Space distorts as human beings try to find a place to inhabit. The perception of geometry that surrounds it, is constantly building or deconstructing a different reality, where we are all trying to create our sense of place. Graphics, nature-inspired textures and futuristic worlds feature the work of Victoria Campobello; alias VXN. Abstract shapes of amorphous forms coexist in highly textured images that seem to blend into a three dimensional space.

1. If you could be any animal which would you be? A sexy snake

2. Sweet foods or salty foods? Sweet forever

3. Old things or new things? Old & melancholic love

4. If you could live in any time period in history when would you choose?  Again melancholic 70s, when my parents were kids.

5. What is your favorite fruit? Strawberries, cherries & an angel kiss in spring

6. What is your first memory? My head is a little bit pissed off, not even remembering what I did yesterday.

7. Would you rather live in outer space or under water? Underwater definitely.

8. What’s the one thing you cannot live without? My computer

9. Do you like to follow rules or break rules? Out of the system

10. Who is another cryptoartist you really admire? Frenetikvoid & ONEFALLART. Robbie Barrat, have been following him since I entered cryptoart and I love what de does. 

I started doing art when I was little, at school.  Used to draw in pencil and acrylics.  Chose art as my main course in high school. But nowadays, I really never grab a piece of paper.  It seems so far off from what I do.  I was born with a computer, so it isn’t a big surprise that I would spend all day long using it for creating.  Remember fighting with my sister just to have it a little bit more time so I could do some silly drawings on paint. 

Then I started my degree in Graphic Design here in Argentina and doing some dramatic pieces of scratches and brushes out of primitive methods. That’s what university gave me, the passion for having my own style.

I think my pieces really communicate that, it’s me in my own world with my eccentric touch.  But to go deeper in this, my art communicates everything I can’t or couldn’t put in to words in real life. I mean Jinshu, Petroleum II or Rotten Body, or maybe Wasp Venom as well, are these vomits.  In any case, each one drives me to different places or emotions I was handling in that moment. Like in Rotten Body, chrome and transparent light blue colors, with reflections standing in the middle of some infinite space, seem to transmit a kind of peace, but when you go deeper, and deeper also in my current mood, you see these tangled cables wrapped around each other with all my anxiety and shitty thoughts exposed.

Well this piece was initially made in photoshop. The crazy thing is that the first sketch came up in the first two hours and it was totally expressive. Didn’t know what I was doing, just brought up some photographs of mercury droplets and started playing with the forms. Then the mercury resulted in the big symmetric structure. I added in water drops and created the environment.  When I finished it, it all made sense; a complete flow in the workout of the piece, authentic and with no break or time given to “rational” thoughts in the process. The crazy thing about this non-mental workout was that I had a tarot reading that day and I had asked the tarotist about why I was feeling emptiness in all my relationships, family etc, and she told me that the first two cards where related to emotional feelings, what is meant to be water in astrology. And the other two cards talked about being satisfied with this fluidity of water, and feelings in harmony. The last one was the Star, depicted a woman touching the sky with her hands, and talked about a complete devotion to life, elevating to the sky but still in harmony and flowing with the earth. Many people made a sexual link in this piece, I’ve been told it looks like a vagina or a clitoris.

Then Franco, Frenetik, big friend of mine, put the idea in my head of turning it 3d, cause it already had this dimensional power over the first sketch and it would really make sense creating its real (or non-real) environment. I knew nothing about modeling at that time.  But actually I’m teaching myself 3d now, and he collaborates with me in making it possible.

It just made sense, I don’t know. There are types of works that you fool around million of ideas and you never know when to close it because you aren’t sure of nothing.  But then, there are these pieces, authentic, that flow and you known when they are ready. 

WATER THERAPY.  It’s all about this. Connection with your own fluids and letting go. And it inquires about sexuality, emotional fluidity and ascendance to a higher self.

Many pieces are about this, I mean, we are essentially made up of water. Water is pure, cleans, and makes us fresh. That’s the connection I have with water, and I’m quite obsessed with the transparency and refractions translucid liquids can generate. I used to work out with bubbles. All this form concentrated in micro-environments fascinates me.

I usually turn these kinds of pieces into abstract worlds. That’s what I enjoy best, working with morphological pieces. Creating forms. And there are two clear paths in my work, either vibrating saturated colors: red, blue, orange (my favorites) or dramatic monochromatic pieces.

I usually develop over time and gradually.  I like to keep some pieces for myself.  I’m just now getting used to sharing my work on social media. 

From everywhere… People, conversations, dramatic events of my life. I also go through lots of artists and visual references.  I’m now obsessed with Jonathan Castro, a Peruvian Designer based in Amsterdam, who features color combinations to dig into himself and his pre-hispanic culture.  Jean Arp and his sculptures; all those non-shaped bodies that stand elegant over the observer.

We are an amazing community of artists full of data and incredible things to share.  We also tend to come together and support each others.  It’s in our nature.  Since things are rather complicated here, our economy and political system are really shitty, we are always seeking to stand out and be heard.

It makes sense. Why selling art outside the virtuality when the pieces are naturally born here.  In the future, I´m hoping for more collectors educated around art and guys like you <3

This week we feature an interview with one of our top collectors Colborn who has collected 352 artworks on SuperRare as of June, 2020.

Naturally it’s difficult to pick a favorite, but immediate to recognize the extraordinary talent and deep symbolism that Glass Crane imbues in each of his work.  My journey into his world began with ATLAS, so perhaps it is best to start our discussion there.  I always appreciate and am attracted to pieces that push the perceived and assumed aesthetics of an artist’s previous body of work.  Perhaps that is me recognizing their growth, their risk-taking, and wanting to support and be included in that journey with them.

