Divinity Complex #1
Quote from CohentheWriter on 29. August 2022, 2:57Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430&token=40841&page=4
Source Link: https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430/40841
Date Minted: October 11, 2020
Artist Description: Elevated to Lesser Spirit
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
Looking at Mark Constantine Inducil’s work is like looking into the artist’s split-open skull. Sometimes that’s a really overt insinuation, with pieces that include human heads literally split open, shapes and objects and all manner of matter spilling out. But even when it’s not actually composed that way, it’s easy to get the sense —from Inducil’s collage-like evocations of dream inanity— that we’re taking a peak under the hood (perhaps illicitly) of the artist’s cranium, watching as his mind associates objects, colors, textures, and shapes in real time. It’s like Inducil trains his artistry upon a starting point, be it a color or idea, and simply allows himself to free-associate, the aspects of every composition seeming to physically spill out of a central point and collect, under sway of gravity, down towards the bottom of their frames. Such an effect is present in so many of Inducil’s works, and it’s present here in Divinity Complex #1. Here, Inducil has created a soft-spoken but somehow casino-like environment, managing to straddle a fine line between energy and passivity. Perhaps the effect depends on where you look first, and the effect of the piece mirrors your initial interaction with it, just as its composition seems to have resulted from whatever item Inducil first put onto page, so to speak. Perhaps it changes with each new glance. Perhaps that tight-rope walk is an eternal one, not always present in Inducil’s works, but, honestly, present much more than you’d expect. Divinity Complex #1 —a precursor by a few months to the artist’s entire SuperRare oeuvre for example— is a kind of declaration of intent by Inducil, or if not that, then a tacit statement of direction. We can see so much of Divinity Complex #1 in the works that were to come thereafter, and even as Inducil continues experimenting today, recently minting work with a much more playful and daytime-colorful scope, the compositional strategies of Divinity Complex #1 remain, and its incredible memorability does as well.
Is it truly a divinity complex if the actor in questions can create things real and tangible? I suppose it’s a moot point, because the divine cranium at the center of Divinity Complex #1 is creating the world it exclusively exists in, and it’s not like we can touch it, or gauge its reality beyond our sense of sight; we have to take the frame’s (and artist’s) word for it. I wonder: Why isn’t a thought more real than an object? Both are fleeting, guaranteed to decay and disintegrate, but just at much different speeds. Why is my imagined conversation with Albert Camus less “real” than a budding mushroom, especially if that budding mushroom is considered as “real” as a planet, two bodies with much different rates of ruin? Look at that giant highly-segmented head at the center of Divinity Complex #1 —some of its sections blue, others as transparent as the internal foundation of a cathedral, some psychedelic, and some orange, and others still yellow red blue, laced with multicolored lipstick, shining with too many hues to quantify— and wonder whether all those creations littered around it are real, at least relative to the head itself. And what does emerge from the head? A halo of tiny red triangles. A cloudburst wrapping itself around forehead, around neck, around covered torso. A bouquet of blue flowers. A red, neon “X.” A bushel of red flowers, tucked into the crevices between a cluster of abstract silvery circles, all of them emerging from the back of the head’s neck. There are other, less easily-categorized items present. Some kind of red goop. Floating, disco-ball-emulating marbles. Blue circle and green trees and tie-dyed surfaces.
But that’s the rub, right? Within Divinity Complex #1 are all these half-formed, semi-abstract objects. It’s not a matter of what’s real and what’s not real, it’s a matter of watching things in the process of becoming real in the first place. Look closely at all these disparate items. They’re more than mere ideas: They have real color, weight, shape, volume. But all they can yet do is mimic certain characteristics of other things, so-called “more real” objects which we can assign specific name or use or connotation to. Almost everything here is too abstract —even the flowers seem, from some angles, scaly or organically unspecific— to “be” in a traditional sense. They are emerging, as is the cranium behind them, which seems completely calm and at ease (very potentially sleeping) as the world around them is created. Talk about a divinity complex. Though the better question is: If the dreamer knows not of their divinity, then who is elevating them to such a level? The artist by his insistence, or we by our acceptance?
Such spiritual and philosophical issues appear and disappear from within Divinity Complex #1 with startling ease. We grasp them, these truly high-minded concepts, for moments, but they submerge themselves once again, taking on the characteristics of the items in the piece itself: half-formed, only vaguely recognizable. Others pop up out of the neurological waters to replace them, and we see a fin, a tentacle, a blowhole, but only for a fleeting second.
Divinity Complex #1, by all appearances an artwork about ideas themselves, is adept at making them. Ideas, that is. And at making us look at them. Teaching us how to look at them! At making us aware of them as they truly are: Weird, sometimes dripping, but swirling around us at all times, too fast for us to truly grab hold of. And then, poof, new ones in their stead. What were we chasing in the first place?
