VAULTED Art Collector Profile #2 - Mr. Kei
Vaulted is a series where prominent members and collectors in the Tezos ecosystem are interviewed and highlighted.
Vaulted #2 with with Mr.Kei (@keigowda)
“Let me just buy art for art’s sake which I guess is what you’re supposed to do”
Merve : Can you tell us how your collecting journey began?
Mr.Kei: The honest answer is I got to it because I was super depressed. I was a full-time trader, my entire life was financialization. Early days, I got into Bitcoin and Ethereum and in 2020 I was like I'm going to teach myself how to trade. It was the wild west, everybody was didn't know what they were doing or they were lying. So, I got rugged a lot, but I made my way. I did well in 2021. By the time 2022 came around, I gotten into PFPs and NFTs, but everything I did was about money.
You can see in this space, a lot of people were just doing that and I was really depressed. I was like, what am I doing with my life? This is awful and a friend of mine is like “why don't you look at art?”, I was like, okay, I'll look at art. Then I thought he meant why don't you try trading art? So, I started buying and trying to flip and I'm horrible at it. There's some people who buy and then they sell really high but I don't know how to do it. So I just decided I'm like let me just buy art for art's sake which I guess is what you're supposed to do.
So as I started to get into it I realised, oh wait you can talk to people, you can buy a piece of art and be like I met the person who made it, because that was new to me. So I started on Solana and getting into this feels good. We were in the bear market and there was five people in the whole world so we got to know everybody. I did spaces people were like what does a collector think? I'm like “I don't know but I'll tell you what I think”.
I started to just get out there and then when the bull market started to come back January 2023 by that time I had expanded collecting art from Solana to Bitcoin. Then, I started buying on ETH and collecting on Tezos a year and a half ago. So my journey started because I was super sad it became a thing because I got to a point where I had kind of a financial thesis about capital redistribution during the bear.
Merve: Can you share a story about acquiring one of your favorite pieces or any interesting moment in your collecting journey?
Mr. Kei: My god, there's so many. Okay here's a good, bittersweet sad/happy and cool story. My mom is 72 and she's a cool mom, Indian, she got Skype when it first came out because we had to talk to India, she's very tech-forward kind of person and she was always just kind of like, oh Bitcoin should I buy it? and I'm always like, no you're old don't worry about it.
When she started to realize I was getting into the art scene, she thought, that's interesting, “what is that about?" and the best way I could explain it to her, "Why don't we listen to a space one time? I don't know what's going to be on, but you can hear the way people talk." So, the space that we listened to was on. My mom is gay, she came out years later from being married. Anyway, she's been out of the closet for 30 32 years.
And the day that we listen spaces, there's an artist named Celestial Body, I think she's amazing. She's incredibly detailed. I didn't know much about her that time, we get on the space and it's about her being trans and she's giving the history for Web3 people about the gay rights movement, an hourlong thing. By the end of it, my mom is crying in a good way. She was, "This is what you're doing." and I'm, "Yes, these are the artists I'm collecting with." So, that happened and I'm hooked on Celestial's work.
Merve: What sets Tezos apart in your eyes compared to other NFT ecosystems?
Mr. Kei: There's a couple things. I feel like Tezos in the most positive sense of the word is punk rock. People are telling other people what to do and if you do this you're a bad artist. At least for me being on three other chains, Bitcoin, ETH and Solana. I like all those chains for different reasons, Tezos is the one where I don't see anybody actually saying you shouldn't be doing that or that's weird.
I think is super cool as diversity of the mediums is better than any other chain it just is because I'm old as hell, so I come from 20 years ago digital art, and I'm like, Why don't I see more animation on other things? Why did I not see interactive? Why don't I see people doing glitch and everybody was doing it on Tezos earlier than anybody else. So, I go there and I'm like, this is digital art, this is what expect. I never know what to expect. That's awesome.
Also, I have found their in real life events are for me an inspiration. They're better than the other ones, for example not so NFC Lisbon this year, it was Tezos Lisbon for me. I went there an it was a lot of Tez people, the main stage they had with all the big screens. I'm like, “that's the way you're supposed to do this”. Everybody I met was super nice. I know I'm nice too, but everybody was open to talking. A lot of the artists I met are artist IRL or they're like blockchain is a part of their career. I think that's a very mature way to look at blockchain art. And the last thing, I see people collaborating and it's meaningful.
Merve: How would you evaluate the current state of the NFT market, particularly on Tezos?
Mr. Kei: There's qualitative and there's quantitative side. So, quantitative is relatively low volume, It's not just Tezos, It's everywhere. In theory, like all markets when it starts to peak, people start to rotate into art. I mean, I'm a baby example of that, when I have a little bit of money telling myself then okay, now I'm going to start buying art.
On Tezos, I like the qualitative side of it. I feel like the vibes are really good and the fact that I own it's not bag bias, but I have a substantial amount of Tezos because I believe in the coin and we've been buying it since it was so low that I think it's the next chain for art, at least to be, it's gonna explode next year (2025) or sometime because I think people are going to realize there's stuff on Tezos. So my opinion is the markets are suppressed right now yet it always happens but I feel qualitatively the vibe is better than other chains.
Merve: Who are your three favorite artists/artworks on Tezos from your collection, and what makes their work stand out to you?
Mr. Kei: What are you doing? Who likes this question? God, this so hard. Let’s do five. Starting with A.L Crego, just amazing. He's so thoughtful. He works in GIFs and animation and he's doing stuff that nobody else understands what he's doing because he's doing it so well and the amount of technical capabilities it has are so deep .
Here is another artist, Adaeze Okaro she’s self-thought photographer, her work like black film noir, It's like African-American classic. Need to add Yuri JJJJ, I think they have definitely a sense of humour and then incredible level of talent. Their latest series about the seasons, I picked up a bunch because I see something in them. It's just incredible stuff. Helios Santos, his works are super interesting and very esoteric. You just got to dive into to understand better.
Finally need to mention Kika Nicolela, she's been doing video glitch computer art. It might not be that everybody understands her aesthetic, especially now when she's working in AI. For the way she does things is so deep and she works hard yet still finds time to support the rest of the universe.
Merve: Which three emerging artists on Tezos do you think are worth keeping an eye on, and why?
Mr.Kei: I'm picking people that I don't think necessarily are emerging, I think they're overlooked. I've been slightly obsessed with Pandagenix. There is a photographer named Abbas Rahmani. I really love monochrome black and white works and this person is doing it like a pro. Their ability to capture stories just with landscapes without people in them is blowing my mind. Anibal, from Argentina. I've been collecting their works and they're aesthetically amazing to me and the passion that's in them.