Digital artist Dawid Planeta’s project, “The Minipeople”, tells the story of his depression through art.

“The Minipeople” project started spontaneously during my period of depression back in 2017. Now I know that depression in its core is basically a defense mechanism that activates when you do something that hurts you for a long period of time. It takes away your energy to stop you from doing it. I didn’t know about it then. All I knew is that my happiness was gone and I couldn’t find joy in anything anymore. 

Then something happened. I was killing time in Photoshop to distract myself from thinking and, after creating an image, I realized something was different: a gentle feeling of excitement appeared. I was afraid it would disappear so I kept working to create more images. I didn’t plan to do it. I saw a way out from the darkness and I followed it. I didn’t plan to share these works with anyone. It was my own, personal journey. But once it helped me get out of the shadows, I decided to share it. 

I never create with a clear vision in mind. What I’m more clear about is the emotion I want the picture to evoke. I didn’t have any plans for this series. I just created few pictures and decided to experiment some more with this technique. This is the best way – to learn as you go. It keeps you fascinated, it keeps you inspired. The first picture from the series evolved from my previous experiments – a series of traditional collages, made with paper and scissors. Trying to optimize the process to have more freedom led me to digital editing and later I switched to creating fully in digital. Art is an ongoing process. It’s difficult to see it because people always look at one part of the process at a time.

For me it’s the same question as, “How important do you think is to be yourself and not pretend to be someone else?” Being an artist is not about creating a style but rather about finding it. Or finding yourself.

If you create the way you like, not the way you want, not the way you think you should, then everything you make resembles you in some way. 
Sometimes you will find that your “real” style is quite far away from what you expected it to be. That’s why many people keep trying to find something they already found but they weren’t happy about it.

The secret is not to try to “come up with ideas”.

I just do what feels right, I follow my intuition. I’m not often inspired with visual art. Most of my inspirations are unconscious, but if I were to point some directions I would say mythology, psychology, spirituality, music, shamanism, poetry.

The process of creating art is very much connected with my own definition of art as “creating a space for a spirit to emerge”. And that’s exactly how I work. I create a space and wait for the spirit to come and take over the process. It’s not as easy as it may sound, because the spirit is like a wild animal – you never know what kind of space will encourage it to come closer. 

It takes a lot of patience, but it’s definitely worth it.

I don’t deal with that. Those “blocks” are just information that there are some other areas that you should focus on at the moment. It may be a problem if you see everything as straight lines, but if you see reality more as a map than you understand that some other part of the map needs to develop right now, which will also help you to understand why you seem to be “blocked” on that particular path. So I guess I’m dealing with it by not dealing with it. And what is most important is not to fight with it – this idea of being “blocked” is only in your mind, and fighting against part of yourself is never a good idea.

Definitely. When it comes to the quote, it often takes a long time to find the right one. A quote works as a hint to turn your mind in a specific direction. It helps you interpret the work within a certain mental landscape. It also helps you see the work with a certain mindset. It helps you not to get lost in countless possibilities of interpreting the work. I don’t want a quote to explain the picture or to repeat what the picture is already saying. I want it to continue the story, helping it to expand. It has to be not too far and not too close to the message of the picture. I want them to complete each other. 

By Dave Krugman,

For me, communication is a deeply visual language, regardless of the medium. A photograph is rich with meaning and depth of feeling, our stories are stratified in layers of light.

Writing has always held that same depth of experience for me, words are a scaffolding for the imagination to build upon. Just as I use my camera to explore and render images from the external world around me, I use my language to draw out worlds from within.

This visual ebb and flow between words and images has always been at the core of my creative practice, and I am excited to let those worlds overlap in this serialized body of work, a cyberpunk inspired, neo noir collection focused on the beating heart of creative culture- New York City.

This body of work represents my best images from a decade of candid street photography and exploration of the illuminated structure of the city I call home.

The Purpose

I’m astounded by the potential of blockchain to change the creative relationship with the internet. After all, the internet without art is an empty framework, it is the designers, artists, coders, and communities that make the metaverse a place worth being. To me, an NFT represents so much more than just a piece of art on the blockchain. They are the keys that unlock the true value of our global interconnectivity, they are tokens of our mutual support, symbols of the symbiosis between creatives and their communities.

To that end, the proceeds from my sales from this first series on SuperRare will go to support the creative community I’m building at ALLSHIPS. 80 percent will go to support development for our creative community ALLSHIPS.CO, and 20 percent will be put into an ALLSHIPS Artist Fund.