I think this piece is more open, natural (palm trees!) and human-centric, emphasized by its use of bright, iridescent coloring and abandonment of the pervasive, binding tentacles.  The Sock and Buskin masks ground it in emotion and are a far departure from previous cybernetic themes.  I feel the camera path taking us through a life’s journey of comedic and tragic experiences, these imposing figures pushing down on us, the observer.  At the end, initially unseen and rising from the ground, is a haunting and seemingly impenetrable mask of tragedy.  Yet the viewer breaks through this with ease.  And here you’re almost presented with two options; initially gesturing for you to consider becoming the small, broken individual figure in an empty artificial landscape reminiscent of Bal Harbor or Rodeo Drive shopping malls.  Ultimately, the choice is made to rise above and carry the sum weight of these experiences, stoic, unscathed, and larger than life.  Synthesizing your comedic/tragic journey, you become Atlas holding the heavens, punished yet perseverant.

There’s nothing I can say about glass crane that isn’t already showcased in his artwork.  The guy is seriously next-level talented, that shines through in abundance and you’d be crazy not to believe in him.  

First and Foremost I collect what I like.  I seek images that trigger my subconscious and express what I cannot put into words.  The body of the collection becomes a symbolic manifestation of the many disparate and diverse elements of my personality. On DEFENSE NODE, Glass Crane put the HP Lovecraft quote “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”  I think my collecting ultimately is a futile effort to do such but I do find it meditative and healing to try and weave these unique pieces created by others into a larger expressive whole that embodies “myself”. 

When I put on my M○C△ goggles, I look for pieces that might carry historical importance; those that capture the essence or significance of a particular moment in time or wave within cryptoart, artists across genres that were particularly early adopters (everyone here is!), those that implement novel techniques, or those that are just particularly exceptional at their specific craft.  I like artists who continue to evolve their style and aren’t bound to the success of previous pieces.  I have an affinity for, and identify strongly with, people who are not full-time artists, but have channeled creativity as an outlet to express information gained in other endeavours.  I like finding artists and pieces that nobody else has touched and saying ‘hey I see this, I think this is important’ (thank you to @thedruid for being the absolute king of this, having probably spent more on gas than he has on art, and having a collection worthy of serious envy).  I appreciate high contrasting elements, conflicting themes, the intersection of analog and digital, and those pieces that spark a conversation, question reality, or provide glimpses into the future. 

I have a real soft spot for what @ambiguous is doing; the art is really funny and makes me laugh every single time I see it, I appreciate that and think it’s incredibly unique. 

I wrote a manifesto on why everyone, especially artists, need to come into virtual reality as soon as possible.  It is a true void of infinite possibilities, of which you are (or should be) one.  If you do not have the ability to at this time and would like to, please consider this and open invite to contact us and together we’ll figure out a way to get you involved. 

We are world-building in a place where there are no rules, no physics, no history, no prejudice or judgment, we can disregard in full the structured, regimented practices of the old world and start fresh.  Blockchain gave us the tools to have open economies and we can bring those into an open, persistent world and begin to value in full those with childlike imagination and creativity.  It is truly the manifest destiny of the digital citizen.  You can be anyone, shapeshift at will, and experiment with the very nature of your own personhood.  The first time you step into a virtual experience of your own creation, it’s incredibly freeing, an unspeakable feeling of power at your own ability to manifest a vision.  The timeline in closing the loop from ideation to creation to experience is incredibly fast and addictive.  For VR artists to be able to take their own creation off of 2D screens and be surrounded in the experience of their own art must be a real thrill.

Ultimately our goal with M○C△ is to ask the question “what would a world look like if it was created with artists at the center?”.  I have a suspicion that not only would it just be incredibly beautiful and visually stunning, but it would foster a culture that is more loving, accepting, and tolerant.  Your worth will be defined in your ability to imagine, collaborate, and implement.  I think that together we can create experiences so powerful that they will be healing on many levels.  I believe it will provide a welcome respite from the deep fractures of our current physical paradigm.  And in virtual reality we can experiment endlessly and take the multitude of lessons learned about ourselves, societal structure, and creative economies back into the “real” world.  A lot of my thinking in this area was informed by Hakim Bey’s “T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone” and if you haven’t already, I would strongly encourage all to give it a read.

It’s been a fun, wonderful, and mysterious adventure.  I would like to thank Steve Wand for some wonderful conversations that pulled me deeper into NFTs.  Josie for first showing me the power of cryptoart and how the physical can merge with the digital and augmented reality experiences.  Also sincere gratitude to my partners in the M○C△ project Pablo and Desi for their relentless pursuit of a greater expression and higher truths, and for continuing to push me way out of my comfort zone into VR, 3D printing, and all these beautiful emerging technologies which are empowering individuals to create more freely.

It’s just a truly humbling and inspiring community.  It feels like home to be with so many people who want to experiment, push boundaries, and evolve together.  Everyone is just bursting at the seams with so much positive energy.  Something truly special is happening here, something worth preserving and not preverting with preconceived notions of what it should be.  It’s hard to put into words, but i think we all are experiencing a similar feeling in many ways and I hope we can collectively keep leaning into that, trusting and stewarding with integrity the idea of a more democratic participation in art. 

Echoing Timothy May’s The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, and the idea that “reputations will be of central importance”, we must continue to be conscious of the minutiae of our behaviors, the calling out of bad actors, and the rooting out of those who seek individual profit over long-term collective vision.  The stakes are high and the opportunity I’ve tried to express above is incredibly real.  SuperRare is super cool, I genuinely appreciate everyone there, and thank you for this opportunity to share with everyone some of my thoughts.