Hidden Truths
Quote from CohentheWriter on 22. August 2022, 5:08Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430&token=107104&page=4
Source Link: https://rarible.com/token/0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430:107104?tab=overview
Date Minted: January 19, 2021
Artist Description: 6th in the Story Series is called Hidden Truth and is about beauty and the potential that is activated in times of change. I offer the covid-19 virus with a bouquet of flowers. Even though the virus has caused much pain and brought about much change, there’s another side of it. There are processes at work here that are not completely visible but there is a beauty in it. The beauty is in the opportunity to think about things in different ways. In gaining expanded perspectives, feedback loops are activated, which influence behavior. We are all vulnerable during these times. Be easy, be gentle, but take risks. About the Series: Everything I create is done spontaneously & intuitively. This allows me to reflect on the work afterwards and dig in to find what my and the collective unconscious is communicating. This collection represents my artistic expression for the past two years. I created these pieces by layering, blending and editing multiple original photos. Repurposing my physical art and modeling photos. Reinventing my past work is an evolution for me as an artist and it allows me the chance to tell the story, highlighting how all the pieces weave together. About the artist: Multidisciplinary Artist & Live Streamer, PolyAnnie weaves her intuitive creativity into a living documentary, boldly paving the way forward into new economies through creating empowered art that’s expressed through many mediums: adhesive vinyl mosaics, erotic abstract expressionist paintings, prop manipulation (hula hoop & fire dance), music, nsfw content creation, dance & fashion design.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
For a devouted and prolifically erotic artist, Hidden Truths by Polyannie is pretty intentionally coy about exposing itself, so to speak. It’s a full intertextual effect, the artwork in concert with the title. Hidden Truths is, based on the sliver of her work that I’ve seen, as potent, beautiful, and revealing an artwork as anything Polyannie has done, this despite the fact that the image obscures the face of its artist/subject, that it does not revel in overt body vulnerability, that more of its power comes from what is suggested and implied than what is actually depicted. Take this bit of the Artist’s Description into consideration: “I offer the covid-19 virus with a bouquet of flowers. Even though the virus has caused much pain and brought about much change, there’s another side of it. There are processes at work here that are not completely visible but there is a beauty in it. The beauty is in the opportunity to think about things in different ways. In gaining expanded perspectives, feedback loops are activated, which influence behavior. We are all vulnerable during these times. Be easy, be gentle, but take risks.” It’s even today a rather iconoclastic view, perhaps not internally so, but certainly sharing such a viewpoint in public would invite charges of privilege and insensitivity. And yet, who among us does not harbor a similar view in the depths of our soul? Speaking as someone who lost a dear family member very early on in the pandemic, who dealt with unprecedented existential dread, who lived a very locked-down and frightened existence for the great brunt of the pandemic, I’m still mega cognizant of all the ways I learned and grew and evolved throughout the course of this insane epoch. Hidden Truths is a brilliant evocation of this viewpoint. And it’s a brilliant evocation of all the secondary meta-emotions which come from recognizing such a viewpoint: the shame, the bashfulness, the mess. The truth of Hidden Truths is that it’s a scalpel of an artwork, exact and incredibly effective. Oh, and those colors though. Quite some colors.