The first piece in this series is a candid photography, taken at the confluence of so many circumstances. A rare foggy night on the Brooklyn Bridge, beams of light cutting through the haze- after a few hours of incredible atmosphere, I was able to create this street photograph of two strangers- 100 percent in camera. In the metadata, a story unfolds:

Of course I remember her. We burned so bright we crumbled, like a glacier cleaving, melting as we drifted out to sea. When I think of all the reasons I loved her, her laughter stood out the most, how it rose from some unknown place, to rise and pop on the surface like bubbles in champagne.

But her glow was the dark sort of light, the flash of fireflies, of glowworms, the phosphorescent blooms that trace the shorelines of undiscovered islands.

Within these concrete canyons, above, below, and under it all, there are many thousands of memories, deeply kept in the hearts of those who hold them. Memories can change, and do, for they are as malleable as the minds that make them. But the ones that hold, the moments that rise like peaks through the low fog of time, are the moments that will change you.

Carolina Sarria Born in Cali, Colombia, Carolina Sarria is the definition of where art and design intersects with fashion.  Influences from her personal references including her freehand illustration and mixed materials appear regularly in Carolina Sarria collections, content and media.  Her most recent work includes a year-long collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts garnering attention and press from the fashion and art world alike.  Carolina Sarria’s work signifies confidence, self-expression, and individuality. carolinasarria.com  | instagram.com/carolinasarrianyc/

Giselle Angeles AKA Fragmatista is a New Media artist and 3D Motion designer. Her work explores digital worlds, immersive experiences, 3D visuals and creative design. Giselle has been creating Multimedia Installations and Immersive experiences for different brands, Gallery Shows. Her work has been included in ZAZ 10 Times Square, MUTEK Festival, Fubiz, Adidas Originals, Vogue, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia w/ Annais Yucra, NEO SHIBUYA TV, One Times Square. instagram.com/fragmatista/ | giselleangeles.com/

In an exploration of fluidity within society, artists Carolina Sarria and Giselle Angeles use digital art, 3d animation, and fashion to propel non-binary models into their environments.  Humans are liquefied in their respective worlds, as light and time bend around them to reflect everlasting transformation. 

These works will be on sale at an up-coming event spotlighting Carolina Sarria’s most recent year-long collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation honoring the legacy of activist Marsha P Johnson. Carolina saria’s event will be on May 15 in Savannah, Georgia.

Q1: What was your creative path of the ‘Embraces’ series?

A1: ‘Embraces’ series was started in 2005. I finished the first collection in 2008 which was exhibited in public organizations in Washington, D.C. in 2009 and collected by the Library of Congress and other institutions. Then, around 2013, I started my art residency at Swatch Art Peace in Shanghai. During that period of time, I explored a large number of different art forms which helped me to further develop the ‘Embraces’ series, and I have completed a new collection of more than 100 pieces. This part of the work is based on small round paper and silk painting, which is what we call sketch. At the same time, I also tried the same ‘huggie’ figure into sculpture, porcelain, and animation works, which were exhibited in Shanghai. I always think there is still potential space for exploration in this series, so from then on, I have made more attempts in schemas and images, and formed my current works in the third stage.

A2: The spiritual connotation of traditional Chinese landscape painting, in my understanding, contains a state of reflecting the human heart with heaven and earth. At the beginning of my ‘Embraces’ series, I wanted to connect people and nature more intuitively. According to Taoism, the world is a big universe, and the human body is a small universe. I always believe that there is a connection between the two. Therefore, embracing represents the spiritual connotation and value orientation of “unity of man and nature”, appreciating seclusion and the true meaning of the scenery with a clear mental state. The way people behave with each other echoes with mountains and rivers. I hope this part of the work is full of warmth, closeness, trust, dependence, mutual assistance, and positive attitude. In this context, the landscape should be a symbol of a purified spiritual world. In the continuous experiments of ‘Embraces’ series, I found that the harmony between man and nature and between man and man is the ideal direction I want to pursue, however, conflicts always exist in this world. I wanted to interpret this schema in many ways, so the following series of works came into being. The thing I always tend to express is not a pessimistic attitude that people are essentially lonely, but a state in which people are essentially trying to resist loneliness, a state in which positivity is mixed all the time.

