The Paintboxed exhibition, part of the Paintboxed – Tezos World Tour, comes to Basel during Art Basel 2025, following stops in Miami, Paris, and New York, presented by ArtMeta, Objkt, the Tezos Foundation, and the Adrian Wilson Archive. Presented at Basel’s Digital Art Mile, it celebrates the Quantel Paintbox, a pioneering 1980s digital painting device that shaped film, television, and pop culture, influencing iconic visuals like the MTV logo, Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” music video, and album covers like Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and movie posters for “Silence of the Lambs”, “Pulp Fiction”, and “JFK”. This video offers a tour of the Paintboxed exhibition and features an insightful interview with artists Adrian Wilson and Matthias Paeper, who discuss the artistic innovation and technical intricacies of the Quantel Paintbox.
Before Photoshop, “Paintboxed” was the term for digital image manipulation. In 1987, the BBC’s “Painting with Light” series showcased artists like David Hockney, Jennifer Bartlett, and Sidney Nolan using Paintbox, marking Hockney’s first digital art, decades before his iPhone/iPad works.
The Basel exhibition features contemporary artists Grant Yun, Bryan Brinkman, Justin Aversano, and Ivona Tau, creating new works on an original Quantel Paintbox, curated by Adrian Wilson. These artworks are displayed as physical lightboxes and paired with NFTs minted on the Tezos blockchain, available for purchase on Objkt, the leading digital art platform. The video has three chapters: 00:00 – Exhibition 05:25 – Interview with Adrian Wilson and Matthias Paeper 49:46 – Exhibition Paintboxed World Tour Basel Exhibition.
