Twins and Cats
What the artist sent to the people who held the inks. In the spring and summer of 2022 nnxyz used a second chain, Polygon, where minting cost almost nothing, to make things for collectors on the drawing board: a pixelated twin for every Nifty Face a person held, a club of flat cartoon cats, a few one-off pieces dropped into the wallets of the buyers who had kept coming back. Twenty works, April to October 2022, and every one of them arrived unasked for.
On April 21, 2022, the artist promised that once the Faces reached 130, every holder would receive the matching pixelated version, number one the same as the original and all the others changed a little so each was unique. On May 4 the artist posted that everyone should now have theirs. Six of the Faces in the second wing have their twins here, and the twin of the Faces origin piece arrived in October, seven weeks after the collector bought the original. The cats came in July, when the artist wrote that every holder of an ink should by now have a chic city cat, and then sold the rest for one MATIC each; the collector bought ten in one evening.
These are the artist's thank-you notes, and they are drawn in a different hand from the inks: flat vector shapes, pixel grids, no scribble. Look at the twins beside the Faces they copy, if you know them. The same grin, with the line taken out and the grid put in, is still a grin.
Two Drops in April
April 28, 2022. Two pieces the artist dropped into the collector's wallet on one day: the only survivor of an eight-piece Polygon set, and a pixel figure from a series called pxlpop.
nnxyz #5
A tall dark figure in magenta and red scribble on black, drawn in a vertical frame twice as high as it is wide: a head, a long body, thin lines running down like rain. It is the one survivor of a Polygon contract the artist called simply nnxyz, eight pieces minted, seven of them burned by the artist afterwards. The collector received it on April 28, 2022, three days after the artist first minted a milestone drawing into his wallet on the drawing board. A figure in the dark, drawn tall for a phone, is the first thing nnxyz made for him off the board, and it is the loneliest picture in the wing.
nnxyz pxlpop #2.01
A pixel figure with blond hair in a blue jacket and dark trousers stands against a brown gradient scattered with stars, drawn on a coarse grid like a character from a 1990s game. The artist posted on May 8, 2022, that a pxlpop had gone as a second little airdrop to a collector who kept filling his pockets with the inks; this one went to Jamie Thingelstad ten days earlier, on April 28. It is the artist's pixel style before the Faces got theirs, and the figure is standing at ease with its hands at its sides, the only relaxed body in the room.
Pixel Twins
May 1 to 4, 2022. Six Faces the collector held were sent their pixelated twins within days of the artist's promise. Each is the drawing redrawn on a grid, the colors kept and the line replaced by squares.
Nifty Faces px #105
A mosaic of a mask: boxed eyes, a grille of white teeth, a yellow crown of spikes, the whole square filled with colored tiles on green. It is Nifty Faces #105 turned into pixels, drawn, in the artist's words, so that every Face a person held got its matching twin. The collector received it on May 1, 2022, the day after the artist had finished sending them. Look at the original in the Faces wing and then at this: the scribble that made the face is gone, and the tiles do the same work with no line at all. The grin survives the translation, which says something about how little it ever depended on the line.
Nifty Faces px #125
A head in a wide hat on orange, in tiles of brown, black and yellow, with a grille of white teeth and a red cross over one eye, the twin of Faces #125.
Nifty Faces px #159
A dark head in sunglasses on grey, the mouth a wide grille of white tiles, red at the corners, the twin of Faces #159 and the one that looks most like a photograph that has been enlarged too far.
Nifty Faces px #160
An angry mask on dark red: two red eyes under heavy brows, a crown of orange spikes, a grille of white teeth, all in tiles. The original, Faces #160, hangs in the room of skulls in the dark. On the grid the anger reads at a glance: the brows are two dark diagonals, the eyes two red squares, and nothing softens them. The artist wrote that every twin got minor changes, making each unique. Here the change is the grid itself, which makes the face harder, as if a snarl had been set in tile.
Nifty Faces px #175
A round head on dark green with a cigarette, two spiral eyes and a wide grin, the tiles in yellow, red and white, the twin of Faces #175.
