I’ve gone through a whole spectrum of moods and modes with the art world.
I started out as a naive artist, thinking it was all about the art and merit. Slowly, I began to see the traps: the ideological minefields, the games, the silly posturing.
For the first decade of my career, doors were oddly shut while others—just as oddly—were open. I tried to understand the map, remaining invitational rather than oppositional. But eventually, I came to a stark realization: many in the scene who preach virtue are actively suppressing dissent. They masquerade as open-minded while policing any deviation from their extreme homogenous worldview.
It’s like music being reduced to only a couple “approved genres”, while everything else is gatekept out.
Then came early crypto art and NFTs—a spark of hope. But even that began importing the very problems we were supposed to be escaping. The old guards returned as “new experts,” credentials intact, turning the whole thing into a sad, market-driven art performance—where art was the sideshow, and control the main act. It was just a continuation of the last 40 years of narrative dominance in the arts.
Meanwhile, the culture wars rage on. Comedy thrives. Public intellectuals are on fire. Western institutions are collapsing under the weight of their recent past.
And what do we get in the art world? “Discourses” on the merging of pixels and flowers. Maybe the occasional watered-down psychedelic reference, careful not to collapse the tired victim-oppressor narrative.
The only way out is through—no cowardice, no kowtowing, no submission. Sub means under. Mission means the mission. I don’t like the mainstream’s mission, so I refuse to be under it. I have my own, that includes coherence, sanity and light at the end of the tunnel.
I hope more join soon. It’s lonely out here.
I know there are many of you there who remain silent.
But together, we are power.
We can raise new digital and or physical temples to the free expression offered by life.
Artists weren’t meant to be the obedient little doggies of politicians or half-baked ideologies.
Rise. It’s time.
1/1 on Series: ”Things You Think and Believe but Can’t Say Inside the Arts"
Comes with a physical signed print if the collector is willing to pay cost + postal
