Taking digital art by storm, one 'cute' face at a time

Bengaluru: There’s a reason why “cute as a button” pop into your head as you flip through digital artist Amrit Pal Singh’s Toy Face series. It is because Singh’s art is a deliberate nod to the Japanese kawaii trend – the celebration of cuteness.

But the devil, as they say, is the detail. It is the tiny details that elevate this artist work from say Channapatna dolls. His Salvador Dali face, for instance, come with that famous mustache and the melted clock. His Frida Kahlo sports her customary hairband, embedded with a tiny skeleton. The face with the ‘grid-filled-with-colours’ is naturally Piet Mondrian, no mistaking that. And, of course, his Van Gogh got a little sunflower pinned on his lapel.

With such an eye for details, it comes as no surprise that Amrit found a way to push his digital art, 3D toy-like renditions of characters and figures in an ode to contemporary culture, into the global arena. He mints these cute faces as non-funglible tokens (NFT). He minted his first NFT in February 2021 – Frida Toy Face – which sold for 3.9 ETH. His primary sales as of July 15 standing at 402+ ETH (50 ETH is valued at USD 98,885.25).

Interestingly, much before he became a ‘NFT’ artist, Delhi-based Amrit says he found unlikely buyers for his toy faces in techies. “I have had collectors both from technology and design communities, but the world of NFT has certainly blurred the lines that separate collectors, artists and curators. What it means is that my art is used as coins. And once I stepped into the NFT world, my practice took a new direction. NFTs really helped digital art and artists,” says Amrit. Digital art may be bread and butter, but Amrit says the artist in him had always sought that “physical” validation. So, when he got the 100th NFT drop, Amrit says he decided to go on a solo exhibition, a physical ‘Toy Face Tour’, in collaboration with Mumbai-based gallery Method and Hefty.Art. “I was doing a lot of commissioned work in product design, interiors and architecture. All of these have come together beautifully in the physical toy room that I have created for the exhibition,” says Amrit. The physical toy room, for instance, will feature iconic furniture.

For this three-city tour – Delhi, Mumbai and now in Bengaluru – Amrit says he went back to the project’s origins and made toy faces of the icons of the art world. “When I was making toy faces, I picked artists whom I looked up to when I first started making art,” adds Amrit.

The seven toy faces that he minted for the physical tour include Amrita Sher-Gill, M F Hussain, Yayoi Kusama, Piet Mondrian, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Salvador Dali. “M F Hussain one is also an official collaboration with M F Hussain Estate,” adds Amrit.

The response for the show had been quite heartwarming, says Amrit, adding that all three states put him in contact with a different kind of art crowd. “In Delhi, we held the exhibition in a farmhouse in Chhatarpur, where I met serious buyers. In Mumbai, it was held in a gallery in the art district of Kala Ghoda. Here I met a very young and vibrant art collectors. Bengaluru, of course, is where my core audience are – the techies. I feel quite blessed to have had these experiences,” says Amrit. The Toy Room is on display at Church Street Social in Bengaluru till July 23.