ART MARKET June 2024: Highlights & Staff Picks
June is closing, and we’re wrapping up with a quick recap of this month’s stats from Fakewhale Gallery’s ART MARKET on objkt.com.
We’re also excited to spotlight our staff’s top picks from June, each chosen for its standout creativity and powerful impact. Here’s what made our list.
Handpicked Favorites
1. Catharsis by da täste
In “Catharsis,” da täste, an Argentine digital artist, channels raw introspection into a powerful visual narrative.
The solitary figure draped in a cloak set against the backdrop of a starlit sky encapsulates the profound isolation that accompanies self-reflection, mirroring the turbulence of confronting one’s flaws in moments of solitude.
The piece’s title and accompanying quote, “If my minutes seem like centuries when you leave, it’s because when I stay alone I see all my idiocy,” further act as a meditation on the passage of time and the clarity it brings, regardless of how harsh.
2. Temptations Ahead by Naturlichturism
Naturlichturism, an artist “surfing the chaos” featured “Temptations Ahead” — a piece encapsulating his unique fusion of collage, drawing, and digital painting.
Engaging with themes of desire and consequence through a visual landscape punctuated by vibrant splashes of color and disjointed lines, it reflects the often fragmented nature of our decision-making processes in a world saturated with endless options.
3. Phantom Limb by Ilya Shkipin
Ilya Shkipin, an artist who blends new technology with traditional expressionism, featured “Phantom Limb,” a powerful exploration of identity and memory.
A spectral figure within a room, captures the essence of what it feels like to be haunted by what’s absent. Perhaps the ‘phantom limb’ of her old identities, each layer a story of what’s been shed and reshaped.
4. Fructose Chase by Parsa Mostaghim
Parsa Mostaghim, a bold experimental artist from Istanbul, crafts vivid scenes that meld the abstract with the minutely detailed, as seen in “Fructose Chase.”
Here anthropomorphized fruits are engaged in a spirited race, combining elements of humor with a surreal depiction of natural survival tactics: a muscular tomato and a swift peach epitomizing the struggle for dominance, each fruit animated with human-like vitality.
5. Mechanical beauty by Kenva
Kenva, a digital artist with a passion for anime, retro styles, and comics, explores the intersection of human emotion and artificial intelligence in “Mechanical Beauty.”
In an exploration of synthetic sentience, it portrays a face that merges organic beauty with mechanical complexity, set against a backdrop of delicate white flowers that contrast sharply with the stark machinery. The fusion of flesh and metal bleeds a literal and metaphorical red, suggesting deep emotional and physical integration. In a similar way, lush florals set against the cold, hard metal evoke a sense of conflict and harmony within the subject, reflecting the dual nature of their existence.
6. Followers by Yigo
Yigo, a digital artist who works between monochrome and glitch art, featured “Followers,” an hypnotizing piece that makes use of digital distortion to explore the anonymity and uniformity that can pervade our online personas.
Here, shadowy figures moving against a glitched, monochrome background that flickers with digital noise, suggesting the transient and often fragmented identities we adopt on digital platforms — the figures, each stripped of detailed features and blended into their stark, binary landscape, in a way depicting the loss of individuality as digital entities merge into a collective presence.
7. Attempt to Escape by Slava 3ngl
Slava 3ngl, a creator of digital madness and GIF director, engages viewers with his dynamic storytelling through the medium of animated GIFs.
His latest creation, “Attempt to Escape,” unfolds a narrative set in an otherworldly cityscape seemingly invaded by an alien entity that mimics outdated computer technology, blending vintage tech aesthetics with futuristic motifs.
Meanwhile, set against the dusk sky, a silhouette stands in quiet contemplation, contrasting sharply with the chaos of the invasion.
8. Pollution of Flowers by Teux
Teux, an artist from Buenos Aires, featured “Pollution of Flowers,” a piece beautifully integrating elements of digital painting, composition, AI, and collage for a multi-layered composition that captures the complexity of human interaction with nature.
A series of vibrant, swirling colors that represent flowers, are juxtaposed with stark, industrial elements symbolizing pollution. It is segmented into phases, each marked with textual and symbolic annotations that guide the viewer through a progression of environmental impact—from the initial resistance of the flora to the eventual overtaking of harmful effects that dim the vibrant colors and leave the air with a burnt smell.
9. The Joke is on Me. by Rutger van der Tas
Rutger van der Tas, a master of merging worlds, crafts his art at the intersection of the tangible and the immaterial.
This is reflected in “The Joke is on Me.” where Rutger employs a blend of mediums—drawing and painting mesh with digital enhancements—to create a layered narrative. The animation itself is constructed from drawings and prints laid upon a canvas backdrop marked with hatched shades, while AI-generated faces gaze out, challenging the viewer’s perceptions. Two sheets of museum-grade glass holding each element precisely in place, giving the piece an almost sculpture-like depth.
Currently, this work rests in Rutger’s studio at a crucial juncture, symbolizing the artist’s and our own hesitations at the crossroads of life’s constant flux. Will it evolve under strokes of oil paint, or remain as it is, capturing the ephemeral nature of art and existence?
10. Self-Insulation by Viola Rama
As an artist with a rich background in fine art, photography, and graphic design, Viola Rama brings a multidisciplinary approach to her creations, seamlessly moving between the spheres of femininity, identity, and the increasingly blurred lines of posthumanism.
“Self-Insulation”, an amalgamation of AI and photography, emerges from a series of photographic self-portraits transformed through digital alchemy. What we see is not just a figure, but a representation of self-reflection and critique on the modern obsession with perfection and technological integration. In a way this subject—merged with elements that seem both synthetic and organic—invites us to ponder our own boundaries and the interplay between our untouched selves and the engineered personas we project.
As we wrap up June’s staff picks, we invite you to continue following the ART MARKET both via X and our official ART MARKET channel on Farcaster.
fakewhale
Founded in 2021, Fakewhale advocates the digital art market's evolution. Viewing NFT technology as a container for art, and leveraging the expansive scope of digital culture, Fakewhale strives to shape a new ecosystem in which art and technology become the starting point, rather than the final destination.
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