Matthieu Bessudo is a French artist known as “McBess” living in London. ​On Monday, November 21, 2022, Great Bowery and B&A Reps helped launch his inaugural NFT collection: Cel Mates.

How did the concept of Cel Mates come about?

In January 2022, I started doing some NFTs on Foundation. Some, 1:1’s. I was doing quite well. I started to think about how we could do a bigger collection. My agent is really into NFTs, and he was really keen to try to help and see how we can make it happen. We didn’t want to do something that was too friendly, we wanted something that had an edge to it, something a bit sarcastic. We came up with the idea of Cel Mates. It’s a play on words, it’s prison, it’s fucking great.

How did you collaborate with your agent and the team on this project?”

We kept in close contact in our Discord chat throughout the whole project, and with the entire team. For almost every angle, we asked each other, what would you do, what’s your take on this. This teamwork really is reflected in the Cel Mates project. We had a really wild ride, it was really fun to work on everything from the artwork, Twitter, the microsite, and the sweepstakes. 

What was the most challenging this about Cel Mates?

It was an insane amount of work. But more so, it was navigating a space that’s completely new. It was daunting but also very exciting at the same time. I had a lot of help on aspects that were foreign to me, like the coding and the financial structure of the gamification of NFTs. I learned a lot about trust, which I have never done so much of in any other project. 

How has web3 informed your art?

I don’t think it has. Of course, every medium does inform things differently, but web3 for me is just a medium. It’s a tool for me to access a world for certain types of people and creating storytelling. That’s it. It hasn’t changed my actual art in any shape or form.

What advice would you give to other artists considering NFT projects?

Don’t do it just for the sake of making NFTs. You have to do it to add something to the table and to create something where this makes sense as a tool for the project. Find a cool concept and run with it!