Maybe let’s start with the colors, because look at how bright they are, and look at how the brightest among them —the paint-splatter reds and yellows— juxtapose with the almost ghostly pallor of the artist’s skin. As to her process, Polyannie says “Everything I create is done spontaneously & intuitively…I created these pieces by layering, blending and editing multiple original photos.” The idea that such complex interplay between colors would come about spontaneously is…well…as an artist who is obsessed with product to an almost scientific degree, it’s very frustrating. Frustrating because it’s so impressive. The artist’s head, enlarged, is untouched until we come to her skin, which is covered in glitchy sprays of random color: dripping and/or boxy reds, yellow, pinks, blues, all of the colors dropping into goopy, ambient globules around the artist’s neck. Her eyes are huge, however, but uncolored. A few bits of this colorization stretch down to the artist’s torso: thick lines outlining her arms, two pink rectangles on her shoulder and another on her hand. Her midsection and bosom are both covered, at the top by the artist’s falling hair, but mostly by the great vase of flowers the artist holds like an offering out to us, the observer, even though her eyes are gazing elsewhere, unfocused on you or I. The flower vase contains about 11 different flowers, but the most prominent among them isn’t a flower at all: It’s the common depiction of the covid-19 virus, blue and yellow and pronged with red spikes. If you didn’t know it was there, you might miss it altogether, thinking it just another of the things the artist is presenting to you as a gift. Some of the ambient colors extend down her bare legs as well, but mostly PolyAnnie’s skin is kept pale and spectral white. The background is an explosion of hodgepodge colors arranged in abstract shapes, some of which might be stretched or cropped or recolored photos. In some you can almost make out a whiff of flower petals, and others might be, like, wallpaper patterns, but it’s impossible to know. Polyannie establishes herself in front of a quite sensual but ultimately illogical assemblage of imagery, and it is in this environment that she gives us her gift.
We know what the piece is about, and we know how it functions, but there are still aspects that enchant and puzzle me. Like the eyes. More than anything else, the eyes. Looking away from us, it not only makes this piece seem more an example of voyeurism than some kind of actual exchange between we and the subject, but it makes us seem an afterthought. As in, how dare we think this gift of flowers is for us? It makes us aware of the relationship we as observers have to the subject of an art piece, like maybe it’s not even for us, but we’ve stumbled upon it by chance, like eavesdropping upon a conversation on the subway.
I fear there’s much more to discuss in this piece. It’s such a rich text, and would only become richer the more you peel back the layers. There are questions Hidden Truths posits that we’d need PolyAnnie herself to answer. Like so many of the greatest gifts, the edges of this one prove wobbly and unsettled, and yet, turning it over in our hands (so to speak), we are undoubtedly aware of its power, and how it has latched onto us, a thing that will not cause much encumbrance as we carry it forward, and forward, and forward.
Source Link: https://rarible.com/token/0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430:107104?tab=overview
Date Minted: January 19, 2021
Artist Description: 6th in the Story Series is called Hidden Truth and is about beauty and the potential that is activated in times of change. I offer the covid-19 virus with a bouquet of flowers. Even though the virus has caused much pain and brought about much change, there’s another side of it. There are processes at work here that are not completely visible but there is a beauty in it. The beauty is in the opportunity to think about things in different ways. In gaining expanded perspectives, feedback loops are activated, which influence behavior. We are all vulnerable during these times. Be easy, be gentle, but take risks. About the Series: Everything I create is done spontaneously & intuitively. This allows me to reflect on the work afterwards and dig in to find what my and the collective unconscious is communicating. This collection represents my artistic expression for the past two years. I created these pieces by layering, blending and editing multiple original photos. Repurposing my physical art and modeling photos. Reinventing my past work is an evolution for me as an artist and it allows me the chance to tell the story, highlighting how all the pieces weave together. About the artist: Multidisciplinary Artist & Live Streamer, PolyAnnie weaves her intuitive creativity into a living documentary, boldly paving the way forward into new economies through creating empowered art that’s expressed through many mediums: adhesive vinyl mosaics, erotic abstract expressionist paintings, prop manipulation (hula hoop & fire dance), music, nsfw content creation, dance & fashion design.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
For a devouted and prolifically erotic artist, Hidden Truths by Polyannie is pretty intentionally coy about exposing itself, so to speak. It’s a full intertextual effect, the artwork in concert with the title. Hidden Truths is, based on the sliver of her work that I’ve seen, as potent, beautiful, and revealing an artwork as anything Polyannie has done, this despite the fact that the image obscures the face of its artist/subject, that it does not revel in overt body vulnerability, that more of its power comes from what is suggested and implied than what is actually depicted. Take this bit of the Artist’s Description into consideration: “I offer the covid-19 virus with a bouquet of flowers. Even though the virus has caused much pain and brought about much change, there’s another side of it. There are processes at work here that are not completely visible but there is a beauty in it. The beauty is in the opportunity to think about things in different ways. In gaining expanded perspectives, feedback loops are activated, which influence behavior. We are all vulnerable during these times. Be easy, be gentle, but take risks.” It’s even today a rather iconoclastic view, perhaps not internally so, but certainly sharing such a viewpoint in public would invite charges of privilege and insensitivity. And yet, who among us does not harbor a similar view in the depths of our soul? Speaking as someone who lost a dear family member very early on in the pandemic, who dealt with unprecedented existential dread, who lived a very locked-down and frightened existence for the great brunt of the pandemic, I’m still mega cognizant of all the ways I learned and grew and evolved throughout the course of this insane epoch. Hidden Truths is a brilliant evocation of this viewpoint. And it’s a brilliant evocation of all the secondary meta-emotions which come from recognizing such a viewpoint: the shame, the bashfulness, the mess. The truth of Hidden Truths is that it’s a scalpel of an artwork, exact and incredibly effective. Oh, and those colors though. Quite some colors.