A3: Those works were created by chance. It took me about half a year establishing this expression. During my art residency at Swatch Art Peace, I learned from a large number of works in various forms, such as photography, graffiti, new media, etc. I felt that my work needed a more dimensional way of explaining concepts. After trying some mediums such as sculpture, installation, porcelain and so on, I think there are still some shortcomings — the strength of the work brought by those mediums is relatively weak, and they are unable to express the concept of combining contradiction and unity. So, I chose to make the picture move. This is actually a bold attempt, because it is completely different from the artistic philosophy of traditional Chinese ink painting. It is no longer implicit but transformed into a more straightforward direction. However, I am not willing to give up traditional Chinese ink painting, so I decide not to make animation as my purpose of artistic creation. What I would like to do is to pick a few out of about a hundred pieces and moved on to the animation stage. I also spent a lot of energy on how to animate: I don’t want the work to be like a common animation style since normal style is not suitable for the Chinese classical ink painting. I hope the animation can still let people find out the hand-painted traces which comes out those playful but simple figures in a digital work with a hand-painted texture.

A4: This may be a new phase in history of art, or, to put it conservatively, the harbinger of a new phase. It is well known that there were several major stages in the development of art: the era of Renaissance technique, the era of the luminescence of masters like Picasso, Van Gogh and Monet, and the era of Duchamp with his ‘Fountain’. In these stages, there are many things that have changed, and the generalization of art category is undoubtedly a very important point. This is where I identify with NFT. It guides artists to create with an attitude that belongs to or to some extent is ahead of the times. I’m just an artist, and I don’t know much about blockchain or crypto, but from my perspective, NFT can operate smoothly on the basis of normalizing the ‘uniqueness’ and ‘value’ of artworks, which is undoubtedly in line with my attitude towards art — originality, exploration, and spiritual value. As an artist, I think NFT provides a special kind of guarantee. I always say that art should not be controlled by money, and here’s the point: first of all, I want artists to be free from pressure to create. An artist like Van Gogh should be able to make a living. Secondly, artists cannot just create arts for profit. We should always be in a state of creative exploration for more advanced, unknown ideas, rather than succumbing to the market, being dedicated to think about ‘how can I sell my paintings more expensive’. From this point, I think NFT is a platform that can provide a kind of assurance. It ensures that artists are not bound by art forms: many art forms are not well recognized and accepted by the public, such as performance art, graffiti, etc. There is always a burden in the mind of the artist when he creates this kind of work. For example, when I was preparing to create this animated ‘Embraces’ series, I had already made the psychological preparation that I would only exhibit them in some way instead of selling them. However, this will undoubtedly affect the enthusiasm of artists to create more or less subconsciously. NFT provides a more relaxing and free creative community. Second, NFT has high tolerance with fantasies. There are a lot of works that have not been truly understood by the public during this time, but that doesn’t stop them from circulating on the chain. The preservation ability of the chain, allowing those works to wait until they are understood one day in the near future, which is fortunate for contemporary artists for sure.

With two series of unique digital portraits sold-out on SuperRare, Vini Naso is launching his latest series that literally hits close to home.

“The Minipeople” project started spontaneously during my period of depression back in 2017. Now I know that depression in its core is basically a defense mechanism that activates when you do something that hurts you for a long period of time. It takes away your energy to stop you from doing it. I didn’t know about it then. All I knew is that my happiness was gone and I couldn’t find joy in anything anymore. 

The spectacle of the bate-bolas fascinated and terrified me as a kid, and certainly inspired my artistic view of the world.  In this series I wanted to channel all the raw energy: the sounds, colours and shapes from my childhood memories and re-imagine the costumes as artworks.  It is an ode to the almost unknown vibrant culture that explodes in the peripheries of Brazilian carnaval while the spotlight and cameras turn to the more bourgeois festivities. 

In my art practice, I often draw upon influences from mythology and folk-art giving it a modern/anachronistic twist.   From mask to shoes, every detail was designed with the intention to explore and share this rich culture.  In the process of diving deep into every detail, I unearthed the feeling of putting on a bate-bola mask for the first time: how the costume allowed me to express myself more freely.    I hope this series provokes thoughts about identity that people across all cultures can relate to.   What does it mean to be yourself and why does it matter? How many versions of you are there?

How does life change when you choose to be unapologetic yourself?

Give someone a mask and they can be themselves.

@DANIELLISMORE