to celebrate it and preserve it in the same way as a document like the Magna Carta,” Gentilli told Decrypt. “But I also wanted to try and answer the question of how one might make a portrait of Satoshi Nakamoto, when there is no image of him.”Portraits of a Mind, he argues, depicts Satoshi through his work. “For me, this work is a portrait of Satoshi, decentralized around the world, in the same way that Bitcoin itself is,” he explained.“I wanted to try and answer the question of how one might make a portrait of Satoshi Nakamoto, when there is no image of him.”—Ben GentilliThe works themselves are canvas discs, 50.59in in diameter, layered with suspended pigment, and graphite and aluminum paint, with each digit individually engraved. Dotted here and there are gold digits—a metaphor for mining—arranged in a constellation-like pattern of decentralization.The series consists of 40 discs. Image: Robert Alice/Ben GentilliWhy discs? They hark
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