A Fighting Game Fantasy

Crossing my mind today, out of nowhere, was a curious ad by a company whose name won’t be mentioned here because you’re probably seeing it on regular basis, and I decided to try the skimpy costume it had offered back then on one of my ‘virtual alter egos’. Gradually, this led to the generating of several fighting game mockups tha – in a way – deconstructed the ‘two wolves’ legend, and turned into a sort of an identity-and-reality-dissolving experiment.

(Or maybe it is just me going nuts, but who can blame me?)

Betraying a plethora of diverse influences that have defined me through the years, and that have also been integrated into my (AI-free!) collages, these images – IMHO – belong somewhere between a self-deprecating quip and wishful thinking – hopefully, a harmless gray area that borders my personal zone of comfort. Only time will tell whether this and preceding Gemini-prompted ‘incidents’ were the right new path towards different results – I doubt, because my past stabs at something else have rarely if ever provided any true change...

The House of No End (II)

Revealing the second set of ‘rooms’ from The House of No End which – in spite of its title – has to end someday, one way or another, intuitively or forcefully. This series marks yet another return to monochromatic visions based on vintage photographs, with the tendency towards the reduction of ‘constructional’ elements, leaving more space for generating meanings... if any. It relies on performance art, but the real ‘performers’ seem to be out of sight – maybe hiding under the water surface that acts as a floor (Black Pearls of the Deep) or yet to appear when the bubble that complements an armless statue eventually bursts (The Cabinet of Doctor Tarotti).

The Paroxysm of Voyeurism

Two Wolves: The Moon Conspiracy

Black Pearl of the Deep

Just Above the Surface

The Cabinet of Doctor Tarotti

Three Hours Before Bed

After Sex on a Flying Armchair

Your Life Coaching Sucks!

Poof! And You'll Be Gone

Moths Are Restless Tonight

AI Fantasy

For a long while, I've been extremely skeptical towards AI, and here I am now, making my first stab at creating... pardon, prompting a sort of a storyboard for a sequence of an experimental fantasy on 16mm. 😄 Some frames took a few tries, because 'Gemini is AI and can make mistakes' (humans do too, right?), but eventually, I feel that the 'sketches' turned out pretty cool.

The House of No End

What is this endless house, and does it even exist? Cosmos on the one side, the absence of reality on the other. But, where are up(s) and down(s)? Is it possible to leave the room and not get lost in the hallways trying to find the next door? Can the all-encompassing word be recalled? No, because it was never coined in the first place. The obviousness brings fourth the illusion, and the illusion dissolves into an abundance of questions. The spirits grow restless, sick and tired of waiting.

So Depressing, so Appalling

Solitude Rules!

There Are Monsters Outside

Who Invited the Moon?

Nobody Asked You to Rise

Like an Afternoon Ghost Hunt

... and the Underpants Too

Wrong Address, Obviously

Trying to Remember

The Symmetry of Confrontation

A Bit of Emptiness, Finally

The Reduction of Light

Reverberations of a Mind Game

Domesticated Lunacy

Playground of the Fallen

Across the Seven Dreams

What started as a response to an Instagram challenge eventually turned into a short, yet consistent series (or rather, a sort of a heptaptych) which brings colors – with all of their deceitfulness – into the forefront, and emphasizes the ‘vintageness’ of layered compositions. All of the elements, be it human figures, animals or plants, are blended in a way that indicates (unspecific) mythology, fairy tales or alien entities, lending secretive and/or unforeseen properties to each ‘object’. Regardless of the palette, the seven ‘chapters’ are imbued with melancholy and heightened awareness of the world’s evils, opposing their metastasizing malignity with strokes of imagination – an act of romantic foolishness. Their long, ostensibly revealing titles bind them to the increasingly collapsing realities, as they invite the observer into a new, harmless one, maybe behind the mirror, maybe beyond the rainbow...

The Log Sings an Ode to the Sunset on the Planet of Reversible Demise

In the Crimson Rain, the Rose Rebel Dreams of the Ultimate Revolution

It Is Not the Artist Who Is Degenerate, but the Regime Under Which He Lives

Silence and a Broken Piece of Virginal Echo in the Glass of Vanilla Ice-Cream

The Antennae Are Used to Communicate with the Immeasurable Distances

What the Blue Moon Rabbit Found in the Garden of Enchanted Cabbage

On a Sultry Night, There Was Nothing but the Memory of a Lost Soul Left