Hiro Ando is a known name around the art realm, having co-founded Studio Crazy NOOdles, which has an eminent team of extremely creative Japanese artists.
He has recently announced his digital collection which will be available as an NTF (non-fungible token), which is increasingly gaining popularity in its own way with many getting drawn towards this advanced technology for investing in art.
Ando has drawn deep inspiration from the traditional Japanese culture and has aimed to bridge the gap between the real and virtual worlds. Ando has successfully established himself as a leading artist who has created his own distinct mark in the pop art space, blending tradition and Japanese culture along with Western and eastern pop culture.
He began his professional career in 1995 as an illustrator and started working on nighttime cityscapes initially before exploring sculpture. The artist's work is greatly inspired by Japanese manga as well as Japanese archetypes like Hello Kitty, the Samurai and the sumo wrestler.
Many of his signature sculptures have been sold at an astronomical price of 150,000 euros and have gained immense popularity amongst many celebrities including Steve Aoki, who is one of the most popular DJs in the electro dance scene, having got hold of the famous Samurai Cat, which he claims to protect him from the evil eye as they are created around the traditional maneki-neko, which is a good luck icon of Japanese mass culture. He has joined the Samurai Cats team as a partner and claims that this project holds a bright future.
Ando has consistently tried to stay ahead as far as technological advances are concerned and has now taken a plunge in the world of NFT, with the introduction of his new project Samurai Cats, which will guarantee the authenticity of his digital works.
According to statistics, NFTs are revolutionizing the contemporary art market which has seen an exponential growth of NFT sales, reaching $2.7 billion in the 2020-2021 fiscal year with the online migration of contemporary art auctions which began during the onset of the global pandemic.
The prominence of NFT around the art space has been growing at an exponential rate and there are enough proofs of this growing trend including the sale of American crypto artist Beeple which sold for $69.3 million at a March 11 auction launched by Christie's.
The artist's tangible works on the digital platform have already created enough buzz and the kind of interest people have shown in his NFT project is indeed overwhelming.
The project is well-equipped to take investors on an extraordinary journey between the physical and virtual world and will offer an exceptional adventure associated with the Japanese neo-pop culture. Samurai Cats is all set to launch shortly and there are 4747 Samurai Cats NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain which have been randomly assembled from over 300 layers hand-drawn by Hiro Ando. There are many benefits which include premium memberships, which will be revealed shortly.
For more information, visit www.samuraicats.io and stay connected via Instagram: @samuraicats_by_hiroando.
