GALACTIC LENS X1
Quote from CohentheWriter on 27. October 2022, 22:16Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430&token=67426&page=5
Source Link: https://rarible.com/token/0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430:67426?tab=overview
Date Minted: October 31, 2020 (Happy Halloween!)
Artist Description: A calligraphic mandala imbued with an ancient power that permeates the galaxy and empowers the viewer.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
Ah, my second mandala artist in 3 days! What a lucky art critic am I, and how lucky we are at the Museum of Crypto Art to have in our Genesis Collection multiple different examples of mandala artists working with different styles but to the same end. The initial piece I’m referring to was Pixel Mandala 001 by Joaquim Mutim, but today we have before us a Mandala of a different kind, MXJXN’s GALACTIC LENS X1. This piece seems to more explicitly codify the kinds of assertions I made when talking about Mutim’s piece, the crux of my argument being that mandalas themselves, though taking on so many different forms, with different colors and internal shapes, all have a kind of permeating spiritual appeal to us, something we connect with instinctively. GALACTIC LENS X1, in both composition and name, recognizes the larger insinuations that such a spiritual association between the human mind and mandalas suggests. MXJXN’s Artist Description reads “A calligraphic mandala imbued with an ancient power that permeates the galaxy and empowers the viewer,” only further emphasizing MXJXN’s own inherent belief that mandalas either possess such power or are conduits which can uniquely communicate it. I’m tempted to dig through the aesthetics of this piece searching for a reason why we might feel such spiritual associations connected with the repetitious shapes which make up a mandala, but I fear I will continue coming up against a brick wall. Or perhaps coming to the edge of a cliff is more like it, nothing but a black ether waiting for me should I jump. Mandalas like GALACTIC LENS X1 may just need to be felt rather than discussed. I’m sure you’re tired of hearing such apologies by now, but I apologize: I’ll be discussing it anyways.
And maybe by doing so, we can find, if not the power behind MXJXN’s mandala, then perhaps some underlying similarities between this and other mandalas of the artist’s creation, or even between mandalas as a general concept. The first thing I noticed about this work is that, despite the onslaught of color and shape, the very center of the piece is bare and empty. Towards the outskirts of the piece, we catch glimpses of a blackish-purple void, and it’s that same void which we see in the center of the mandala, unobstructed by obfuscating shapes. That said, the center void lacks the random purple lines that course sporadically through the void at the mandala’s edges. There seems to be four layers to this mandala, all made up of symbols which repeat again and again (in both the second and third layers, 64 times). Each of these “layers” is an internal composition in its own right, and I suppose we can generally describe the objects that make each layer up a as
1) scimitar-like white and red arcs
2) long, curving, spear-like white and red obelisks
3) four interconnected diamonds
4) glowing blue-and-white diamond pipes.
I know these are rather banal and nonspecific descriptions, but we’re dealing with bizarre and abstract shapes here, and when repeated as much as they are —side-by-side, like individual cards in a fanned-out deck— the shapes bleed into one another, the effect of their wholeness far more striking than their individual compositions anyways. The actual effect of their wholeness, by the way, is an optical illusion, causing us to sense movement in what is actually a static image. Each of the circular mandala’s layers seem pulled in inverse directions: Layer 1 goes this way, 2 that way, 3 this way again, and 4 that way, on until we arrive at the static center. That pull and counter-pull gives the impression of concentric circles moving in the opposite directions of their neighbors.There are two other effects worth mentioning. One is that the inner layers of blue shapes become more defined the longer we look at the piece for a prolonged period, as the outer white shapes bleed into each other and appear flattened. The second is that, after looking at the mandala for some time, should we look away, it remains impressed in our vision for a few moments, transported via afterburn into our ocular nerve.
What I’m finding from this piece is a number of different ways in which MXJXN has found to manipulate our brains, using optical illusion composition and the afterimage effect to get us to recognize the physical processes our brains are actually undertaking when seeing this artwork. Because of that, we begin to feel distant from our brains, like they are fallible machines working in large part on their own, a feeling we tend to ignore for the most part in our lives. But when we are given this slight distance, and we begin to realize that “we” are not our brains, so then we start to wonder…well…what are we? GALACTIC LENS X1 is like an eyeball peering back at us, observing us and making us feel observed. It seems to be watching us, knowing that we have found a new perspective on our own minds —an automatically spiritual experience— and anticipating what we’ll go on to convince ourselves of in the aftermath.
