2021 – MARG.ART

Going back in for my gloves / Closing in…

Highlighting two amazing works for Halloween this year from Danish artist Spøgelsesmaskinen

Above: Going back in for my gloves

Moving down a hallway, a door opens, and a cloaked phantom appears to walk through the next doorway. Repeat.

Above: Closing in

Running through a forest at night, light glimmers from flashlights, bouncing on the ground and leaves as we close in … on something.

As simple loops, Going back… and Closing in are perfect examples of Danish artist Spøgelsesmaskinen’s work found on the Tezos-based Hic Et Nunc platform from early 2021: both pieces are eerily mysterious, permeated with shadows and contrasting light, all created with 4-bit graphics reminiscent of vintage computer games from the late 1990s.

The framing differs between the pieces, but they share a sense of propulsion, moving forward with almost identical speed and perspective. The looping repetition is seamless, adding more uncertainty to the perplexing search. Where are the gloves? What are we closing in on?

I have no idea how the artist comes up with these concepts, nor do I want to know. Mystery is what makes these pieces come together so well. The pieces are permeated throughout by an unsettling, disconcerted sense of unease. It feels dated and timeless at once, and that sense of curiosity is piqued every time I come upon these enigmatic little gifs. Even the blurbs (on Objkt) where a description normally goes says nothing terribly descriptive, only the characteristics of the file itself, and the items contained within:

The artist remains prolific, continuing to produce works on both Ethereum and Tezos, and has a gallery show at Bricks Gallery in Copenhagen through November of 2023. Feel free to follow the artist via the links below:

Website: https://www.spogel.xyz/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/spogelsemaskine

Objkt: https://objkt.com/profile/spogel/created

Ethereum: https://www.spogel.xyz/ssmbl/

Happy Halloween!

Eventide

By GoldCat

Margaret,

As you approach your second birthday, a few things hold true: you love the Elmo Slide, swinging on your swing set, your mom’s boobs and owls. The stuffed baby owl we got you a couple of months ago took favorite status away from all of your other toys when we finally figured it all out: the reason you like owls so much is that you are, in fact, nocturnal 🙂

I’ve loved the artist GoldCat’s work for a couple of years now, and her stature has grown quite a bit during that time — her works on SuperRare command thousands of dollars and she has works available through Christies.

One half of the artist’s Prelude series from November of 2021, Eventide captures the ominous stare of a Great Horned Owl perched, and surrounded by swirls of red clouds, or perhaps smoke. Perhaps it’s the glow of the magic hour, which means the hunt will begin soon. In the distance, near the base of the figure, you can see what appears to be clear sky, perhaps the remnants of the day. Time to take flight.

Now get to sleep,

Dada

Link to the piece on Objkt.com
Link to GoldCat’s Twitter.

Atmospherics Twenty-Eight

Artist: celadoor

A pseudo-random pick from my collections comes from the artist celadoor, who bills his works as “more of a vibe than a series.” He’s actually a good friend & confidant in the space, and offers a very level-headed approach whenever discussing the latest trends in the Tezos-based art world. In describing his process, he offers this:

I take pictures of moments that never happened and landscapes that don’t exist using a smartphone camera, a light source, and my finger. Most work includes paper currency as a reflective surface.
-Celadoor

A striking image of muted, golden sunlight, with cloud-like formations bleeding into a mountain range below, or, perhaps, more clouds, Atmospherics Twenty-Eight is, as you likely guessed, the 28th item in the artist’s Atmospherics series. Released August 5th, 2021, it was priced extremely (or ridiculously) affordable at just 0.2 Tz (around 0.65 $USD at the time). And yet, incredibly, many of them sat unsold for nearly a full month.

Prolific artists are often misunderstood by the more “serious” art crowd, as those ~~collectors~~ investors prefer limited pieces, sold selectively, the elusive exclusivity of the “Super Rare”. In remaining so prolific and also relatively affordable, celadoor has catered to the true collector here in keeping a healthy supply of easily accessible artworks available through and through. Although, lately, it is getting harder and harder to find a celadoor piece near a 0.2tz price. Remember kids, just because it is affordable now does not mean it’ll stay that way. In the case of Atmospherics Twenty-Eight, all copies sold, but you can still get one — now at about 12 tez.

Follow celadoor on Twitter, find his works on Objkt and (soon) on fx(hash)!

Pure Phase #203 / Pure Phase #89

Artist: Nicklaus Hubben

_{Click image above to see the full-motion splendor of Pure Phase #203}

_{Click image above to see the full-motion splendor of Pure Phase #89}

Released on December 21st, 2021 on the Tezos-based generative art platform fx(hash)*, Nick Hubben’s Pure Phase is a perfectly simple piece that builds from three overlapping layers, each moving in the same harmonic time, but against each other, creating a design that is eternally out of phase; disharmonious and convergent at the same time. It’s beautiful, it’s brilliant, it’s so simple and a it remains a great example of what generative art can be.

