Modern Living #94/105

Series of minimal landscapes that venture into the virtual abstraction. Honoring the beauty of glitched/pixelated skies.........

A new World where nothing shocks but everything is a mess. Bringing together everything in a mix media piece, re-working forgotten portraits and my contemporary street art to bring a maximal piece to question ourselves. PNG 1860 x 2600.

Your head turns away: O the new love! Your head turns back, - O the new love!

An anthropomorphic figure stands, wide eyed, staring at the viewer; its body masculine, muscular, and humanoid. Its “mind” dissociates into a conglomerate of structures resembling feathers, grain, teeth–as well as a radial flower “node”, casting linear rays throughout the composition. To his left, a vat of bodies gesture and writhe in a kind of amniotic soup, attended by a video game robot. The bot's red display reads “uWu”. Behind the robot and filling the left side of the composition is an archaic figure composed of a variety of vintage objects and symbols. Among them are a hardbound book with ancient cuneiform scripts, indicating barley, beer, bread, ox, house, and sky, behind which is a grimacing, salivating jagged toothed maw; and an old Commodore floppy drive. The figure’s head tilts toward an illuminated crescent moon, suggesting the Egyptian Sacred Bull. The archaic figure is composed of a variety of mutating cells, which shift in color, and pattern; eventually breaking free into an ephemeral broadcast of bubbles which move across the background. The work came into being against a psychological introspection, which included associations to pop culture such as alien abduction and pod people, as well as quite a bit of reflection on grains as a symbol of civilization, agriculture, sustenance, life, and imbibing (mainly whiskies).

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"Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?" is dedicated to the mysterious creation of Bitcoin, and acts as the showcase artwork within Javier Arrés’ exploratory series "Bitcoin, The Origin". "Who is the creator of Bitcoin?" The artist, Arrés, explores this question, and the feelings of doubt and mystery that accompany it, through his unique artistic language. An unknown, an enigma. It should be remembered that the name Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym of Bitcoin's author or authors and gives us little insight into its true creator. For this Visual Toy, Arrés uses the signature claw machine, his famous half-operation, to symbolize our collective ignorance and unconfirmed belief: As soon as it has the stuffed animal within its grasp and appears to have solved the puzzle, the animal escapes again, and again. At present, there are three more public and studied possibilities who are either believed to be the creators of the currency or who directly claim the creation of it. It may be all or none of them, yet these three personalities leave us clues which are an important part of this interesting enigma. For this moment, it will remain unknown... In this artwork, Arrés elevates the claw machine from the apparatus, to an iconic pop art object serving as an important element to the Bitcoin creation narrative. Action is everywhere, with each movement serving an iconographical or metaphorical purpose related directly to cryptocurrency: Various ups and downs, roller coasters, mining points, robot, coins and more speak to a sense of hope, risk, mystery, randomness and possibility of pay out. Hundreds of manically thought out details make this creation one of the artist’s most complex Visual Toys to date. ------- "Bitcoin, The Origin" is a set of two Visual Toys, titled "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto" and "It’s Alive!" which reflect and explore the mystery and enigmas behind the creation of Bitcoin. Arrés presents these proposals to us in his signature style, full of iconography, fantasy, maniacal animations and a panoply of details (both subtle and overt) which simultaneously fascinate, hypnotize, and narrate this historical milestone through the singular vision of the artist. Through this series, Arrés freezes a crucial moment of cryptocurrency history, taking a still photo under his vision and turning it into two unique crypto artworks. ---- More info about Javier Arrés: https://javierarres.com/about.html