My name is Can-Florian, I’m the founder of ART2PEOPLE.
ART2PEOPLE is an artist collective in the field of digital art.
Together, we created the NF-G Challenge.
The NF-G Challenge is about working with five international artists to interpret the Mercedes-Benz G-Class, my favourite vehicle.
The outcome is a digital work of art, or rather, five digital works of art.
What’s particularly exciting here is that the artists are already very established in their fields.
That means they’re among the top 50 in the world.
Some designers call me an artist, but artists call me a designer.
I just like to make stuff.
Since I was really young, like a kid, I started with electronic music, to photography and then graphic design.
Here I’m actually in my studio, which is based in Tirana, Albania.
This is where I have everything that I need to create my art:
from animations to 3D work, and graphic design and photography and cinematography.
I consider my art style as experimental,
as I try to mix everything that I learned to come up with something new
using different software like Photoshop, After Effects and Cinema 4D.
I am Roger Kilimanjaro, a French 3D artist.
I have been doing commercial 3D works and motion graphics for the past 10 years now,
and I started selling my personal work as NFTs one year ago.
In my work I like to play around and experiment a lot with motion.
Also, a big part of my work is making loops,
because I find the repetitive motion quite elegant and satisfying.
I am a London-based interior designer and art director,
and at the moment my work is really focusing around digital architecture and interior design.
My name is Anthony Authié and I am a French architect living and working in Paris.
I challenge the boundaries between virtual space and reality
by creating photo-realistic images and initiating doubt in the viewer’s mind.
NFT is the abbreviation for Non-Fungible Token.
An NFT is a unique, non-interchangeable and non-forgeable data unit on the public blockchain.
It allows you to assign digital goods or a digital work of art to exactly one person/owner.
I’ve been a real big fan of the Mercedes-Benz G-Class for a very long time, it’s such an iconic car.
And the fact that it has cut through history and still maintains its own shape and its own aesthetic,
it represents so much, and it is such a cool design piece.
Since growing up, we’ve always had very big cars in the family.
So, I’ve always been drawn to this type of car.
And the Mercedes-Benz G-Class has always been a standout one.
To work with it so closely on this project has been really cool – to discover the details,
and especially deconstructing it to see everything that makes it up.
So, I’ve definitely grown my love for it during the process of this project.
It’s a big object and the idea that came to us quite quickly
was to be able to have it suspended in the air and just hang there with the help of a single chain.
That way it can turn to make it almost light, levitating, like a leaf turning in space.
We thought it was interesting and we really wanted to develop this idea.
Owning a Mercedes-Benz G-Class is something very special.
To own exclusive art that is truly unique,
that you can then keep in your wallet, in your digital purse, is also something very special.
And the symbiosis of the two takes it all to a whole other level.
The concept of this project was, for me, really important, to see the car as a piece — as an artwork itself.
The movements and everything that happens give you this idea
that you are in this museum that you enter, and you see everything moving.
It’s mysterious. It has that epic feel to it.
I started as a collector in this field, i.e. I invested in digital art.
And I realised relatively quickly that behind the art, there is an artist who is tangible.
So, I can exchange ideas with him, and that inspired me so much that I said:
I want to create joint projects with these artists that we choose.
And that was the birth of ART2PEOPLE.
Also, understanding the meaning of the logo helped me a lot.
The three-pointed star logo represents the strength of the engines on the land, on the sea and in the air.
Having this in mind, I came up with the idea of creating an artwork that contains these three elements
and reinforcing that by adding elements like the cyber butterfly, the Mercedes-Benz UFO and, of course, the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon.
So, in the end, the five pieces came out totally differently.
The interpretations by the different artists are incredible.
You can see the concept of Roger Kilimanjaro’s piece here, for example.
Roger built the entire rigging here himself, which is really an insane amount of work.
And the result is really great.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the artists
on behalf of ART2PEOPLE for participating in this great project.
And finally, I would like to highlight the art piece by Antoni Tudisco.
He presents his very own interpretation of the Mercedes-Benz G-Class’ potential future.