The artist known as Beeple launched the art world’s craze for nonfungible tokens by selling one of his digital collages at Christie’s for $69 million this spring. Now Beeple has something even more surprising for sale—a real-life sculpture.

Christie’s said it plans on Nov. 9 to auction the first physical work of art by Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, for an estimated $15 million. The sculpture, called “HUMAN ONE,”  is a 7-foot-tall, white mahogany column covered in LED screens that depicts a life-size astronaut...

The artist known as Beeple launched the art world’s craze for nonfungible tokens by selling one of his digital collages at Christie’s for $69 million this spring. Now Beeple has something even more surprising for sale—a real-life sculpture.

Christie’s said it plans on Nov. 9 to auction the first physical work of art by Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, for an estimated $15 million. The sculpture, called “HUMAN ONE,”  is a 7-foot-tall, white mahogany column covered in LED screens that depicts a life-size astronaut dressed in a mirrored helmet and silvery suit. The monolith-like pillar is designed to slowly rotate so that viewers standing before it will see the figure appear to stroll through sci-fi landscapes. The artist plans to alter these backdrops several times a day and update them during his career. It also comes with a corresponding NFT.

“It has such a gravitas, and it sucks you in,” said Noah Davis, Christie’s head of digital art and online sales.

‘HUMAN ONE’ will serve as a fresh test of collectors’ appetites at the high end.

Photo: Christie's Images Ltd.

The work is the latest sign of a historic merger between traditional and digital art. More NFT artists are starting to adopt the real-life materials of the art establishment rather than stick to pixels. Earlier this month in London, Sotheby’s sold a $2.8 million acrylic box by digital artist FEWOCiOUS that contained a cartoonish blue, life-size figure wearing clothes designed by the artist for its owner to wear. (The house discouraged doing so for preservation purposes.)

Dealers say such experiments could be a way for digital artists to extend their collector base and raise their price points even more.

In less than a year, NFT buyers have grown from amassing a vast menagerie of slightly varied characters like CryptoPunks, Mr. Davis said, to valuing one-of-a-kind digital works the same way old-guard collectors prize rarity in art works. Mr. Winkelmann’s sculpture, for example, is one of one, he said. “Collectors are getting sophisticated,” Mr. Davis said. “They want to flex their individual tastes rather than buy something that’s one of 10,000.”

Traditional collectors and established artists are also taking a closer look at NFTs, particularly hybrid versions of so-called “phygital” artworks that contain both physical and digital elements.

NFTs started gaining traction last year as digital artists realized they could apply the same technology used to track cryptocurrency to tokenize their JPEGs, making them as unique as any painter’s canvas. Each NFT’s price and ownership details are logged on a digital ledger known as the blockchain. In the past year, roughly $1.8 billion worth of NFT artworks have sold, according to market data tracker Nonfungible.com.

“HUMAN ONE” will serve as a fresh test of collectors’ appetites at the high end. It also marks the first time a Beeple will be offered alongside heavyweight painters like Jean-Michel Basquiat in Christie’s marquee 21st Century evening sale. (His record-setting NFT, “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days,” sold in an online-only sale in March.)

Mr. Winkelmann will attend the New York auction—his first, he said.

“People gathering in a big room to buy things made by other people—it’s the weirdest ritual of transaction if you really think about it,” Mr. Winkelmann said. “I’m excited to go.”

Mr. Winkelmann’s entree into the blue-chip art world hasn’t been easy, but he is catching up quickly—and says he sees his shift into sculpture as an extension, rather than a rejection, of his digital practice. He cited Damien Hirst’s shark tanks and Jeff Koons’s metallic “Rabbit” as influencing the aesthetics of “HUMAN ONE,” an idea he got over the summer after he noticed a cart of upturned television screens in his hangar-like studio in South Carolina.

Screens give the illusion that the digital astronaut character at the center of each is encased in a see-through container yet moving through changing scenery.

Photo: Christie's Images Ltd.

Relying on projection-mapping skills he gleaned from his past work designing digital stage elements for music concerts, he said he wrapped a mahogany armature in screens. Then he created a looping video feed for each screen that gives the illusion that the digital astronaut character at the center of each is encased in a see-through container yet moving through a backdrop of ever-changing scenery.

Painters have long experimented with trompe l’oeil techniques, but he said digital technology gives him an advantage because he can alter elements whenever he wants by layering additional codes to its corresponding NFT on the blockchain. Each time he does, the screens on the physical piece will alter, remotely.

“If you look at a painting, it’s a statement frozen in time—the artist is done,” he said, adding that the owner of this piece “won’t really know what they’re getting because I’ll keep changing it.”

Earlier

Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, have exploded onto the digital art scene this past year. Proponents say they are a way to make digital assets scarce, and therefore more valuable. WSJ explains how they work, and why skeptics question whether they’re built to last. Photo Illustration: Jacob Reynolds/WSJ The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com