HEN – 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!

Map 1: Red zones

Artist: Helio Santos

I’ve always loved maps, detailed maps, maps that show things that are no longer there and maps that make your imagination wonder at what is to come. My grandfather worked with the US Army Transportation Corps during WWII, and I own a few of his strategic maps of Europe, along with my parent’s travel guides through what was West Germany. I have atlases from countries that have changed names, and we have a globe showing borders that are now decades gone. I still have travel atlases from when my bands would tour the eastern USA in the 90 and 2000s. The beauty of maps is that they allow us to view place and time, geographically, and politically, for one fleetingly brief moment in history.

Heliodoro Santos is an amazing artist that I’ve admired since the early days of the Tezos-based Hic Et Nunc platform back in 2021. Most of his work that I’ve collected are described by him as “landscape generated by machine learning and computer vision algorithms. The dream of a landscape by the machine”. Below is one of my favorite pieces called Landscape dissolution II, described by the artist as “Exploring generative adversarial network and particles”:

Map 1 is my introduction to the artist using more two-dimensional work. I really love the colors at play here, they are the first thing that drew my eye to it, the strong contrast of reds, orange and light blue. As the viewer of any map, we want this area to exist, to find something familiar and focus on a concrete location, but we cannot. Much of this looks like the southwestern United States, the red areas resembling the heat maps that we’ve seen much of this year. It also looks like there are elements of the Mexican peninsula throughout. The piece feels very Pacific in nature. I love the fact that the map itself includes what appears to be a legend, in white, the text garbled, but still present. It’s beautiful:

Once again, the mystery behind this work’s creation adds to its beauty. I’m sure I could try to get an explanation of processes and machinery behind this (perhaps not?) but regardless, it’s a really amazing piece that carries the weight of most maps in this day and age, portending geographic motion, displacement, confusion and massive, uncontrollable swaths of heat.

Link to piece on Objkt.com
Linktree

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)!

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.

W(N)AGMI

Doom and gloom cycles perpetuate the crypto world seemingly every few months, starting with an obvious affect on a single protocol (or coin) before inevitably taking down an entire market like a perfect game of dominoes. In the world of May of 2022, this shift was due to a person or persons taking advantage of instruments to manipulate markets and take down a particular stablecoin. Before this event, the evil harbinger was interest rates, and before that it was the Poly hack, Ronin, Bitconnect, Kucoin, Mt. Gox, and so on. These hacks are a self-replicating monster lurking under the bed, waiting for everyone to get complacent before unleashing themselves every once in a while, depleting everyone’s investments, and making Matt Damon look like even more of an asshole than he already is.

Stirpe foro in tardus nuntium by Xponentialdesign

The NFT market isn’t given any immunity at all. When the price of crypto falls, so do NFT markets. Yet some artists on Tezos have embraced this, and are creating works that showcase a heightened sense of uncertainty. The recent #fear4tez event brought together over 100 artists to release limited works that revolve around the theme of fear. On this page are some of my favorites, with links to purchase. Many of these cost only around 1 Tz, or the current equivalent of about $1.78, an incredible bargain in today’s dreadful markets.

The greatest piece of advice my mother ever gave to me was a truth that life is unfair. It doesn’t matter how much love you may give, or how much joy you may share — our world is inevitably, and naturally unfair to us all.

going down together by Spøgelsesmaskinen

With this in mind, we must always remember to enjoy each day for the little joys it brings, from the morning laughter of a newly-awakened child, to seeing a dog manically run laps in the backyard. Concentrate less on what makes life unfair, live in the moment and focus on what brings you enjoyment.

It’s also always important to enjoy art, collect what you love (and can afford), and support artists even in down times. Especially in down times! Tomorrow, next month, or next year will certainly bring another downturn, but artists will continue to make incredible work, regardless, and that is a big gain in my book.

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!

The House of Bluebeard

artist: Yakudoo

Karim Maaloul, known on Twitter as Yakudoo, is a Belgian artist and an incredible storyteller and illustrator in his various works. In The House of Bluebeard, he takes the 17th century French folk tale by Charles Perrault as inspiration, and combines the story into an NFT that you can navigate and discover, interactively, by moving and zooming and panning around each of the 12 static scenes.

If you don’t know the story of Bluebeard, I recommend reading it or a variation of it before viewing this NFT. You don’t want to spoil the ending, do you? Keep in mind that, like most folk tales, it can get a little gory.

The wonder of tiny details abound in each frame. Notice the details from inside the house — the upstairs dining hall, walls and grandfather clock — all of which you can zoom into — to see ever-clearer details:

The piece never ceases to amaze me. In writing this up I discovered that detail exists even inside the paintings on the walls.

It’s an incredible work, and has a dark sense of foreboding in every frame. Maaloul is no stranger to folk tales. He’s also done an interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood, another interactive work that, as with Bluebeard, lets you pan around the scene and zoom in and out for detail, some of which you won’t notice till your fifth or sixth viewing. It’s amazing.

The interactive zoom/pan “trick” (I’m at a loss for what to call it) that is used in both works is subtle, and adds to the wonder and sense of mystery of the original folk tale. It’s a style that is clearly Maaloul’s own, and I hope he continues to produce more of these little gems soon.

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.}.

Once in a Lifetime

Artist: Juki

A randomly selected piece for my first post comes from a Turkish artist name Juki, who uses bright pallets and imagery to create an incredible mood. What I love about this piece is the strong contrast of saturated colors, mixed with the more cloudy, muted tones in the distance, the rays of light coming down from above, the towering stalks, and of course, the golden-yellow buck peering (cautiously?) at the side. In the foreground rests a felled tree, the only one down.

It’s slightly haunting, slightly bewildering, and also amazing. You want to jump in, and walk around, and get lost in this place. Juki’s other pieces carry the same contrast and pallets. Check out more of the artists work here!