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At the age of eleven my parents went through a very violent divorce (escalating with my dad hitting my mother on the head with a hammer). I think this divorce; and more so the aftermath of it; has probably shaped my entire outlook on life. For a very long time I felt like I didn’t belong. A bad family situation, being bullied at school, etc. It made me very strongly revolt against society. At the time it was very black and white for me: society bad – alternative lifestyle good. This made me always look at life in a different light and look for other ways of doing things. I performed in bars with my poetry, did odd jobs, worked on my own projects and mostly traveled whenever I could. Growing older, I realized my travels were a form of escapism and however beautiful they were I wanted to build something lasting. This is when I started to full on focus on my projects, which eventually leads us here to me creating 256ART.
For me art has always been a way to scream very publicly, without being looked at as an insane person. When I started with my poetry way back when, it surprised me how many people felt a connection with my writings. It made me realize a key point, art has to be pure. Someone enjoying any form of art, will nearly always look at what it represents in their own life rather than that of its creator. I think my art often times combines a fairly mathematical / analytical side of me with a darker side that has always been a part of me. Whilst I want to be clear, my life right now is great, at times I feel that darkness coming up and inside I feel the heart and head clash so intensely, I just shut down. I’m in a stage in my life now, where I have a strong internal framework to get myself past these moments. One way to do so is by letting it out in the form of art. From very non-abstract poetry in the past, to more abstract generative art now.
Over the last few months I've been working pretty much day and night in order to launch the revamped 256ART platform for generative artists. This artwork is called "It's (a)live" as not only is it celebrating the launch of 256ART, but the art itself is alive. The goal of “It’s (a)live is to represent the possibilities of fully on chain generative art, where there is a lot of room left for experimentation. If you check the live view of your piece, you will quite literally see the art come alive. The feeling I wanted to re-create is that of an old movie, but one where the movie is an forever-evolving piece of art. It’s my strong belief that generative art has an unlimited amount of experimentation ahead of it. With 256ART, we want to create a space where artists are free to do just that whilst at the same time telling the stories that led them to create their art.
It’s late August 2021, I’m sitting outside on top of a hilltop in the country of Georgia, where my brother has opened his glamping earlier this year. What was supposed to be a one month stay; quite literally spending the last of my fiat savings; had turned into 5-month hiatus. The last year and a half or so, I had been feeling lost. The three years before that, I had been working on a social media application for travelers. Then Covid hit. Investors pulled out, finances dwindled, the project ran a slow death to the point where I could barely keep it in maintenance mode. Spending a few months in nature, meeting incredible people day after day that would visit the glamping, starts to invigorate something inside of me again. A few of my side projects in the blockchain space are keeping me afloat and NFTs are starting to get wider acceptance, well, at least in the crypto space.
I decide to learn more. I’ve always been a very curious individual and the more I learn the giddier I’m becoming. At the time I have around 0.4 ETH in my wallet with no real money coming in. To learn is to do in my opinion, so first thing I did was scout through OpenSea to find some cheap (think 0.01 ETH) NFT projects where I think the concept is unique or interesting. I dive into Twitter Spaces and soak up all the information I can like a sponge. Then I stumble upon generative art. What was just a small side interest had quickly become a major focus in my life. Creating art with code.
It Was Always The Eyes is a series conveying the message of silent understanding. When you meet a person who’s been through a lot, I think quite often you can see the sentiment of their past in their eyes. Most of us protect ourselves by wearing a “mask” (some do so more strongly than others), but the eyes of a person barely ever deceive. It Was Always The Eyes, strips away that mask and focuses fully on just the eyes. Even in a deceptively simple art piece, the result is quite powerful. Somehow allowing a lot of emotions to come crashing through.