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Joseph Koh

Singapore-based “technopreneur” Vignesh Sundaresan, who goes by the nickname MetaKovan online, grabbed global attention in March 2021 when he splashed out US$69 million on the non-fungible token (NFT) artwork Everydays: the First 5,000 Days by American digital artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple.
That record-breaking bid supercharged a speculative frenzy in NFTs. The Indian-born investor later boasted in a TV interview that he was prepared to pay even more, so convinced was he that NFTs were marking a pivotal moment in art history.
More than four years later, much has changed.
The NFT market has experienced a massive correction since mid-2022, with trading volume dropping by 90 per cent by most estimates, even as the value of major cryptocurrencies recovered from dips in the 2020s. Once in-demand “profile picture” NFTs, such as those in the “Bored Ape Yacht Club” series, now have price tags of less than US$20,000, despite some previously fetching millions.
Sundaresan also seems transformed. At the launch of his new experimental art and technology space, Padimai Art & Tech Studio, he is softly spoken and reserved, explaining that the “artistic laboratory” in Singapore’s Tanjong Pagar Distripark, also home to the Singapore Art Museum, seeks to highlight the need for more decentralisation of the internet rather than the flaunting of accumulated digital assets.

He envisions Padimai – which means “image”, “form” or “metaphor” in Tamil – as a site for experimentation, residencies, commissions and exhibitions that explore the intersections of art, technology and social practices.
While Sundaresan admits he felt “a sublime attraction to the spectacle” of bitcoin and blockchain technology going mainstream in 2021, he says that his fundamental convictions have always stayed the same.
“Christie’s was going to accept internet money [for the Beeple auction] so it was a very interesting moment for me that a traditional [auction house] was recognising that cryptocurrency has value,” he says.
For him, the allure of cryptocurrency was that it was nascent rather than mainstream, and counterculture spirit was something he had always espoused.
“While my involvement in blockchains has evolved a lot over time, the conviction about decentralisation and reclaim[ing] the free internet as much as possible has been a continuous theme in my life,” he says.
In the same spirit, artists can still make use of the decentralised blockchain technology on which NFTs are based to reclaim agency, he adds.

One of the key figures who has helped him plan for Padimai is Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, whose works often touch on human perception and environmental consciousness through the use of light, colour and movement.
After Sundaresan bought Beeple’s artwork, the London-based augmented reality/virtual reality (VR) studio Acute Art reached out to connect him with Eliasson.
Although he was not familiar with Eliasson’s practice, Sundaresan took an interest in the artist’s background as an architect as he was planning to build “a monument around the Beeple 5,000 in the metaverse”.
“I wanted to build a virtual museum in the metaverse and make it open to the public, so I was looking to speak to real-world architects who were interested in building this kind of structure,” Sundaresan says.
However, as he held discussions with Eliasson during the pandemic, his ideas started to shift. In particular, seeing Eliasson’s Cirkelbroen – a bridge that enabled residents to run, walk or cycle around Copenhagen’s inner harbour – was a watershed moment.
“An artist has been commissioned to create something useful to so many people, and as they cross the bridge, it has an impact on their life,” he says.
While perched on Cirkelbroen, he began to see how the act of commissioning an artist carries the duty of determining how the commission will be “deployed” in the world, he recalls.
Sundaresan believes that digital artworks can overcome the chasm between cultures, especially when it comes to gaining access to art.
“It’s the same artwork, if you are in America or in a small town in India,” he says.
That is why Padimai Art & Tech Studio’s first commission is Eliasson’s virtual reality work called Your View Matter (2022/2025).

Putting on VR headsets, participants wander through six geometric virtual environments shaped after the five Platonic solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron) and a sphere. Moiré patterns pulse and respond according to body movements, all programmed to an ambient soundtrack crafted by Eliasson.
The experience, which Sundaresan has minted as an NFT for ownership, is also available for people to enjoy online.
“I really wanted it to be on the internet. Whether you’re in Hong Kong, India, or wherever you are, as long as you have a VR [device], even a Google Cardboard, a US$10 VR [device], you can experience the artwork,” Sundaresan says.
Every visitor’s experience of Your View Matter is singular. Their journey through the worlds generates a unique data file that records the exact route and visual perspective in 2D. These encounters are then preserved in a blockchain-based archive – a decentralised, physically stored system – built by Sundaresan.
The work transforms perception into an embodied, spatial act, exploring the viewer’s role in creating meaning. The artwork also expounds on the ethics of perceiving, storing and remembering in the digital age.
Besides commissioning more digital works – he has several artists in the pipeline – Sundaresan has “completely moved away from other parts of the crypto ecosystem”.
“After 2021, I gave up all my distractions and focused on art. Now even when [I’m] coding, it’s for an artwork.”
Art has become a “therapeutic tool” for him.
“For me personally I’ve always been in this hyper-capitalistic world of money. Crypto is such a fast-paced, dystopian kind of thing that sometimes it feels like you are in this echo chamber, so when you look at art, you feel that [sense of] relief,” he says.
“When you’re able to participate in the production of art, it feels even more gratifying, and that has become my approach to art.”


