Beeple Studio holds Art Charleston 2023 Gala at Clements Ferry studio

Art Charleston 2023, a five-day visual art festival presented by the Gibbes Museum of Art that ran in late April, included a fundraising gala held at Beeple’s innovative digital art studio, a 50,000 square foot warehouse located in the Charleston Regional Business Center off of Clements Ferry Road. 

 

The studio also features a 15,000 square foot gallery and 13,000 square foot experiential space.

 

The event, held April 29, created a museum like experience, showcasing Beeple’s early art and impressions and moving through his various periods of creativity, including his latest creations.

 

An innovative and oftentimes irreverent 3-D digital artist whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, Beeple is well-known for his NFT opus, “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” which sold for over $69 million dollars at a Christie’s auction in 2021. It is reproduced and hangs at Beeple Studio and was the highlight of the event.

 

Beeple’s art is often critical of and offers social commentary on the likes of mega-billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Other caricature guests who appeared at the gala and whose images appear in Beeple’s art include actors as North Korean leader Kim Jung Un and Mark Zuckerberg.

 

Other favorite subjects embraced in Beeple’s art: Pokémon, Buzz Lightyear, the Simpsons and Michael Jackson.

 

Winkelmann has been creating a picture every day from start to finish and posting online for over fifteen years without missing a single day. At the gala, he created an image live for that day as guests observed his methodology and creative process.

 

Like Beeple’s art, Art Charleston 2023 created an immersive experience that stressed innovation and artistic collaborations aimed “to inspire, challenge and present Charleston’s strong and diverse human stories through the visual arts.”

 

You can see and follow Beeple and his art at instagram.com/beeple_crap.

 

- Suzanne Detar, sdetar@thedanielislandnews.com