Tech-oligarch robot dogs last week invaded social media platforms, sniffing around one another — and, yes, pooping, too — in a makeshift prescient dog park.
And it hit big.
The origin was Art Basel Miami Beach. The kennel keeper, as it were, was none other than the Charleston area-based artist known as Beeple (aka Mike Winkelmann). He is most famous for cleaning up at Christie’s first digital auction in 2021 with the record-breaking $69.3 million NFT sale of his “Everydays: the First 5,000 Days.”
Musk, Bezos and more
The scene of his latest work at Art Basel was the new AI sector called Zero10. Beeple’s installation “Regular Animals (2025)” rounded up robotic quadruped canines topped off with discomfittingy lifelike heads of tech billionaires Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerburg, Jeff Bezos, as well as those of departed arts icons Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso.
At times, these celebrated hyper-producers generated their own works, so to speak, pooping out printed pages of digital art. Those who have been to Beeple Studios will recognize some of the artist’s tried-and-true visual tropes. Since it first opened, the studios have regularly trotted out rubbery simulacra of titans who roam the gallery or glare from screens.
As an artist, Beeple has often traded in the outsize stature of tech billionaires. Many of the “Everydays” works that comprise his mega-million-earning aggregate piece involve behemoth versions of them, along world leaders. In the past few years since Beeple broke through, his oeuvre has aged in uncanny, unsettling ways.
With current global developments, such as Musk closing in on trillionaire status and the whole gang gathering for state dinners, the depiction of blank-faced Golemesque Gullivers looming over Lilliputian mortals seems less dystopian and more just standard operating procedure.
Going global
At Art Basel Miami Beach, the scene rapidly became a scroller’s catnip, with images of the installation unleashed in a social media frenzy. The work caught the attention of traditional media outlets, too, including USA Today, The New York Post and CNN. Even The Wall Street Journal covered the $100K price tag each dog commanded — and reportedly received — with reports that every dog found a willing owner at the art fair.
No one was more surprised than Winkelmann.
“We were pretty shocked by the immediate visceral response the piece was getting as people immediately started calling it the next ‘banana,’ ” the artist told the Charleston City Paper, referring to the famous duct-taped banana by artist Maurizio Cattelan that turned the artworld in its ear at its 2019 Miami Beach debut.
Within two days, Winkelmann said, his installation was global news, with the Charleston artist fielding interviews for nearly every major publication.
Such a worldwide public relations bonanza was a boon to Art Basel and well beyond, upping the value on such artistic statements, even among the starchiest stocks-centric newspapers.
Staying local
In the coming days, Charleston artists may feel some of its radiant heat, too. Winkelmann has increasingly trained his singular brain on supporting the local community in the Charleston area.
On Dec. 13, Beeple Studios hosts Charleston Art Night. If past events are any indication, other robots may just pop out and poop out a print or two. The evening thus far promises community art, dance and an auction of works from 43 artists, with proceeds benefitting the Public Works Arts Center in Summerville.
Recently at his studios, Beeple joined with television producer Danny McBride to mine the pros and cons of AI. Synthetic Theatre, a production billed as a live AI theater experience, with replicas of the decapitated heads of Beeple and McBride affixed to human-like robots. This time, the digital prints were purged from the rafters above, telegraphing the end of the world as we know it.
But in Charleston these days, signs are auspicious. The arts world seems primed for a next chapter–one that expands to a Cainhoy industrial strip a la Beeple Studios and takes over thousands of square feet in the Navy Yard, with visual arts exhibitions and events in recent weeks alone.
From the vantage of artists and arts advocates, globally and locally, pooping pups likely never looked so good.
“I think it goes to show though that people are really hungry for artworks that speak to the times we’re living in–works that comment on the things affecting their everyday life, and very little is having more impact on our lives than technology,” Winkelmann said.
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