[re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³
Quote from CohentheWriter on 23. April 2022, 19:55Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/permanent-collection?collection=0xb932a70a57673d89f4acffbe830e8ed7f75fb9e0&token=11108&page=2
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/%5Bre:surrection%5D--of--n,n-everdie(mt.)%C2%B3-11108
Date Minted: June 16, 2020
Artist Description: My first piece back on the SuperRare platform with a trifecta of pyramids, mountains, and transdimensional artifacts - a coming back to life of sorts.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
Crypto Art at its most bonkers, abstract, and arguably, truest. That’s my first reaction upon seeing [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ by OG crypto artist, and provocateur, Max Osiris. Within the swirling colors and glitchy, heavily-abstract, slightly-surrealist piece are so many of the characteristics which early crypto art exalted. Intense colors. A twitchy, internet influence. A mishmash of forms and movements and anachronistic imagery that are singularly, uniquely current. [re:Surrection] is as much intentional collage as much as it is the random assortment of garage sale knickknacks. It’s zany but with an underlying logic, difficult, perhaps, as that logic is to uncover. It’s intensely self-referential and also quite self-aware. [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ clearly has enough respect for history to leave it untouched, but is irreverent enough to play with it, destroy it in places, bastardize it for the sake of something new. Osiris calls this piece “a coming back to life of sorts.” Apropos the artist, we’ll have to take his word on it. Apropos us, it might also apply. It’s invigorating, this piece. It’s exciting and captivating. It’s a completely modern, completely archaic and arcane production. It’s crypto art as it’s meant to be: intuitive, technologically-reliant, and somewhat incomprehensible to those who haven’t the care nor time to initiate themselves into the ecosystem.
As we can see, contradictions of form, intent, and function abound. Nominally a piece concerned with “a trifecta of pyramids, mountains, and transdimensional artifacts,” [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ really seems more concerned with tearing down any cogent conjecture of what exactly it is. Hardly anything in this piece is presented with complete coherence, except perhaps the only apparently untarnished object in the piece, a representation of a Great Pyramid of Giza, which takes up about a third of the finished image, and which wears a glowing sun atop its zenith like a halo or a mitre. Yet even this recognizable image is colored over in tie-dye hues, awash in psychedelic color. Strangely, however the repetitious nature of that pyramid’s construction gives off the impression that, instead of being a facsimile of the real object, it’s instead computer-generated, or in some way unreal; or is its association with the Great Pyramid itself but a figment of our imagination? Perhaps it’s a completely arcane series of lines and shapes that we ourselves have internally construed into something recognizable. Nothing else is really recognizable in the piece, and so we’re almost tricked into this line of thinking. After all, what else are we looking at but zigzagging and pinwheel lines of blurred, contrasting colors —either neon or stark black or intensely, emptily white— or glitchy surfaces copy-and-pasted beside themselves hundreds of times. All contribute to a sensation that the initial image is falling into impressionism under the weight of its own repetitive composition. One can nominally make out the “mountains” Osiris alludes to in his Artist Description, but they carry this same sense of anti-realism, seeming more like jagged paint strokes than representations of real objects. If the pyramid is realism, then at its feet are the atoms of that reality: haggard and wild and unruly, the basest aspects of imagery —shape and color and cohesion— torn to shreds around it.
Just from the sheer glut of imagery, [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ confirms itself as an incredibly rich text. It pulls from Egyptian imagery as well as other cultural and religious iconography. There is, small as it is, an animal sculpture floating near the upper-left side of the pyramid, one that seems to be borne from some kind of Eastern religious tradition; I don’t know enough to suggest which. There may or may not be fractured pieces of Sanskrit script pasted in places. And there’s an interesting contradictory effect which emerges from this dichotomy, that of ancient images juxtaposed with hyper-contemporary computer designs.
These kinds of graphics and computer effects are natural extensions of a 2020’s internet sensibility. Those engaged with the crypto art world will not feel ungrounded by these colors and juxtapositions, just as those engaged with the abstract expressionist world of the mid-20th century could ground themselves in the weird and obfuscating shades, techniques, impastos of Pollack and Rothko. Osiris is almost daring us not to understand, or rather, he’s testing us. This is a piece it’d be easy to turn away from, especially without having the visual language ingrained in our subconscious. One can almost hear the phantom cries of “This isn’t art!” coming from the unimaginative echelons of old-school Gauguin groupies. But each generation of abstractionists speaks in their own language, esoteric to all others, especially those past, but nevertheless building off of them. Osiris’ language is abstraction by multiplication, by explosion, by divergence from precise placement. Is it abstraction through hyperbole, and by the disintegration of the familiar into its barest, battiest pieces. Nothing here is unfamiliar. Not the images, nor the fragments of recognizable items, nor the colors. That which is familiar is broken down into unfamiliarity by its nearness to so much visual noise. And yet spliced together as they are, it all becomes a holistic hallucinogenic, a daydream, a kaleidoscope scene underwater. Familiarity is literally pulled apart like taffy, until it becomes weird. Then that weirdness is tossed in a sausage grinder. Then that ground weirdness is smeared over the image haphazardly. And the result is a whole lot of seemingly familiar objects that we still have no lexicon to describe, which appear less like themselves and more like references to themselves. Everything falls deeply into a pit of vague resemblance. And we let ourselves be overrun by the sheer glut of it. [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ is a fire-hose. [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ is 8 inches of rain in an hour, and then the mental levee breaks. What else can it do: It is not built for this.
