Emerging from early Bitcoin and Ethereum meme culture, PIV has developed a practice that treats CryptoPunks as both subject and medium. What began as an interest in onchain culture evolved into a focused exploration of visual language, art history, and reinterpretation. Drawing from influences that range from film noir to 20th century modernism, PIV approaches Punk derivatives as a way to add meaning through framing, shadow, abstraction, and restraint, while remaining grounded in the original pixel form.

In this interview, PIV reflects on Punkism as a method of recontextualizing CryptoPunks across digital and physical formats. From playful onchain works to carefully composed oil paintings, he discusses the relationship between constraint and freedom, the role of community, and the ongoing dialogue between web3 art and its historical predecessors.

OpenSea: Can you tell us about your journey as an artist? How did you first get into art, and how did your style evolve toward the work you’re doing today?

PIV: Originally, my main interest was Bitcoin and the memes surrounding it during the block size war. That later expanded to Ethereum. At first it was still mostly about memes and my interest in art on the blockchain came relatively late. That was when I encountered CryptoPunks, derivatives, and eventually realized that I could give my own twist to derivatives. Later, from the end of 2023 onward, the derivative paintings emerged.

OpenSea: When creating art around CryptoPunks, did you pick specific art periods or artists as inspiration? What's your process like?

PIV: I try to draw from anything that I find interesting within visual culture in the broadest sense. Often these are things artists, photographers, or filmmakers have done, how they translated an idea into an image to achieve a certain effect. But inspiration can just as easily come from a meme, an advertisement, or an image from a comic book.

The tools I borrow from for my Punk derivatives include things like framing, mise-en-scène, shadow, light, and reflection. In film noir, for instance, a figure’s shadow is sometimes larger than the figure itself to suggest menace, or the shadow of a hand, belonging to someone outside the frame, falls across the face of the main character. I take pleasure in translating these kinds of visual effects into the world of CryptoPunks.

The creative process here is often incidental: noticing something while doing something else, and then figuring out how it could be applied to a Punk.

When it comes to painting, I have a strong affinity for 20th-century modernism, particularly Suprematism, Bauhaus, and the Zurich Concretes. Although I work exclusively with CryptoPunk elements, I think these influences inevitably shine through in the paintings.

OpenSea: Your work has been featured in contexts beyond digital art spaces, and will soon be exhibited in physical settings like the CryptoPunks Brunch during the NODE Foundation opening and Onchain Harmony. What does it mean to you to see your work bridging digital and real-world art experiences?

PIV: Until the second half of 2023, I had only made digital work, but I felt a strong urge to create physical pieces. To somehow translate the digital into the physical. I didn’t immediately know how to do this, though the idea of simply copying digital work into paint didn’t appeal to me.

A kind of breakthrough came when I started cutting fragments out of Punks in such a way that they almost became abstract works, and then painting those. I had never really painted before, certainly not oil on canvas, but looking very closely at abstract paintings by Verena Loewensberg and Vera Molnar helped me get started. 

The physical work followed from the digital, and later the paintings began to influence the digital work as well. One example is Cropped Punks, an Opepen set of 80 crops of CryptoPunks in the Opepen format (4x6 pixels), a Punk derivative project inside Opepen. Subsequently, I combined several of those crops again into a painting, which is also on view at the Punks Brunch. 

OpenSea: Do you approach creating work for a physical setting differently than work destined for onchain or digital presentation?

PIV: Good question. For me, the approach is very different. My digital work often has a humorous or comic aspect. Sometimes it’s almost a kind of riddle, where you have to make the connection to an underlying added layer of meaning yourself. The works are usually just 24x24 pixels, can be made quickly, and are also consumed quickly. You see it, you grin for a moment, and then you move on. Physical work is much more restrained. Less humorous. A joke on the wall tends to wear thin quickly. The compositions are also more worked out, and the process takes much longer with several preparatory studies, not to mention the time spent mixing the paint to get the colors just right.

OpenSea: CryptoPunks are a foundational piece of web3 art culture. How has being a part of and engaging with the CryptoPunks community influenced you as an artist?

PIV: In a 1984 interview, Laurie Anderson tells an anecdote about an evening performance in New York:

Andreas Weininger, who used to play trumpet in the Bauhaus band, showed up at the Guggenheim to talk. He was 85 years old and it was a Saturday night. He came out and said: “Hi, I’m from the nineteenth century.” And we go: “Whoah.” And he said: “You know, we had Saturdays in the nineteenth century too, and what we did was…” And he proceeded to describe these insane long-ago evenings. It really seemed so alive and exciting. So wonderful. It was a kind of real continuity, and you really felt that, yes, there have been artists, and there is a long line, and we can learn from each other, and we can go forward, and try to be as generous as possible to each other.

I love that notion of continuity. And with web3 and CryptoPunks, that line, from the original Punks to all subsequent derivatives, is actually visualized through the blockchain.

OpenSea: What are some of the most memorable interactions or collaborations you’ve had with members of the CryptoPunks community?

PIV: The Art of Punk exhibition in Linz at the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025 was definitely a highlight. Essentially, the only curatorial requirement was to be a CryptoPunk holder. It was amazing to see how Tschuuuly brought everything together into a coherent and carefully curated whole. The result was also a beautiful overview of work by people who just love Punks.

Another highlight for me was Set 6 in Opepen, the public art protocol by Visualize Value. It’s not a CryptoPunks project per se, but as with everything in web3, many Punks are involved as creators, collaborators, and collectors.

OpenSea: Punkism reimagines CryptoPunks through the lens of art history and digital culture. What first inspired you to blend these worlds, and how do you define “Punkism”?

PIV: The first time something really “clicked” for me was with Six Marilyns. It consists of six screenshots, actually of Phunks, mirrored Punks, that are not perfectly aligned. On the one hand, the image still clearly refers to the Punks homepage with bids and offers, but on the other hand, the reference to Warhol is unmistakable, with the different background colors, lipstick, and makeup. That’s when I understood that I could add a new layer of meaning to CryptoPunks without significantly altering the image itself, and that I could create Punk derivatives in a way that perhaps hadn’t been done before. 

For me, Punkism is about recontextualizing CryptoPunks in every possible way to add layers of meaning. As long as people make the effort to reinterpret them, they remain relevant, and even grow in relevance, however modestly.

OpenSea: When you create a piece, are you thinking more about honoring the original CryptoPunk identity, challenging it, or something else entirely? How do you balance innovation with respect for the original pixel art?

PIV: More about challenging it. The original Punks are permanently inscribed on the Ethereum blockchain exactly as they were conceived, and because of that they have a kind of untouchable status. That gives me a certain freedom to approach them in a playful and uninhibited way.

In some of my favorite works, I treat them quite iconoclastically, to the point where almost nothing of the Punk itself remains. An example is Faster Than His Own Shadow. The joke is borrowed from the Lucky Luke comic, in which the cowboy shoots faster than his shadow. In the Punk version, you only see the shadow of a Punk wearing a cowboy hat, and a tiny remnant of the hat trait itself.

The realization that, as an artist, you can do anything can be paralyzing, because where do you even begin? But when you tell yourself that you can do anything, as long as it is within the medium of Punk, that constraint can become deeply liberating. Exploring the work of Sophie Taeuber-Arp or Matisse through the visual language of CryptoPunks. On top of that, it is an interesting challenge to create an oeuvre that is as original and personal as possible within the limitations of that visual language.

At the same time, it can also be very satisfying to honor the original identity as much as possible. For instance, spending hours mixing oil paint to match the original colors as closely as possible.

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