Mitchell F Chan is a Toronto-based conceptual and public artist. He is perhaps best known for creating “Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility” in 2017, which was one of the first major NFT art projects. His works explore the ways that humans navigate the world around them and how technology and social structures affect our behavior. He is interested in themes of ownership and commodification of art. 

During architecture school, Mitchell developed an interest in the ways that people interact with the world, as well as the social structures we’ve created. He would soon transition from architecture to art, finding that art provided more freedom to explore these broad social constructs and to change human perception. Throughout his career, Mitchell has made works that encourage the viewer to draw their own conclusions and develop their own opinions about the topic at hand. 

When creating “Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility”, Mitchell was inspired by the French artist Yves Klein, who created “Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility”. In Klein’s work, buyers received paper receipts for the purchase of empty space that represented the artwork. Mitchell aimed to recreate this with blockchain transactions. To go with the receipts, he wrote a 33-page essay speculating that in the future, art sales could take place on the blockchain, and discussed the ways this would change art. 

The first piece in this series was minted at InterAccess Media Art Center in Toronto and was one of the first art pieces to be minted on the Blockchain. In 2021, one of the Digital Zones sold for $1.2 million. 

Mitchell ventured into generative art in 2021 with the “LeWitt Generator Generator”. This blockchain-based project uses code to place points at random on a digital wall, connect them with lines, and then distort them. Mitchell minted 750 of these abstract line drawings during the project, each of which was completely unique. 

In addition to his solo projects, Mitchell also founded a company called Studio F Minus to create large-scale public art. Over the past 10 years, Studio F Minus has created over 30 public art pieces in cities throughout Canada. One of their most recent pieces, “Nil-Nil”, was on display in Toronto in summer 2021. This piece featured three oversized smartphones on a soccer field and represented the shift to digital social interactions that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Mitchell is currently working on one of his most ambitious projects yet, “Beggars Belief”. This piece is a series of short interactive fiction pieces that explore the concept of gamification and commodity in the modern world. Each episode will have video game elements as well as pieces of art that viewers can mint as NFTs if they choose. Seasons will consist of four episodes each, and each episode is between five and 15 minutes long. While the first season will release in 2023, there is currently a demo available to play on his website, which provides a taste of this fascinating and novel approach to art.