Source Link: https://rarible.com/token/0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430:67426?tab=overview
Date Minted: October 31, 2020 (Happy Halloween!)
Artist Description: A calligraphic mandala imbued with an ancient power that permeates the galaxy and empowers the viewer.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
Ah, my second mandala artist in 3 days! What a lucky art critic am I, and how lucky we are at the Museum of Crypto Art to have in our Genesis Collection multiple different examples of mandala artists working with different styles but to the same end. The initial piece I’m referring to was Pixel Mandala 001 by Joaquim Mutim, but today we have before us a Mandala of a different kind, MXJXN’s GALACTIC LENS X1. This piece seems to more explicitly codify the kinds of assertions I made when talking about Mutim’s piece, the crux of my argument being that mandalas themselves, though taking on so many different forms, with different colors and internal shapes, all have a kind of permeating spiritual appeal to us, something we connect with instinctively. GALACTIC LENS X1, in both composition and name, recognizes the larger insinuations that such a spiritual association between the human mind and mandalas suggests. MXJXN’s Artist Description reads “A calligraphic mandala imbued with an ancient power that permeates the galaxy and empowers the viewer,” only further emphasizing MXJXN’s own inherent belief that mandalas either possess such power or are conduits which can uniquely communicate it. I’m tempted to dig through the aesthetics of this piece searching for a reason why we might feel such spiritual associations connected with the repetitious shapes which make up a mandala, but I fear I will continue coming up against a brick wall. Or perhaps coming to the edge of a cliff is more like it, nothing but a black ether waiting for me should I jump. Mandalas like GALACTIC LENS X1 may just need to be felt rather than discussed. I’m sure you’re tired of hearing such apologies by now, but I apologize: I’ll be discussing it anyways.
And maybe by doing so, we can find, if not the power behind MXJXN’s mandala, then perhaps some underlying similarities between this and other mandalas of the artist’s creation, or even between mandalas as a general concept. The first thing I noticed about this work is that, despite the onslaught of color and shape, the very center of the piece is bare and empty. Towards the outskirts of the piece, we catch glimpses of a blackish-purple void, and it’s that same void which we see in the center of the mandala, unobstructed by obfuscating shapes. That said, the center void lacks the random purple lines that course sporadically through the void at the mandala’s edges. There seems to be four layers to this mandala, all made up of symbols which repeat again and again (in both the second and third layers, 64 times). Each of these “layers” is an internal composition in its own right, and I suppose we can generally describe the objects that make each layer up a as
1) scimitar-like white and red arcs
2) long, curving, spear-like white and red obelisks
3) four interconnected diamonds
4) glowing blue-and-white diamond pipes.
I know these are rather banal and nonspecific descriptions, but we’re dealing with bizarre and abstract shapes here, and when repeated as much as they are —side-by-side, like individual cards in a fanned-out deck— the shapes bleed into one another, the effect of their wholeness far more striking than their individual compositions anyways. The actual effect of their wholeness, by the way, is an optical illusion, causing us to sense movement in what is actually a static image. Each of the circular mandala’s layers seem pulled in inverse directions: Layer 1 goes this way, 2 that way, 3 this way again, and 4 that way, on until we arrive at the static center. That pull and counter-pull gives the impression of concentric circles moving in the opposite directions of their neighbors.There are two other effects worth mentioning. One is that the inner layers of blue shapes become more defined the longer we look at the piece for a prolonged period, as the outer white shapes bleed into each other and appear flattened. The second is that, after looking at the mandala for some time, should we look away, it remains impressed in our vision for a few moments, transported via afterburn into our ocular nerve.
What I’m finding from this piece is a number of different ways in which MXJXN has found to manipulate our brains, using optical illusion composition and the afterimage effect to get us to recognize the physical processes our brains are actually undertaking when seeing this artwork. Because of that, we begin to feel distant from our brains, like they are fallible machines working in large part on their own, a feeling we tend to ignore for the most part in our lives. But when we are given this slight distance, and we begin to realize that “we” are not our brains, so then we start to wonder…well…what are we? GALACTIC LENS X1 is like an eyeball peering back at us, observing us and making us feel observed. It seems to be watching us, knowing that we have found a new perspective on our own minds —an automatically spiritual experience— and anticipating what we’ll go on to convince ourselves of in the aftermath.