Transient Curated is pleased to present The Timechain, a series of digital works by Jæn rooted in the mascaron.
Mascarons are ornamental grotesque faces, originating in ancient Greece and carried through the Renaissance, now reborn in the digital age. The series builds on 16th-century prints by Belgian illustrator Frans Huys, made after sculptural designs by Cornelis Floris de Vriendt, which were originally distributed as reference material for stone carvers. In 2020 Jæn began making digital versions of these prints, adding color, volume, and lighting.
Each mascaron in the series exists not as a single image but as an ongoing collection of iterations including animations, AI-generated hallucinations, black-and-white stone, minimalist pixel art, and a dynamic piece that reveals one new pixel per week, scheduled to complete in the year 2517. The pixel art iterations, each fitting within a 42×42 pixel frame are stored entirely onchain. These iterations are stored directly within each token using the ERC-7160TL standard. Collectors will receive an archival quality art print and a luxury pin of their mascaron, and can contribute onchain inscriptions onto the artwork, shaping the Timechain.
The series spans five centuries of collaboration across three artists. De Vriendt designed the faces in the 1500s, Huys printed them for wide distribution, and Jæn has now digitally restored and extended them. The works are released under a CC-BY SA 4.0 license, inviting future artists to continue the lineage under the same conditions, crediting all three artists and releasing derivative works openly.
The Timechain tests how art survives across time, and what responsibility artists and collectors share in that survival. First made for buildings,now the mascarons live on a blockchain, accruing new layers indefinitely.
The original designs survived 500 years; what does it take to ensure they survive 500 more?
Learn more about The Timechain on the artist's website.
About the Artist
Jæn has been an artist for over two decades, with a practice spanning drawing, painting, music, street art, animation, and more. He has exhibited in museums and galleries across every continent except Antarctica, including Saatchi in London and Urban Spree in Berlin, and directed the first NFT project exhibited aboard the International Space Station. In recent years his practice has taken a more conceptual turn, interrogating what it means to make and preserve art in the age of blockchain and AI.
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