Source Link: https://superrare.com/artwork-v2/%5Bre:surrection%5D--of--n,n-everdie(mt.)%C2%B3-11108
Date Minted: June 16, 2020
Artist Description: My first piece back on the SuperRare platform with a trifecta of pyramids, mountains, and transdimensional artifacts - a coming back to life of sorts.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
Crypto Art at its most bonkers, abstract, and arguably, truest. That’s my first reaction upon seeing [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ by OG crypto artist, and provocateur, Max Osiris. Within the swirling colors and glitchy, heavily-abstract, slightly-surrealist piece are so many of the characteristics which early crypto art exalted. Intense colors. A twitchy, internet influence. A mishmash of forms and movements and anachronistic imagery that are singularly, uniquely current. [re:Surrection] is as much intentional collage as much as it is the random assortment of garage sale knickknacks. It’s zany but with an underlying logic, difficult, perhaps, as that logic is to uncover. It’s intensely self-referential and also quite self-aware. [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ clearly has enough respect for history to leave it untouched, but is irreverent enough to play with it, destroy it in places, bastardize it for the sake of something new. Osiris calls this piece “a coming back to life of sorts.” Apropos the artist, we’ll have to take his word on it. Apropos us, it might also apply. It’s invigorating, this piece. It’s exciting and captivating. It’s a completely modern, completely archaic and arcane production. It’s crypto art as it’s meant to be: intuitive, technologically-reliant, and somewhat incomprehensible to those who haven’t the care nor time to initiate themselves into the ecosystem.
As we can see, contradictions of form, intent, and function abound. Nominally a piece concerned with “a trifecta of pyramids, mountains, and transdimensional artifacts,” [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ really seems more concerned with tearing down any cogent conjecture of what exactly it is. Hardly anything in this piece is presented with complete coherence, except perhaps the only apparently untarnished object in the piece, a representation of a Great Pyramid of Giza, which takes up about a third of the finished image, and which wears a glowing sun atop its zenith like a halo or a mitre. Yet even this recognizable image is colored over in tie-dye hues, awash in psychedelic color. Strangely, however the repetitious nature of that pyramid’s construction gives off the impression that, instead of being a facsimile of the real object, it’s instead computer-generated, or in some way unreal; or is its association with the Great Pyramid itself but a figment of our imagination? Perhaps it’s a completely arcane series of lines and shapes that we ourselves have internally construed into something recognizable. Nothing else is really recognizable in the piece, and so we’re almost tricked into this line of thinking. After all, what else are we looking at but zigzagging and pinwheel lines of blurred, contrasting colors —either neon or stark black or intensely, emptily white— or glitchy surfaces copy-and-pasted beside themselves hundreds of times. All contribute to a sensation that the initial image is falling into impressionism under the weight of its own repetitive composition. One can nominally make out the “mountains” Osiris alludes to in his Artist Description, but they carry this same sense of anti-realism, seeming more like jagged paint strokes than representations of real objects. If the pyramid is realism, then at its feet are the atoms of that reality: haggard and wild and unruly, the basest aspects of imagery —shape and color and cohesion— torn to shreds around it.
Just from the sheer glut of imagery, [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ confirms itself as an incredibly rich text. It pulls from Egyptian imagery as well as other cultural and religious iconography. There is, small as it is, an animal sculpture floating near the upper-left side of the pyramid, one that seems to be borne from some kind of Eastern religious tradition; I don’t know enough to suggest which. There may or may not be fractured pieces of Sanskrit script pasted in places. And there’s an interesting contradictory effect which emerges from this dichotomy, that of ancient images juxtaposed with hyper-contemporary computer designs.
These kinds of graphics and computer effects are natural extensions of a 2020’s internet sensibility. Those engaged with the crypto art world will not feel ungrounded by these colors and juxtapositions, just as those engaged with the abstract expressionist world of the mid-20th century could ground themselves in the weird and obfuscating shades, techniques, impastos of Pollack and Rothko. Osiris is almost daring us not to understand, or rather, he’s testing us. This is a piece it’d be easy to turn away from, especially without having the visual language ingrained in our subconscious. One can almost hear the phantom cries of “This isn’t art!” coming from the unimaginative echelons of old-school Gauguin groupies. But each generation of abstractionists speaks in their own language, esoteric to all others, especially those past, but nevertheless building off of them. Osiris’ language is abstraction by multiplication, by explosion, by divergence from precise placement. Is it abstraction through hyperbole, and by the disintegration of the familiar into its barest, battiest pieces. Nothing here is unfamiliar. Not the images, nor the fragments of recognizable items, nor the colors. That which is familiar is broken down into unfamiliarity by its nearness to so much visual noise. And yet spliced together as they are, it all becomes a holistic hallucinogenic, a daydream, a kaleidoscope scene underwater. Familiarity is literally pulled apart like taffy, until it becomes weird. Then that weirdness is tossed in a sausage grinder. Then that ground weirdness is smeared over the image haphazardly. And the result is a whole lot of seemingly familiar objects that we still have no lexicon to describe, which appear less like themselves and more like references to themselves. Everything falls deeply into a pit of vague resemblance. And we let ourselves be overrun by the sheer glut of it. [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ is a fire-hose. [re:Surrection] -of- N,N-EverDie(Mt.)³ is 8 inches of rain in an hour, and then the mental levee breaks. What else can it do: It is not built for this.