From paintings, digital prints, videos, AR to NFTs – the tulip is a recurring symbol in Gordon Cheung’s works. The 2008 credit crisis led to discovering the first financial bubble in recorded history, which was Tulipmania. During the Dutch Golden Age, Tulip bulbs reached the price of a house that dramatically crashed within a year in February 1637. The tulip became an icon of this impulse; a surreal metaphor of the madness of crowds. Financial institutions that caused the credit crisis often compare Bitcoin to Tulipmania seeing it as a threat to their power.

The NFT collection, Tulip Maniac is based on a Tulipomania watercolour catalogue that was used by speculators during the Dutch Golden Age from which 3d modelling, machine learning AI and algorithms are used to create works. The tulip bulb pulsates according to Bitcoin data. It bears witness to how far we have adapted from nature into the digital world with a timeline starting from the birth of global modern capitalism to today’s mass adoption of blockchain technology epitomised by Bitcoin as a pillar of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.