June is all about colors and inclusiveness as we celebrate Pride Month. With an ongoing art challenge for our artist that will result in someone taking home an Apple TV, we’ve also decided to highlight available Async artworks that showcases great usage of lines and colors for this month’s curation week.
The New Crest Wave
Our First Supper OG artist Coldie introduced John Van Hamersveld to our Async platform, and their latest Layered artwork follows the same theme as his last production.
The New Crest Wave consists of clean, playful shapes made with sharpie markers, and digitized into complementary colors to form 5 distinct Layers each with 4 different colors.
Van Hamersveld is an iconic American artist and designer who is responsible for an enormous catalog of well-known music industry and pop culture-related images such as Endless Summer, album covers for The Beach Boys, Kiss, and Rolling Stones.
His art can be found in several IRL murals: 1984 Olympics in LA, a rustic water tank in El Segundo, and the Cabrillo Aquarium.
His vibrant colors brings life to everyday, industrial settings and his latest Async art is no different. From psychedelic pop art to brand identity projects, Van Hamersveld easily creates iconic images, which are permanently embedded in our collective consciousness.
Habitación SUR
Collaborations on the Async platform are always welcome and encouraged. With our Layer system, it’s very easy to “divide & conquer” a blank canvas with a large group of artists. “Habitacion SUR” or “South Room” contains artwork and Layers from over 26 Argentinian artists who form an online art collective - CryptoArg.
This is one of the most cohesive-looking collaborations we have seen to date. With each artist neatly pairing up with another to design their small corner of a stark, gray room. The colors are all chosen purposefully, with orange-red indigo as the main color palette to create harmony and ensure that Layer changes will still compose a beautiful Master composition.
The meaning behind a room that points to The South is explained here. There is an overarching pride in being an artist of color. Democratization of a canvas via Layers = democratizing the ownership of the piece. It speaks to a profound choice that all the artists advocate for, and in a sense, echoes the voice of a community that has been subjected to historical colonization.
Cryptoarg contains some of the most well known artists in the cryptoart space, including: Frenetik Void, Hilen Goody, Milton Sanz, Oxeegeno and Julian Brangold:
Compute
Matthew Hawtin’s first solo Async work is very much inspired by his previous collaboration with his brother Ritchie Hawtin for their debut Async Music piece. The brothers reunited after several years to resurface F.U.S.E music & artwork in a new way. Learn about the inspiration and methodical process that went into the original pioneering works:
According to M. Hawtin, they were both developing their musical and visual language at the same time in the 90’s. Techno music was conceived as the music of the future, as it is created entirely via computers while most were created via analog.
After an eye-opening trip to Easter Island in 1993, M.Hawtin started working on Computer Space silk screen prints, which referenced internal mindscapes, neural networks, highways, circuit boards and the information superhighway. What connected the art and the music was in essence the idea of computer space (now more commonly known as metaverse) and where this new music exists. R. Hawtin was creating pioneering music in the techno genre, and M. Hawtin’s bright, hex-coded colors was the visual language that helped explain the futuristic nature of it, especially to an audience that was essentially pre-internet (and absolutely pre-metaverse.)
“Compute” is one of those earlier concepts that is unearthed and now finally brought to light with Async platform. Hawtin enjoys playing with the notion of fundamental states of digital computers and electronic devices as the analog society he was born into has now transformed into a digital age. The various Layers represent the different states and made it possible to create three distinct monochrome pieces as well as a multicoloured Master. “Compute” is both a symbolic and conceptual representation of the computing processes that make our digital lives possible.
VatiLeaks II
What do you get when you cross a video game, community treasure hunt, and a social awareness campaign all in one Async artwork? Something that’s very similar to what VJ Entter and Monica Rikić produced:
Together the two artists made an entire customizable programmable artwork that tracks a public stock price, without utilizing the Async production team for a custom artwork. The artist team truly is showcasing what can be done with programmable art.
Check out the step-by-step process of how they were able to hook up Bertone’s helicopter to Exxon Mobile’s stock price, as well as the story behind the extraordinary scene.
There is also a social community contest hosted within the Async artwork. All the player character Layers need to be sold first, and the artist will reveal the hidden bounty, in which a lucky Layer owner can take home
In God We Trust
MrRichi is a relatively new artist on our platform, and he graces our gallery with his playful and colorful remixes of iconic paintings. He originates from Belgrade, Serbia and his background and love for graffiti is really shines through in his Async artworks.
