# [Black/White] Square - Kim Asendorf

Source: https://kimasendorf.com/square
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/BlackWhite-Square-Kim-Asendorf?index=0x687b5682fe21a2f9c2b265df6d0064d89e3bd9432ee806d3f3325bedf23e10f2a120c176
Submitted by misha on 2025-07-19 UTC, 8 upvotes, 0 comments

## Summary

Kim Asendorf's "Black Square" and "White Square" are two generative on-chain works on Ethereum Mainnet in which opposing algorithms keep each square in constant tension between preservation and dissolution. Each piece is a 1/1 with a 1.0 ETH reserve price, and both are offered in auctions that run for 7 days and extend by 5 minutes when a bid lands in the final 5 minutes. Asendorf describes the pair as companion works, with the black square on white representing physical reality and its inverse representing the digital. The works are fully on-chain, with 11.5 KB of code and no external dependencies.

## Article

“Black Square” and “White Square” by Kim Asendorf are two generative works on Ethereum Mainnet where opposing algorithms create perpetual transformation within the constraints of a single form. “Black Square” presents a black square on white ground, and “White Square” inverts this relationship: each existing in constant negotiation between preservation and dissolution.

Edition:

Unique

Medium:

Real-time animation, WebGL2/JavaScript, no external dependencies

Code size:

11.5 KB

Storage:

Fully on-chain

Blockchain:

Ethereum Mainnet

Token Standard:

ERC-721

Contract address:

This series strips generative art to its most elemental: the pixel as square, the square as both constraint and fundamental unit. Through algorithmic tension, one force maintains form while another tears at its boundaries without ever reaching stasis. These companion pieces propose a system, where duality itself becomes the artistic inquiry: two works that refuse to be one, yet cannot exist without their inverse.

“Black Square” and “White Square” are available for auction as unique 1/1s, each with a reserve price of 1.0 ETH. The auctions start with the first bid and will run for 7 days. The auction will extend by 5 minutes if a bid is placed in the final 5 minutes.

[Black/White] Square, Kim Asendorf, 2025

Kim Asendorf's Black Square and White Square emerge at that particular juncture where one's practice turns inward, stripping away accumulated layers to reveal something elemental: the irreducible form. Two works, two colours, one form, yet within these constraints, Asendorf locates a generative engine of surprising tension. Each square exists in perpetual negotiation with itself, one force maintaining its geometry while another continually threatens its dissolution. These works refuse the usual narratives of utility or reference, offering instead pure formal investigation: the pixel square as ur-element, as both beginning and end.

Asendorf's squares arise from his practice's fundamental logic. The pixel is, in fact, already a square, the screen's cellular unit, the atomic building block of digital imagery. To work with the square is to work with the medium's most honest form. After years of increasingly complex generative systems, he strips everything away to focus on this basic element. Yet what distinguishes these works from mere formal exercises is their refusal to remain static. The white background doesn't merely frame the black square, it actively consumes it, while the square simultaneously flows into its surrounding space. Through algorithmic tension, each square breathes and morphs through a unique dialectic: one algorithm attempts to preserve the square's integrity while another tears at its boundaries. Neither element dominates, both exist in a state of productive antagonism.

What's particularly compelling is Asendorf's conceptualisation of these as companion pieces occupying different ontological territories. The black square on white represents physical reality, while its inverse manifests the digital. "The digital space for me is rather black than white," he observes. Both are emptiness, both are potential, yet they encode fundamentally different relationships to presence and absence. Built entirely on-chain through Asendorf's custom smart contract, the series achieves infrastructural elegance that matches its visual austerity: pure code living on blockchain, generating endless variations without external dependencies.

For those who feel that the proper place of the juxtaposed black and white works is across material worlds, framing a duality with conscious choice of two-token existence might help ease us in understanding Asendorf's decision to release these as separate works rather than states of a single one. Could one imagine a contract whereby the physical exhibition demands the black-on-white version while the collector's screen displays its inverse? The possibility tantalises, but Asendorf's choice to maintain their independence suggests something more radical - that duality itself might be the very core artistic inquiry.

The dialectic at play here feels decidedly contemporary: an algorithm that "tries to maintain its shape while another algorithm is basically tearing it apart," as Asendorf noted. In a digital art world drunken by technical obscureness and visual spectacle, these squares arrive as inevitability, rather than homage. "It's the other way around. This square is in me and I use it," he states, dismissing external inspiration for internal logic. This evolution toward minimalism represents natural maturation rather than conceptual exercise. After all, Malevich wrote of such impulse as "the supremacy of pure feeling in the pictorial arts."

- Dr. Mimi Nguyen