Nifty Faces px #179
A face on teal in brown and white tiles with a grille of teeth and a tall forehead, the twin of Faces #179, and the plainest of the six.
The Cat Club
July 15 to October 15, 2022. Eleven chic city cats: three sent free to the collector as a holder of the inks, seven bought for one MATIC each on August 21, and one that arrived on the day New Nifty on the Block ended.
Chic City Cat #6
A blue cat sits in profile on a grey ledge, its body striped in pale blue, its tail curled pink, against a ground split on the diagonal between teal and a darker blue. The eyes are two X marks. It is one of the first chic city cats, number 6 of nearly ten thousand, and it came to the collector on July 15, 2022, the day the artist posted that everyone who held an ink should by now have received a cat. The club was the artist's answer to a promise made in May, when the cats of the spring were still black silhouettes on the board; here the cat is flat, blue and sitting still, and the X eyes are the only thing it kept from the drawings.
Chic City Cat #69
A cyan cat in a pink cap with a heart on it, sitting on a split ground of orange and brown, sent to the collector on July 18.
Chic City Cat #91
A violet cat with white stripes and a pink tail, X eyes, on a split ground of green and teal, sent to the collector on July 28, the day the artist posted that every owner of an ink should now be the proud owner of a chic city cat.
Chic City Cat #194
A lime green cat with a black tail sits on a split ground of maroon and brown, one eye a target, the mouth a small grin. The collector bought it on August 21, 2022, in one transaction with five others, at one MATIC each, the price the artist had set for anyone who wanted to mint a cat for themselves. Nine days earlier the artist had announced that the year's unsold inks would burn. The cats were the opposite of a burn: nearly ten thousand of them, for a dollar, sent to whoever wanted one. The collector wanted ten.
Chic City Cat #195
A dark grey cat with white stripes on a split ground of slate and blue, bought with #194.
Chic City Cat #196
A pale grey cat with spiral eyes on a split ground of olive and brown, bought the same evening.
Chic City Cat #197
A pink cat with white stripes and a heart for one eye on a split ground of purple and green, bought the same evening.
Chic City Cat #199
A lavender cat with a white hoop earring on a split ground of orange and brown, bought the same evening.
Chic City Cat #400
A cat whose body fades from pink at the head to orange at the tail, with a ball of yarn at its feet, on a split ground of blue and olive. It is the one cat in the room drawn in a gradient, and the one that has something to play with. The collector bought it on August 21 in a second transaction, with three more. Four hundred is a round number, and the artist was by then numbering the inks toward four hundred and announcing their burning; the cat with the same number is pink and has a toy.
Chic City Cat #403
A grey cat with a halo and X eyes on a split ground of teal and green, bought with #400, the one cat that is both dead and blessed.
Chic City Cat #275
A cyan cat with a halo sits on a split ground of purple and green, its eyes two small marks, its tail white. It came to the collector on October 15, 2022, the Saturday the artist drew the last three works of New Nifty on the Block, and the day before the whole of that series was sent to him. A cat with a halo on the day the series ended: the artist, who had just drawn a crowned skull as the collection piece, sent the collector a small blessed cat the same afternoon. Nothing in the record says it was meant as a sign, and it is hard to look at it as anything else.
The Last Twin
October 4, 2022. The pixel twin of the Faces origin piece, sent seven weeks after the collector bought the original.
Nifty Faces px #0000
The Faces origin piece in tiles: a dark square packed with blocks of red, blue, yellow and white, the artist's name spelled across it in pixels where the original spelled it in scribble, a grille of white teeth low in the frame. The collector bought Nifty Faces #0000 on August 13, 2022, for five hundred xDai, and on October 4 the artist sent him its twin, the only pixel twin that was not part of the May airdrop. The twins were made for everyone who held a Face. This one was made for the one person who held the Face that held all the others, and it closes the room the way the original closes its wing: a name, a grin, and the whole series packed in behind them.
Closing
The room begins with a dark figure drawn on a phone in April and ends with the pixel twin of the Faces origin piece in October. In between are six Faces turned into mosaics and eleven cats that cost a dollar. None of it was for sale on the board; it was what the artist did for the people who stayed, and the collector who stayed longest has the fullest set.