Maybe let’s start with the colors, because look at how bright they are, and look at how the brightest among them —the paint-splatter reds and yellows— juxtapose with the almost ghostly pallor of the artist’s skin. As to her process, Polyannie says “Everything I create is done spontaneously & intuitively…I created these pieces by layering, blending and editing multiple original photos.” The idea that such complex interplay between colors would come about spontaneously is…well…as an artist who is obsessed with product to an almost scientific degree, it’s very frustrating. Frustrating because it’s so impressive. The artist’s head, enlarged, is untouched until we come to her skin, which is covered in glitchy sprays of random color: dripping and/or boxy reds, yellow, pinks, blues, all of the colors dropping into goopy, ambient globules around the artist’s neck. Her eyes are huge, however, but uncolored. A few bits of this colorization stretch down to the artist’s torso: thick lines outlining her arms, two pink rectangles on her shoulder and another on her hand. Her midsection and bosom are both covered, at the top by the artist’s falling hair, but mostly by the great vase of flowers the artist holds like an offering out to us, the observer, even though her eyes are gazing elsewhere, unfocused on you or I. The flower vase contains about 11 different flowers, but the most prominent among them isn’t a flower at all: It’s the common depiction of the covid-19 virus, blue and yellow and pronged with red spikes. If you didn’t know it was there, you might miss it altogether, thinking it just another of the things the artist is presenting to you as a gift. Some of the ambient colors extend down her bare legs as well, but mostly PolyAnnie’s skin is kept pale and spectral white. The background is an explosion of hodgepodge colors arranged in abstract shapes, some of which might be stretched or cropped or recolored photos. In some you can almost make out a whiff of flower petals, and others might be, like, wallpaper patterns, but it’s impossible to know. Polyannie establishes herself in front of a quite sensual but ultimately illogical assemblage of imagery, and it is in this environment that she gives us her gift.
We know what the piece is about, and we know how it functions, but there are still aspects that enchant and puzzle me. Like the eyes. More than anything else, the eyes. Looking away from us, it not only makes this piece seem more an example of voyeurism than some kind of actual exchange between we and the subject, but it makes us seem an afterthought. As in, how dare we think this gift of flowers is for us? It makes us aware of the relationship we as observers have to the subject of an art piece, like maybe it’s not even for us, but we’ve stumbled upon it by chance, like eavesdropping upon a conversation on the subway.
I fear there’s much more to discuss in this piece. It’s such a rich text, and would only become richer the more you peel back the layers. There are questions Hidden Truths posits that we’d need PolyAnnie herself to answer. Like so many of the greatest gifts, the edges of this one prove wobbly and unsettled, and yet, turning it over in our hands (so to speak), we are undoubtedly aware of its power, and how it has latched onto us, a thing that will not cause much encumbrance as we carry it forward, and forward, and forward.