The Essential Nature of Collecting – An Interview with Chris Coleman
“I hope more people collect art to appreciate it and live with it — and for that, we need more people willing to display digital art on devices in their homes.”
Artificial Wunderkammer #1, 2023. Artist: Danielle King. Part of the Mehran/Coleman collection.
When we look at human behavior and its traces throughout history, the act of collecting feels deeply ingrained. Objects with seemingly no practical use have always been gathered by our ancestors. Collecting and preserving things we consider important, whether for symbolic reasons or aesthetic affinity, take on personal, emotional meanings for the collector. Collections often pass from one generation to the next — it's a way of connecting the past and future. It’s a way of knowing ourselves.
Protecting — or more specifically, in the case of art — preserving, takes on even more significance when we reflect on digital media. The passage of time, relentless as it is, poses a unique threat to digital art, created by and for technologies that perish as they evolve, ever more rapidly.
In this interview with Chris Coleman, a digital artist, educator, critical arts engineer, creative coder, and highly active collector on the objkt.com platform, he shares his perspective on the topic, seen through the lens of someone who both creates and collects digital art, even before the emergence of NFT technology. He also speaks about his collection with his wife, artist Laleh Mehran, which spans beyond digital art and NFTs, and offers insight into his approach to selecting future pieces.
The Mehran/Coleman digital collection includes approximately 9,100 works collected across various platforms. On Tezos alone, there are 8,000. They also have a few hundred physical artworks and 175 digital works that are not NFTs.
“One artist told us that our collection had evolved from something casual into something the artists trusted would be cared for in the future. That’s when we realized the seriousness of what we had and the importance of representing it properly,” he recalls. The Mehran/Coleman digital collection includes approximately 9,100 works collected across various platforms. On Tezos alone, there are 8,000. They also have a few hundred physical artworks and 175 digital works that are not NFTs.
Chris and Laleh’s “cabinet of curiosities” comprises physical and digital works, online pieces, and NFTs. Both digital artists since the late '90s, they began collecting from other artists they befriended and admired. The collection focuses on 21st-century artworks and is showcased on their website, mehrancoleman.org - worth the visit.
Messenger v1-dv2, 2021. Artist: Auriea Harvey. GLB sculpture (Still). Part of the Mehran/Coleman collection.
Do you collect anything besides art, whether digital or physical? Anything goes — coins, comics, stamps, etc. :)
I collect music, but I also had coin and stamp collections when I was young, followed by some comics as a teen. The coins and stamps were the types of collections most young people in my culture were exposed to in the early '80s — I suspect both were initiated with gifts from my grandfather. My music collection began with cassette tapes, then grew to many hundreds of CDs, and since then, it has expanded to more than 40,000 MP3s.
How does your experience as a digital artist influence your approach to collecting?
Because my practice is highly technical, I have a strong understanding of what goes into creating any given artwork. This allows me to focus on the ideas and aesthetics of the work. It also means that I have a deep understanding of much of the context behind the work, as I’ve been both enjoying and teaching digital art for so long.
Dry Stem Study 2, 2021. Artist: Andrew Benson (pixlpa). Feedback study. Part of the Mehran/Coleman collection.
And how do you decide which artists or works to collect? Are there specific styles, themes, or techniques in digital art that resonate with you?
Some of it is intuitive. For work that is low cost, especially, I can enjoy just collecting casually. For more expensive work, I do research, see what the artist has been doing, writing, and how their work is evolving. Beyond that, I have some basic rules, like staying away from works about memes, nothing that treats women as objects, and other work caught up in momentary internet trends. I hope our collection speaks to longer-term ideas and concerns.
THE VEIL 002 - Palm Fronds Under Gilded Iris Crater Lens, 2022. Artist: Rodell Warner. Part of the Mehran/Coleman collection.
Do you also consider market trends and potential value?
Almost never. I’ve done it now and then, but I’m bad at it, so I tend to focus on work that I plan to keep.
You and Laleh have a website dedicated to your collection since 2006. Why? Did you feel the need to consolidate and centralize the collection on a single platform?
We had an artist tell us that our collection had evolved from casual to something where the artists were trusting us to steward their art into the future. We then had to recognize the seriousness of what we have and how we need to represent it in the world. We realized that we need spreadsheets cataloging the artworks: where they came from, when they were made, and much, much more. We’re still far behind in this task; I need a year off work and not collecting more artwork just to do it right. The website is an attempt to start recognizing the seriousness of the collection and was inspired by the Spalters and how they’ve started to share their collection with the world online.
Fragment #02, 2022. Artist: Julien Espagnon. 56x76cm | Pigment ink 0.2mm and 0.3mm (Uni pin) | Cold pressed Watercolour paper 300g/m² | Axidraw plotter SE/A1. Part of the Mehran/Coleman collection.
Do you and Laleh have opposing or converging tastes when it comes to collecting? Is the purchase process autonomous, or do you discuss each piece beforehand?