I now own a handful of these (the cost of these at minting was the around 4$USD) but between #203 and #89 I can’t decide on which is my favorite, so I’ve included both here for you to enjoy. There are so many great variations of this piece. As of this writing, thirty or so remain on the secondary market — starting around 8tz (~$17USD).

Nicklaus has not released anything since Pure Phase on the platform, but I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. Feel free to follow him on Twitter and (fx)hash.

^{_{*full disclosure: I’ve been on the fxhash team since the early days.}}

Tower Of Babel (or) Social Climbing

Artist: Tim Maxwell

Tim Maxwell is a NYC-based artist that works with hand drawn lines. Lots and lots of finely-crafted, meticulous, time consuming, hand drawn lines — usually with a trusted fountain pen, on large sheets of paper. It is a very precise, redundant degree of work, but if there is one thing I love about his method it’s just this — the degree of repetition and laser-beam focus on his craft. Out of this monotonous tedium are born incredibly stunning works of art.

Tim is also a solid friend in the NFT art space. I can’t remember when we began corresponding via Twitter, but I do recall the conversation starting around an old photo of Fugazi, and moving on from there. I’ve since collected quite a few of his works. When I though of which of his pieces to showcase here, Tower of Babel jumped out at me. It’s an earlier piece of his, one that he released on the Hic Et Nunc (now Teia) marketplace, in late May of last year.

Tim often works within a few themes, occasionally containing shadowy, humanoid figures scrambling in desolate, endless landscapes. Or at gates, waiting patiently. Or climbing impossibly large staircases. He factors our vain existence as a whole here, as these figures try to climb impossible heights, and fail. Here, a tiny detail from the downloaded IPFS file:

The piece reminds me of Orson Welles’ interpretation of The Trial, in it’s starkly contrasted, black-and-white beauty — not to mention a few themes evident in Kafka’s original: anti-individuality vs. conformed society, alienation, control, collective consciousness and humanity’s eternal struggle against it.

I am greatly looking forward to meeting Tim at NFTNYC, coming up later this month, where I hope we can chat about more than just art! Besides the work on Tezos, Tim has also released work on Nifty Gateway and Foundation, among many other places. Feel free to check out his releases and follow him on Twitter.

Gemini

Artist: Lance Weiller

Lance Weiler, known online as culturehacker, is an artist/storyteller who works with code to produce glitchy, striking images that often take you to unexpected places. Often working in portrait, his faces and figures are sometimes ghostly, and layered, sometimes striking or bemused. You can occasionally only identify a face by the lips, or nose. He was one of the earliest artists to release work on the Hic et Nunc platform in March of 2021, and remains active in the Tezos community via releases on Objkt.com.

Gemini is fairly typical of his lighter work, capturing a striking gaze in close duplicate, with a marked degree of distortion, melting and glitch. Gemini was a small edition of three. I noticed that another of the editions is owned by Ganbrood, a friend and artist who will appear in this blog soon.

Recently I found out that, like myself, Lance studied film in college, and that he had the opportunity to meet and shoot with the legendary art-film director, Stan Brakhage. This is really wonderful as I can see a bit of Brakhage’s reflections and influence scattered throughout some of Lance’s work. Lance also attempted to release a work a day in 2021, a creative exercise that is very admirable — and also exhausting! And he also recently wrote a nice piece about the demise and rebirth of the HEN community in November of last year. On top of all of this, he’s also the director of the Columbia University School of the Arts’ Digital Storytelling Lab.

See more of Lance’s work as culturehacker on Objkt.com. For his amazing series of 1/1 glitch portraits, go here. Follow him on twitter, Instagram or his own website!

Psychedelic chicken à la mode

Artist: Iskra Velitchkova

Iskra Velitchkova is a Spanish-based generative artist whose creations run from incredibly colorful and wild, to hazier, darker and somber in tone. Almost all of her creations have elements of mystery and wonder, as the above clearly shows. I remember seeing Psychedelic Chicken in a random tweet a few months back, and rushing to see if it was available on Hic Et Nunc¹, only to find that all 15 editions had sold out quickly. She has a number of pieces that showcase the above bird theme, including a larger edition that shows iterations of the figure, and even a few that contain motion, as seen here:

*Above: Birth ii – Alive* by Iskra Velitchkova

I continue to love all of her work, but Psychedelic Chicken was an absolute favorite when I first saw it. I bookmarked the page, hoping to return and find it available, sometime, somehow. And after a month or so, I randomly checked back and there it was — for the then-low price of 20tz (about USD$46 at the time). The image just makes me happy, and I’m still overjoyed to have it in my collection. It remains one of my all-time favorite pieces of this year, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

^{1 Now defunct, Hic Et Nunc was one of the ‘original’ NFT marketplaces on the Tezos blockchain.}.