Mad Dog Jones, whose real name is Michah Dowbak, is an illustrator and
digital artist from Ontario, Canada. His work often examines decaying
technology and planned obsolescence.
Across his career, Jones has partnered with the F1 team Mercedes-AMG
Petronas to create a series of NFTs for the Miami Grand Prix and
created artwork for musicians including Run The Jewels and Deadmau5.
Mad Dog Jones, whose real name is Michah Dowbak, is an illustrator and
digital artist from Ontario, Canada. His work often examines decaying
technology and planned obsolescence.
Across his career, Jones has partnered with the F1 team Mercedes-AMG
Petronas to create a series of NFTs for the Miami Grand Prix and
created artwork for musicians including Run The Jewels and Deadmau5.
In April 2021, Jones became the most expensive living Canadian artist
when his NFT REPLICATOR sold for $4.1 million. It was the
first time his work had appeared at auction and bidding on the newly
minted NFT started at just $100.
As the name suggests, REPLICATOR — a digital image of a
photocopier — was designed to self-replicate, producing a new set of
artworks every 28 days for seven generations. Each generation is
smaller than the last, and like a real photocopier, REPLICATOR
could jam, curbing output. According to the accompanying auction
house’s catalogue, if the winning bidder of REPLICATOR later
decided to sell the NFT, all future generations of work would be the
property of the new owner.
Dowbak began sharing his digital art on Instagram in 2017. Three years
later, his first NFT project consisted of 100 works that sold on the
platform Nifty Gateway for just $1 each.
A follow up project, called Crash + Burn, required collectors
to trade in five of his $1 pieces in order to be able to purchase a
work. Jones then destroyed the older works. This created scarcity and
pushed up his prices, in turn rewarding early collectors who held onto
their NFTs.
In March 2021 Jones’ work was included in the world’s first museum show
of crypto art at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. Other
artists in the show ‘Virtual Niche — Have you ever seen memes in the
mirror?’ included Beeple and FEWOCiOUS.
In July 2021, Jones’ NFT A Bag of Oranges sold for $212,500 at
Christie’s. The following November, one of Jones’s physical artworks —
a digital print — appeared at auction in Hong Kong. The work, which was
exhibited at Diesel gallery in Tokyo in 2019, sold for HK$630,000, more
than five times its low estimate.