I tend to collect most of the NFTs, but for other work, and especially larger purchases, we have a lot of conversations about each piece. She is less "addicted" to collecting but deeply enjoys having the work in the house. Fortunately, we have a shared “taste” in the work both aesthetically and conceptually.
How do you view the issue of preserving digital works? Curators like Regina Harsanyi have reflected on this, but artists like Victor Acevedo were already considering the challenges years ago, thinking of converting digital to physical forms as a way to prolong the life of device-based art.
Since Laleh and I are both artists working with digital tools, we have seen decades of change in tools and have experienced having our own works "decay" or become obsolete. I take the idea of stewardship very seriously, but again, the task to do it properly at the level that Regina rightfully points out as necessary is a huge undertaking. Really, I should stop collecting until I am able to get a handle on the preservation of what we already have, but then I would miss out on great new work!
Image/Language, 2024. Artist: Simulacro. GIF from the video. Part of the Mehran/Coleman collection.
What is the pain and joy of NFT technology in relation to art, in your opinion? Does the "bro culture" help or hinder the ecosystem?
I appreciate that blockchain technology solved some very real issues that people had with collecting digital art. When I try to imagine this happening without the crypto speculation hype cycle, I’m not sure it would have been able to get off the ground. Things are settling back down, and there are many new collectors who wouldn’t have existed without the crypto entry point. That said, this excitement came with a lot of toxicity that is not normally such a huge part of the arts. Even if it feels retrograde, we need to all help make sure things get better and learn to create spaces that are safe and welcoming for everyone.
Mon Drapeau, 2024. Artist: Lorna Mills. Animated Gif, 700x700, 15 frames, 10fps. Part of the Mehran/Coleman collection.
I’m Brazilian, and in Brazil, NFTs are generally seen as tied to AI that steals artists' work, scams, and pyramid schemes. What’s it like in the U.S.? What challenges does NFT technology still need to overcome to gain broader acceptance in the art world?
People are still surprised when I talk about collecting via NFTs, and it’s not surprising since the bulk of mainstream coverage was about meme and PFP NFTs. I always talk about us collecting art and me selling art via NFTs — not that they are NFTs. Before much more time passes, I hope the NFT part of the sale and purchase will be insignificant. It would be like saying I collected a painting using a check.
Desierto Florido, 2024. Artist: hypereikon. AI bioart. Part of the Mehran/Coleman collection.
How do you see the NFT art market in the next five years?
The technology is here, and if artists continue to believe in it as a way to sell their work, it will persist. As for the market, it will never be like 2021 again, and that’s probably a good thing. I do hope more people start collecting art to enjoy and live with — but we need more people willing to display digital art on devices in their homes.
Can you share a piece from your collection on objkt that holds special meaning for you? Why?
Perhaps a good choice for this interview is "Artificial Wunderkammer #1" by Danielle King. Our NFT cold wallets are named Phantasmagorias, after the popularity of people assembling a room packed with very strange objects from around the world starting around the 1800s. The word is also used for “an exhibition of optical effects and illusions,” which is especially appropriate for digital art. Wunderkammer is used similarly, translated as room of wonders or cabinet of curiosities. I think Danielle and I share perspectives on the very eclectic nature of collecting NFTs, and this piece from her served as a test for a larger series later on. When I saw her mint it, I was so excited that an artist I admired was thinking about the essential nature of collecting in these ways.
Note: Aside from Danielle King’s piece chosen by Chris Coleman — which you saw at the beginning of this interview — all the other pieces were freely selected from the amazing Mehran/Coleman collection in the Phantasmagoria wallet on objkt.com. It’s easy to lose ourselves exploring it — a tough call.
Chris Coleman and Laleh Mehran. © https://mehrancoleman.org/
About Chris Coleman
“Chris Coleman was born in West Virginia and he received his MFA from SUNY Buffalo in New York. His work includes sculptures, videos, creative coding and interactive installations. Coleman has had his work in exhibitions and festivals in more than 25 countries including Brazil, Argentina, Singapore, Finland, the U.A.E., Italy, Germany, France, China, the UK, Latvia, and across North America. He currently resides in Denver, CO and is a Professor of Emergent Digital Practices and the Director of the Clinic for Open Source Arts at the University of Denver.”
https://objkt.com/@digitalcoleman
About Laleh Mehran
“Laleh Mehran was born in Iran and relocated with her family to the United States at the start of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. Mehran creates elaborate environments in digital and physical spaces focused on complex intersections between politics, religion, and science. In a political climate in which certain views are increasingly suspect and can have extreme consequences, Mehran’s artworks are invitations to think again about each of these paradigms and the profound connections that bind them. Her research, often modeled on and about the very ideas of science and technology, takes advantage of their cultural importance in order to articulate a set of ideas which require precisely these kinds of mediations from both political and religious intolerance. Out of necessity, her artwork is as veiled as it is explicit, as personal as it is political and as critical as it is tolerant.”