Wyatt Allgeier is a writer and an editor for Gagosian Quarterly. He lives and works in New York City.
Daniel Bailey (aka Mr. Bailey) is a conceptual footwear designer and the founder of the sneaker design and community platform CONCEPTKICKS. For ComplexCon’s Sneakers for Breakfast, he partnered with Takashi Murakami to create a set of sneakers inspired by Takashi’s artwork.
Takashi Murakami earned a PhD from the Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Fine Arts. He began exhibiting his work while still at the university and in 1996 established the Hiropon Factory studio (today Kaikai Kiki) to produce it. In addition to making and marketing Murakami’s art and related work, Kaikai Kiki functions as a supportive environment for fostering emerging artists. With the curation of the 2000 Superflat exhibition, Murakami advanced the Superflat theory of Japanese art. He has exhibited widely both in Japan and overseas.
Ashley Overbeek is director of strategic initiatives at Gagosian, where she worked with Takashi Murakami on his An Arrow through History show. She has been collecting NFTs since early 2019 and cohosts a recurring live audio conversation in which she interviews leading crypto artists.
RTFKT Studios is a creator-led organization that uses the latest in game engines, NFTs, blockchain authentication, and augmented reality, combined with manufacturing expertise, to create one-of-a-kind sneakers and digital artifacts.
Elizabeth Semmelhack is the director and senior curator of the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto. She has curated more than thirty exhibitions, including Future Now, which featured RTFKT’s digital sneakers. She is also the author of several books related to footwear highlighting Takashi Murakami’s collaborations in the sneaker space.
Amy Whitaker is an associate professor at New York University and longtime researcher in the intersections of art, economics, and politics. She is the author of three books, Museum Legs (Hol Art Books, 2009), Art Thinking (Harper Business, 2016), and Economics of Visual Art (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and coauthor, with Nora Burnett Abrams, of The Story of NFTs: Artists, Technology, and Democracy (Rizzoli and MCA Denver, 2023).
