Bloons
Quote from CohentheWriter on 2. May 2022, 23:10Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/permanent-collection?collection=0xb932a70a57673d89f4acffbe830e8ed7f75fb9e0&token=14654&page=2
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/bloons-14654
Date Minted: October 13, 2020
Artist Description: Over the course of my career, many of my artworks have been censored or deleted from my social media portfolios for explicit content violations. Both Instagram and Facebook have flagged my account, making it almost impossible to release new artworks to their platforms. This is my first release from the "Banned From The Internet" series. This series will feature all of my banned artworks and will be exclusively released on SR. Grab them while you still can 🙂
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
This could be the most physically jarring piece in our permanent collection. I remember perusing MOCA’s gallery long before I was an employee, and this piece jumped immediately out to me. I had no frame of reference for it; didn’t know Slime Sunday, didn’t know Crypto Art, had no comparisons or juxtapositions. I knew only that this, this, was the product of a truly special brain and a truly special talent. Bloons is unlike anything else in Crypto Art, but then again, neither is its artist, Slime Sunday, a prolific graphic artist and controversy-laden social media user. SlimeSunday discusses some of his artistic history in Bloons’ artist description, saying “Over the course of my career, many of my artworks have been censored or deleted from my social media portfolios for explicit content violations. Both Instagram and Facebook have flagged my account, making it almost impossible to release new artworks to their platforms.” One could see why: Bloons is just the kind of off-putting, in-your-face, socially-taboo artwork that gets pearls clutched. It’s graphic, it’s captivating, it’s kind of repulsive, and it’s absolutely brilliant.
And there’s not much going on here either. That is to say, what you see is what you get; there’s no slow unfolding or subtlety here, it’s a smack in the face. The image is dominated by a single female breast, almost parodically idealized. Plump, cascading slowly downward, as a disembodied shoulder and torso take up some of the background behind it. Of course, the breast itself isn’t the most intriguing quality, but the nipple at its edge, which has been transposed with the circular tip of a tied-off balloon, wrapped —pinched even— in a string, which floats and loops off the edge of the image. In the back, clouds placidly float by. And that’s it; that’s the image.
But that doesn’t do justice to the scope, the size, the color. If nothing else, it’s rare to see such an overtly taboo image presented here with 0 of the underlying sexuality it might otherwise contain. The image is zoomed in so much and presented so oblong-ly, that it takes almost all of the greater female form out of the image, and when isolated from the rest of the body, the single breast appears odd, disconnected, without any of the lascivious association it necessarily has (especially in a male dominated field) when traditionally objectified. It has been objectified here, but in a knowing and ironic way. The reduction of the thing from a body part into a nearly free-standing item. The addition of bright, neon colors. The physical transformation from body part to piece of plastic, to less than just plastic, to disposable plastic, the kind of object a child might haphazardly let loose into the wind, receiving hardly any admonishment from their parent for doing so. The female breast, with all its various connotations coalesced down into it, reduced to the complete worthlessness of disposable plastic.
There’s a linguistic phenomenon called Semantic Satiation, something that happens mentally where a word, spoken aloud repetitiously, begins to lose its meaning, becoming a collection of syllables and phonemes more than a meaningful word. The more I look at Bloons, the more this seems to happen pictorially. Perhaps it’s the association with the balloon, or perhaps it’s just the angle with which it is shown, the hegemony it has over the image, the lack of body with which to ground it, but the breast seems less a breast than a standalone, unassociated object. Considering such an ubiquitous image within the context, where all that context has been forcibly taken away, leaves us to honestly consider whether we’re looking at a breast augmented with balloon imagery or a balloon augmented with the image of a breast.
SlimeSunday is obviously an intelligent artist; balloons are one of a common objectifying materials used to historically describe breasts. So this isn’t just a picture of the female form objectified, it’s a picture of the same form objectified according to the patriarchal language that men have traditionally used to reduce women to their attributes. Elsewhere in his oeuvre, SlimeSunday expands on this theme, using other traditionally-sexist connotations, which I’ll leave you to imagine for yourself.
