Jonathan Monaghan

Jonathan Monaghan (born September 14, 1986 in Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York) is a contemporary visual artist who creates sculptures, prints, and video art with 3D modeling and animation software.

Biography Monaghan received his B.F.A. in computer graphics from the New York Institute of Technology in 2008. Monaghan then went on to receive a M.F.A. from the University of Maryland.

Work Monaghan's animations have been exhibited at the Sundance Film Festival and the Palais de Tokyo. Monaghan's work sits in numerous public and private collections such as The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

As he stated, "My first artistic interests were [...] video game designers and science fiction movies". He created the French penguin (2009), an "absurd and sad representation of power as a slave of itself"; Rainbow Narcosis (2012), a "journey through absurd worlds, loaded with historical and artistic references"; and Robot Ninja (2013), where "the environments become abstract and the spirit more masculine, almost macho".

According to Token Supremacy: The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art, and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022, by Zachary Small, Monaghan created what is arguably the first NFT in 2013, when he processed the editions of his digital artwork 'Mothership' through the first iteration of a bitcoin blockchain registration framework called Keidom, later ascribe. In 2017, he released a series of digital futuristic Fabergé eggs.

Monaghan is represented by bitforms gallery in New York.

Exhibitions

Solo 2015:Escape Pod, bitforms gallery, New York 2016: Gotham, Galerie 22,48m², Paris 2017: Disco Beast, bitforms gallery, New York 2017: After Fabergé, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore 2020: Out of the Abyss, Spring/Break Art Show, New York 2021: Den of Wolves, bitforms gallery, New York 2022: Move the Way you Want, The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.

Select screenings LOOP Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Sundance Film Festival, Park City, UT Hirshhorn Museum - "Experimental Media Series" Washington D.C. International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands