Tina Rivers Ryan

What makes an artwork great? At @artblocks_io weekend in Marfa, I tried to share the answer by looking deeply at 5 perfect artworks at talking about what I saw. The whole talk is now online! Many thanks to @opensea for commissioning this lecture! youtu.be/XphcODzeeqQ?si=-cPv…

Artforum’s Best of 2025!!! I am really proud of all my friends involved in making this show! These people make brilliant and challenging work, the kind that takes a while to sink in and hold in your brain, and I’m genuinely happy to see them get recognition like this. ❤️❤️❤️ @matto__matto @isthisanart_ @figure31 @0xfff @sssluke1 @0x113d @rheaplex Paul Seidler, Absent, @0xhaiku

Had kinda the ultimate "How it started / How it's going" summary today: Woke up to find that my first ever NFT series from 2017, Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility had been collected by JediWolf, @jediwolf, for 8.5ETH. At the same time, the most recent issue of Artforum hit the shelves featuring a 2-page review of my latest series, The Zantar Triptych. Both of these artworks are the result of thinking deeply about technology. I don't mean thinking about how they can be manipulated as an artistic medium, or how I can get really proficient in these technologies. I mean thinking about what technology mean in a broader social context. I am not interested in fiddling around with smart contracts or game engines to try to make something kewl; I'm interested in thinking about the consequences of a world where everyone fiddles around with smart contracts or game engines. These technologies reinforce and ossify some old social patterns, and sometimes enable new ones. Briefly, but specifically: Digital Zones was about the ways cryptocurrency reinforced an old (but very experimental and then-unproven) pattern of financializing immateriality. The Zantar Triptych is about the ways that gameplay patterns reinforce value extraction from users. I am proud of these artworks! I think they are good! I am also extremely aware of how lucky I am. Not everyone who makes good art gets to see their name in print in Artforum; not everyone who makes good art gets to have success in the market. I am also not really one who enjoys putting in work on social media. (This post aside.) So a lot of this is probably dumb luck. All that is to say, I am just extremely grateful that after all these years, people care and pay attention. I am especially grateful to @miminguyenmimi , who supports weird-ass art like mine, brings it into the world, and works hard to make people care about it, and @KevinBuist, for taking the time to look deeply at this art and bring real insight into it. Thank you to every collector and artist in my weird little world.