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Singaporean buyer of US$69 million Beeple NFT opens art and technology space

Singapore-based blockchain entrepreneur Vignesh Sundaresan (right), also known as Metakovan, has opened a new experimental art and technology space, Padimai Art & Tech Studio, in Singapore, whose first commission is a virtual reality work by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (left). Photo: Yanina Isla

Sundaresan shows the NFT “Everydays: the First 5,000 Days”, by Beeple, in his home in Singapore in 2021. Photo: AFP

Vignesh Sundaresan (on stage, left) and Olafur Eliasson (on stage, centre) speak during the opening of Padimai Art & Tech Studio in Singapore. Photo: Padimai

Every visitor’s experience of Your View Matter is singular. Photo: Padimai

Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait, sold for US$54.7m, breaks auction record for female artists

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s 1940 self-portrait “El sueno (La cama)“ sold on November 20 at Sotheby’s new home at the Breuer in New York for $54.7 million including fees. It became the top-selling work by any female artist at an auction. Photo: Julian Cassady/Alive Coverage

“El sueno (La cama)“ (1940), Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait. Photo: Sotheby’s 

Gustav Klimt’s “Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer” (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer), which sold for US$236.4 million at auction on November 18, in New York. Photo: Sotheby’s via AP

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Untitled (Perfect Lovers) (1987-1990), by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, is installed in the permanent collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, in the US state of Connecticut. Photo: The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation

Untitled (1989/1990), featuring two stacks of paper, is seen in front of Untitled (Fear) (1991), featuring a blue mirror, at David Zwirner in Central. Photo: David Zwirner

Untitled (1989/1990), featuring two stacks of paper, also features at Hong Kong’s Central Market. Photo: David Zwirner

Untitled (Welcome Back Heroes) (1991), by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, is seen in Hong Kong’s Tai Hang neighbourhood. Photo: David Zwirner

Untitled (Couple) (1993), by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, is part of the David Zwirner exhibition. Photo: David Zwirner.

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Gillian Chung at an interview with the Post in 2009. Photo: SCMP

Gillian Chung at an interview with the Post in 2010. Chung, one half of Hong Kong’s Cantopop duo Twins, is now thriving as a singer and actress but the road to success – marred by a scandal involving intimate photos – has not been an easy one. Photo: SCMP

Charlene Choi (left), then 18, and Chung, 20, at an interview with the Post in 2001. Photo: SCMP

Choi and Chung perform on stage at HarbourFest in October, 2003. Photo: SCMP

Chung (left) in a still from “The Twins Effect” (2003).

Chung speaks at a press conference attended by more than 300 artists, legislators and supporters in Tseung Kwan O in 2006. Photo: SCMP

Chung (left) and Choi at the Asian Film Awards presentation ceremony in Wan Chai in 2007. Photo: SCMP

Chung was interviewed in March 2009 about the photos of her and Edison Chen. Photo: TVB

Chung at an interview with the Post in 2009. Photo: SCMP

Chung (left) and Choi of Twins meet their fans in March 2010 ahead of their reunion concert, titled “Bouncing Back”, at the Hong Kong Coliseum. Photo: SCMP

Chung and Michael Lai on their wedding day, with (back row from left) bridesmaids Yumiko Cheng, Joey Yung and Choi, in 2018. Photo: Instagram/@yungchoyee

Gillian Chung in a still from the film “Prison Flowers” (2023).

Gillian Chung (left) and Charlene Choi during preparations for their 2024 concert series. Photo: Instagram/@q_gill

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Arts

Vignesh Sundaresan explains the aim behind Padimai Art & Tech Studio, which opens with a virtual reality work by artist Olafur Eliasson


Vignesh Sundaresan explains the aim behind Padimai Art & Tech Studio, which opens with a virtual reality work by artist Olafur Eliasson.


Singaporean buyer of US$69 million Beeple NFT opens art and technology space

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Vignesh Sundaresan explains the aim behind Padimai Art & Tech Studio, which opens with a virtual reality work by artist Olafur Eliasson

Vignesh Sundaresan explains the aim behind Padimai Art & Tech Studio, which opens with a virtual reality work by artist Olafur Eliasson