Source Link: https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430/40841
Date Minted: October 11, 2020
Artist Description: Elevated to Lesser Spirit
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
Looking at Mark Constantine Inducil’s work is like looking into the artist’s split-open skull. Sometimes that’s a really overt insinuation, with pieces that include human heads literally split open, shapes and objects and all manner of matter spilling out. But even when it’s not actually composed that way, it’s easy to get the sense —from Inducil’s collage-like evocations of dream inanity— that we’re taking a peak under the hood (perhaps illicitly) of the artist’s cranium, watching as his mind associates objects, colors, textures, and shapes in real time. It’s like Inducil trains his artistry upon a starting point, be it a color or idea, and simply allows himself to free-associate, the aspects of every composition seeming to physically spill out of a central point and collect, under sway of gravity, down towards the bottom of their frames. Such an effect is present in so many of Inducil’s works, and it’s present here in Divinity Complex #1. Here, Inducil has created a soft-spoken but somehow casino-like environment, managing to straddle a fine line between energy and passivity. Perhaps the effect depends on where you look first, and the effect of the piece mirrors your initial interaction with it, just as its composition seems to have resulted from whatever item Inducil first put onto page, so to speak. Perhaps it changes with each new glance. Perhaps that tight-rope walk is an eternal one, not always present in Inducil’s works, but, honestly, present much more than you’d expect. Divinity Complex #1 —a precursor by a few months to the artist’s entire SuperRare oeuvre for example— is a kind of declaration of intent by Inducil, or if not that, then a tacit statement of direction. We can see so much of Divinity Complex #1 in the works that were to come thereafter, and even as Inducil continues experimenting today, recently minting work with a much more playful and daytime-colorful scope, the compositional strategies of Divinity Complex #1 remain, and its incredible memorability does as well.
Is it truly a divinity complex if the actor in questions can create things real and tangible? I suppose it’s a moot point, because the divine cranium at the center of Divinity Complex #1 is creating the world it exclusively exists in, and it’s not like we can touch it, or gauge its reality beyond our sense of sight; we have to take the frame’s (and artist’s) word for it. I wonder: Why isn’t a thought more real than an object? Both are fleeting, guaranteed to decay and disintegrate, but just at much different speeds. Why is my imagined conversation with Albert Camus less “real” than a budding mushroom, especially if that budding mushroom is considered as “real” as a planet, two bodies with much different rates of ruin? Look at that giant highly-segmented head at the center of Divinity Complex #1 —some of its sections blue, others as transparent as the internal foundation of a cathedral, some psychedelic, and some orange, and others still yellow red blue, laced with multicolored lipstick, shining with too many hues to quantify— and wonder whether all those creations littered around it are real, at least relative to the head itself. And what does emerge from the head? A halo of tiny red triangles. A cloudburst wrapping itself around forehead, around neck, around covered torso. A bouquet of blue flowers. A red, neon “X.” A bushel of red flowers, tucked into the crevices between a cluster of abstract silvery circles, all of them emerging from the back of the head’s neck. There are other, less easily-categorized items present. Some kind of red goop. Floating, disco-ball-emulating marbles. Blue circle and green trees and tie-dyed surfaces.
But that’s the rub, right? Within Divinity Complex #1 are all these half-formed, semi-abstract objects. It’s not a matter of what’s real and what’s not real, it’s a matter of watching things in the process of becoming real in the first place. Look closely at all these disparate items. They’re more than mere ideas: They have real color, weight, shape, volume. But all they can yet do is mimic certain characteristics of other things, so-called “more real” objects which we can assign specific name or use or connotation to. Almost everything here is too abstract —even the flowers seem, from some angles, scaly or organically unspecific— to “be” in a traditional sense. They are emerging, as is the cranium behind them, which seems completely calm and at ease (very potentially sleeping) as the world around them is created. Talk about a divinity complex. Though the better question is: If the dreamer knows not of their divinity, then who is elevating them to such a level? The artist by his insistence, or we by our acceptance?
Such spiritual and philosophical issues appear and disappear from within Divinity Complex #1 with startling ease. We grasp them, these truly high-minded concepts, for moments, but they submerge themselves once again, taking on the characteristics of the items in the piece itself: half-formed, only vaguely recognizable. Others pop up out of the neurological waters to replace them, and we see a fin, a tentacle, a blowhole, but only for a fleeting second.
Divinity Complex #1, by all appearances an artwork about ideas themselves, is adept at making them. Ideas, that is. And at making us look at them. Teaching us how to look at them! At making us aware of them as they truly are: Weird, sometimes dripping, but swirling around us at all times, too fast for us to truly grab hold of. And then, poof, new ones in their stead. What were we chasing in the first place?