How Crypto Artist Sam Spratt Is Building a New Kind of Gamified Art World

One of the challenges of spotting an original artist is that we tend to judge new art based on the criteria of the past—causing a major blind spot when it comes to disruptive innovation that’s playing different games with different rules.

Today, when so many artists are incorporating emergent technology into their work, this might be more challenging than ever. And it’s probably the reason the broader art world has been slow to appreciate the brilliance of Sam Spratt, who has somehow managed to fuse Old Master painting, crypto, video games, and a dash of Zuckerbergian social-networking into something pretty groundbreaking.

A former commercial artist who parlayed an early job doing $20-a-pop illustrations for Gizmodo into a thriving career working on everything from album covers for Donald Glover and Ty Dolla Sign to concepts for Red Dead Redemption 2, Spratt only pivoted to fine art in 2021 with the release of his NFT series “LUCI.” It’s safe to say he nailed the debut. Sold through Nifty Gateway and Christie’s, his work has already generated about $6 million in primary- and secondary-market sales, including the sale of his 1:1 magnum opus The Monument Game to Ryan Zurrer’s 1OF1 Collection for $700,000.

But what’s really interesting about Spratt’s work is the way he hitches his intricate digital paintings to crypto’s inherent capacity for gamification in order to build a richly intimate storytelling world of personal significance and human connection. And, yes, it’s about monkeys.

This week, for our 10th live Artwrld conversation, we're pleased to talk to Sam Spratt about the ambitious ideas behind his “LUCI” series, where he’s taking it next, and how he’s harnessing the “devil’s casino” of the NFT marketplace to help lost people find their tribe.