Discovering Johnny Boy, the NFT identity of Giovanni Motta
Giovanni Motta is one of the 50 artists featured in ‘CRYPTO ART – Begins’, the first NFT book chronicling the history and evolution of Crypto Art
“CRYPTO ART – Begins” recounts the exciting beginnings and evolution of Crypto Art through the history and work of 50 of the world’s best artists who contributed to its birth and are still an active part of its present and future revolution with their NFT projects.
CRYPTO ART – Begins presents Giovanni Motta
First a sculptor and then a digital artist, Giovanni Motta fascinated the NFT world with his childlike alter ego.
His works are an invitation to continuous self-discovery and to maintaining the will to explore, experiment and express oneself.
WHO IS GIOVANNI MOTTA?
After graduating from high school with a degree in accountancy, Giovanni Motta started working in communications as a creative and advertising executive, thus beginning to deviate in the direction of creativity.
This attitude is no secret: in fact, the artist has always been fascinated by the Japanese manga and anime universe, which proves to be his gateway to the theme that characterises his artistic research, namely that of the inner child.
The first medium of artistic expression that Motta encountered on his journey was painting, which he mastered to the extent that he chose hyperrealism.
However, an innate curiosity for technology led him to approach 3D printing and animation, which he has been using since 2010 to create digital sculptures and animations.
Finally in 2020, Motta approached Crypto Art for what is a perfect marriage and within a year reached number one in the SuperRare rankings.
HIS ART
To understand Giovanni Motta’s art, one needs to know Johnny Boy, a cartoon-like character design that gives life to the artist’s child alter ego.
Johnny Boy embodies every artist’s need to maintain a child’s curious perspective on the world. That ability to use the imagination to its fullest potential without fear of exploring outside the limits that is fundamental to making art.
This is how we see Johnny Boy investigating enchanted universes as in ‘Afternoon Garage’ (2021), an animated NFT that shows us the character taking off on an interstellar journey thanks to a rocket backpack.
The bright colours and plastic quality of the forms make Motta’s works visually accessible, emphasising precisely that dimension of innocence and childlike wonder that allows us to find beauty in everything.
But not all of Motta’s works deal with themes of positivity, in ‘I am the future’ (2021) Johnny Boy marches like a titan over a built-up area, incinerating everything he encounters with lasers shooting from his eyes.
The artist accompanies the work with a text that seems to suggest that the theme is the need to allow one’s self to express itself and be free in order to aspire to a happy future: ‘Don’t make me angry. I am the future, I am life. Let me go, let me run free, let me grow happy.”
CURATOR ELEONORA BRIZI SAYS OF GIOVANNI MOTTA
Eleonora Brizi, curator and founder of Breezy Art, who curated for The NFT Magazine the selection of the 50 artists featured in the book ‘Crypto Art Begins’ writes about Giovanni Motta:
“For Giovanni Motta, being an artist is a choice of Mother Nature that identifies a human being as an ‘instrument for producing art’ that, once created, is released into the world available for all to contemplate. For this reason, an artist should be in a perpetual state of crisis.”