Bitcoin, crypto-idioms, and NFT-isms are all present in some shape or form as he “graffiti’s” over his own paintings with modern colloquialisms.
His latest Async work is a powerful example of his style adapting Leonardo DaVinci’s “Salvatore Mundi” - one of the most recognizable and expensive painting to be ever sold at a public auction house into a cryptoart classic. “Salvatore Mundi” translates to “savior of the world”. “In God We Trust” is the mandated phrase found on every single US fiat coin/bill. The historical context deserves an entire series in itself, but to be sure it becomes an interesting message when it is appended with “All Others Pay Cash” as seen in the artwork.
Whereas the origin of graffiti is likened to vandalism, MrRichi uses his handwritten messages as brushstrokes for a parody. Fiat is not the world-saver. The celestial orb in Christ’s left hand is transformed into bitcoin iconography, signalling that this is perhaps the savior the everyday people are waiting for.
Numbed Emotions
Newcomer Mehak Jain quickly garnered attention with her debut Async artwork Chess and Addicts. She’s a professional chess player who is nationally ranked, and has got a knack for story-telling within her digital illustrations. She’s showcasing Async works at CADAF this week, so make sure to check out the virtual experience.
“Numbed Emotions” changes four times a day, with subtle changes for sunrise, sunset, day and night states. At sunrise the woman is like a puppet to her fears controlling her. The eyes are watching and something is eating her. At daytime, she has a small tiny smile to show some positivity as she goes about her day, but by sunset, something hits her and it stops the positive emotions. It is painful. And finally, at night that negative trigger is not there anymore (or was never there at all) but the feeling of that terror stays until sunrise comes again.
Within her latest Day/Night autonomous piece “Numbed Emotion”, Mehak speaks on how she processes emotions on a very personal level. Almost everyone can relate to the counterbalance of an extremely happy emotion, to the tiny voice on the back which asks “is this too good to be true, and how long will it last”?
Read more from the artist herself here.
Teamwork
Frank Ape by Brandon Sines is fast becoming Async team’s favorite artist. The cheerful, upbeat style with its positive message is something we all look forward to seeing in each one of his Async pieces. Frank Ape is a mystical creature who lives amongst the humans but without human restrictions. What started as a form of self-expression on the streets of NYC for the artist quickly turned into a movement for the people.
Frank has special powers that he continues to discover as he is tested by the many challenges of life. Frank champions positivity and equality, and cares about all living things. He believes in using imagination and play to inspire other people and animals through thoughtful actions.
“Teamwork” celebrates this idea of working together to help shape a brighter future both visually and functionally. Each layer owner controls three different states of their Frank, and one owner controls the color of the light. Each state is an integral part in the process of working together: carrying the letter, placing the letter, and helping reach the light switch.
Layer owners collaborate to create thousands of possibilities (59,049 to be exact) all representing a facet of working together. Sometimes in perfect harmony, other times in glorious chaos, but always for the greater good of the community.
Yellow and Blue
Quiet and reclusive from social media, Daveed Schwartz is one of those artists who we consistently see returning with a new concept to try with programmable art. Hailing from a prestigious Hollywood & gaming career, he uses mixed media to convey his sombre commentary with his visual artwork. Learn more about his creative process from our Artist Spotlight here.
The subject of many of his pieces are the artists in their studio standing in front of their art and gallery or museum visitors viewing art. His latest Day/Night piece is about waiting for inspiration to strike, dealing with the artist's daily struggle, and the anxiety in the studio trying to create something new and fresh. In this case the Async art endlessly looping Day/Night states are a perfect vehicle to demonstrate that the struggle never leaves you and continues around the clock.
G-U-I-L-T-Y
K-art is another brand new artist to our platform. His usage of neon colors to emote dark messaging is reminiscent of another well-known artist, XCOPY, but with more organic textures and elements.
His debut Async piece is aptly titled “G-U-I-L-T-Y” changes four times a day. The artwork conjures up a feeling of dread and heaviness as the viewer deliberate the meaning behind the empty eyes, the gaping holes where the heart is supposed to be, and the ominous looking mouth.
In every piece, it is up to the viewer's understanding on how they will absorb the contrast between the subject's presence and the space that they are in. Viewer are witnessing the creation of the subjects right in front of their eyes. This is the approach of the social science educated visual artist, k-art.
This concludes our June highlights. Throughout the curation week, artists will be joining us in our Async Discord to chat, as well joining us on Thursday for another exclusive Cryptovoxels tour. Follow us on Twitter and Discord to get the latest updates!
