META ART Virtual Gallery
Architecture, Master planning & Interior Architecture
Launched Spring 2022.
VERSES META ART represents a new frontier for digital curation—an NFT gallery set within the stark beauty of the Sonoran Desert. Developed by REAFE Studio in collaboration with @woodsocietyofthearts, the gallery marries contemporary architectural principles with the limitless potential of virtual space. The result is a boundaryless environment where artists, collectors and curators from around the world can gather, view, and acquire work across the digital spectrum.
The concept draws from modernist architecture, emphasising clarity, proportion and honesty in materiality. Generous volumes and carefully considered circulation allow visitors to navigate intuitively, while strategically positioned virtual “windows” frame the desert’s dramatic vistas, flooding the inner gallery with natural light. Each structure references architectural greats, with a nod to Jean Prouvé’s modernist rigor and a tactile feel reminiscent of rammed-earth construction.
Within this digital environment, the artwork is at the heart of the experience. Thanks to @martingayford for the stunning pieces that animate the gallery, transforming it into a lively intersection of creativity and technology. From concept development and master planning to architectural and interior architecture, the project demonstrates how virtual space can extend the reach, accessibility and impact of contemporary art in the NFT era..
Robin Friend - Bastard Countryside
REAFE STUDIO have had the pleasure of building a curated exhibition that shows the complete Bastard Countryside body of work, all housed within the META ART Gallery.
Bastard Countryside collects together 15 years worth of exploration within the British landscape, dwelling on what Victor Hugo called the ‘bastard countryside’: “somewhat ugly but bizarre, made up of two different natures”. Friend’s large-format colour images scrutinise these in-between, unkempt, and often surreal marginal areas of the country, highlighting frictions between the pastoral sublime and the discarded, often polluted reality of the present.
Starting from a classical landscape tradition, Friend’s meticulous 5x4 photographs are given heightened effect through exaggerations of colour and composition, embodying friction between British pastoral ideals and present reality. In particular, Friend follows moments in which the expected narrative of the landscape is rudely interrupted: often through leakage, pollution, or the wreckage and containment of nature.
In his accompanying essay, writer Robert Macfarlane describes Bastard Countryside as “a vision par excellence of our synthetic ‘modern nature’– produced by assemblage and entanglement rather than purity and distinction”. Contained within Friend’s photographs are “hard questions […] about what kinds of landscape one might wish either to pass through or to live in; about what versions of ‘modern nature’ might be worth fighting for, and why.”