And yet, I’m struggling to find more to say about this piece. Perhaps that’s a result of its shock value aesthetic. This is a piece that seems designed to capture attention, to draw eyes, as opposed to holding them. And yet I find it lingering in my head, an image so unique and perturbing that it becomes instantly memorable, the kind of thing that sits in your subconscious, sits in your stomach, and comes roaring out of you at unforeseeable moments. Art can be just this: a shock, a gasp, a hangdog jaw. To create anything wholly unique after all this art history, with such a fantastic glut of new art arriving in the public sphere everyday, is a triumph in and of itself. To add to that triumph a clear and concise social commentary on the nature of female objectification, now we’re approaching the realm of the extremely impressive. But the way this piece sticks with you, the way it demands to be shared and shown and discussed, that displays an uncommon energy. This piece pulses with its artist’s irreverent energy. And getting that kind of personality, perspective, and purpose down into a single art piece is a rare feat. Yet SlimeSunday achieves it masterfully.Â
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/bloons-14654
Date Minted: October 13, 2020
Artist Description: Over the course of my career, many of my artworks have been censored or deleted from my social media portfolios for explicit content violations. Both Instagram and Facebook have flagged my account, making it almost impossible to release new artworks to their platforms. This is my first release from the "Banned From The Internet" series. This series will feature all of my banned artworks and will be exclusively released on SR. Grab them while you still can 🙂
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
This could be the most physically jarring piece in our permanent collection. I remember perusing MOCA’s gallery long before I was an employee, and this piece jumped immediately out to me. I had no frame of reference for it; didn’t know Slime Sunday, didn’t know Crypto Art, had no comparisons or juxtapositions. I knew only that this, this, was the product of a truly special brain and a truly special talent. Bloons is unlike anything else in Crypto Art, but then again, neither is its artist, Slime Sunday, a prolific graphic artist and controversy-laden social media user. SlimeSunday discusses some of his artistic history in Bloons’ artist description, saying “Over the course of my career, many of my artworks have been censored or deleted from my social media portfolios for explicit content violations. Both Instagram and Facebook have flagged my account, making it almost impossible to release new artworks to their platforms.” One could see why: Bloons is just the kind of off-putting, in-your-face, socially-taboo artwork that gets pearls clutched. It’s graphic, it’s captivating, it’s kind of repulsive, and it’s absolutely brilliant.
And there’s not much going on here either. That is to say, what you see is what you get; there’s no slow unfolding or subtlety here, it’s a smack in the face. The image is dominated by a single female breast, almost parodically idealized. Plump, cascading slowly downward, as a disembodied shoulder and torso take up some of the background behind it. Of course, the breast itself isn’t the most intriguing quality, but the nipple at its edge, which has been transposed with the circular tip of a tied-off balloon, wrapped —pinched even— in a string, which floats and loops off the edge of the image. In the back, clouds placidly float by. And that’s it; that’s the image.
But that doesn’t do justice to the scope, the size, the color. If nothing else, it’s rare to see such an overtly taboo image presented here with 0 of the underlying sexuality it might otherwise contain. The image is zoomed in so much and presented so oblong-ly, that it takes almost all of the greater female form out of the image, and when isolated from the rest of the body, the single breast appears odd, disconnected, without any of the lascivious association it necessarily has (especially in a male dominated field) when traditionally objectified. It has been objectified here, but in a knowing and ironic way. The reduction of the thing from a body part into a nearly free-standing item. The addition of bright, neon colors. The physical transformation from body part to piece of plastic, to less than just plastic, to disposable plastic, the kind of object a child might haphazardly let loose into the wind, receiving hardly any admonishment from their parent for doing so. The female breast, with all its various connotations coalesced down into it, reduced to the complete worthlessness of disposable plastic.
There’s a linguistic phenomenon called Semantic Satiation, something that happens mentally where a word, spoken aloud repetitiously, begins to lose its meaning, becoming a collection of syllables and phonemes more than a meaningful word. The more I look at Bloons, the more this seems to happen pictorially. Perhaps it’s the association with the balloon, or perhaps it’s just the angle with which it is shown, the hegemony it has over the image, the lack of body with which to ground it, but the breast seems less a breast than a standalone, unassociated object. Considering such an ubiquitous image within the context, where all that context has been forcibly taken away, leaves us to honestly consider whether we’re looking at a breast augmented with balloon imagery or a balloon augmented with the image of a breast.
SlimeSunday is obviously an intelligent artist; balloons are one of a common objectifying materials used to historically describe breasts. So this isn’t just a picture of the female form objectified, it’s a picture of the same form objectified according to the patriarchal language that men have traditionally used to reduce women to their attributes. Elsewhere in his oeuvre, SlimeSunday expands on this theme, using other traditionally-sexist connotations, which I’ll leave you to imagine for yourself.
And yet, I’m struggling to find more to say about this piece. Perhaps that’s a result of its shock value aesthetic. This is a piece that seems designed to capture attention, to draw eyes, as opposed to holding them. And yet I find it lingering in my head, an image so unique and perturbing that it becomes instantly memorable, the kind of thing that sits in your subconscious, sits in your stomach, and comes roaring out of you at unforeseeable moments. Art can be just this: a shock, a gasp, a hangdog jaw. To create anything wholly unique after all this art history, with such a fantastic glut of new art arriving in the public sphere everyday, is a triumph in and of itself. To add to that triumph a clear and concise social commentary on the nature of female objectification, now we’re approaching the realm of the extremely impressive. But the way this piece sticks with you, the way it demands to be shared and shown and discussed, that displays an uncommon energy. This piece pulses with its artist’s irreverent energy. And getting that kind of personality, perspective, and purpose down into a single art piece is a rare feat. Yet SlimeSunday achieves it masterfully.Â