Curated Conversations: diewiththemostlikes

Diewiththemostlikes (aka Mark Wilson) is an Indiana based artist who creates witty digital paintings that serve as satirical, sometimes even crude, social commentaries on consumerist culture. He is also a prolific writer, authoring five books ranging from poetry to short stories and everything in between.

Minting his first work in March 2021 on Hic Et Nunc, diewiththemostlikes has become one of the most recognizable artists in the digital art space. His work was featured in the first ever digital art exhibition in Milan, the Decentralized Art Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the Armory Show in Times Square, the CAFA gallery in Beijing, and the Expanded Art gallery in Berlin.

SuperRare Labs curator Mika Bar-On Nesher interviewed diewiththemostlikes about his artwork, the NFT space, and his most recent drop on SuperRare.

Mika Bar-On Nesher: How did you get started in the NFT Space?

Diewiththemostlikes: The same way a dying old man eases his way into a crockpot of tepid bath water set to keep warm for the last decade, one inconsequential ounce of sagging skin at a time. I’d been creating digital art for about 10 years and physicals for my whole life, so when a random internet stranger with ambiguous intentions told me I could possibly sell cans of fuckable monster energy, I was delighted. HIC ET NUNC, the OG Tezos platform, was a formative orgy of unchecked creativity to grow in and make some damn good friends. That’s the place that embraced the uncanny prose and odes to strip malls and hometowns we’d never leave first, forever grateful for that. 

MBON: Consumption is a major theme in your work; how do you view the digital cycle in relation to America’s obsession with excess?

DWTML: There isn’t much difference between the passive consumption, digestion, and sickening expulsion of flavorless digital content and the devouring of a ketamine pile of goat knuckle from an Arby’s off of US31. We chew because there’s nothing better to do. We wade through a retention pond of celebrity gossip and viral videos to avoid thinking about the rapidly deteriorating fruit platter that will be served at our sparsely attended funeral. Excess is a necessary distraction from embracing the fact that we are the lips and buttholes of a generation.

MBON: Can you tell us about your process when creating your digital paintings? What do you draw inspiration from?

DWTML: Mainly things around me. I’m a writer so everything gets embellished, I’ll inherit the lifetime of regret in a recreational vehicle rusting in a front yard or the sadness of a man unboxing a Fleshlight in the parking lot of an adult bookstore. I think about freshly paved asphalt a lot and the fact that most of our hometowns aren’t all that different.

MBON: Do you see yourself positioned in a specific tradition? Who are some of the artists that have inspired you?

DWTML: I see myself as formless, relentless and obsessed with pursuing any medium or any mechanism to adequately portray what’s in my head. I’m a documentarian over all. Perhaps of our own shared madness, but there’s an urgency to tell the story I feel like needs telling. I’m inspired by everyone, and in many ways I think we’re all fueling each other on this psychotic, unflinching evolution, I’m grateful as fuck that I get to live in what is essentially an imagination jacuzzi all day and experience some of the best art and people around. 

MBON: Many artists dream of becoming a full time artist–despite your massive success, you still hold a day job. How do you balance the two? 

DWTML: Quiet quitting is vital and refusing to go on camera. I think that goes for anyone not pursuing an art career too. If there’s an opportunity to be a benign skin tag on the sagging ass of some faceless company, embrace it and pursue your real calling. To think that your entire existence could be distilled into watching your bones slowly cave and your skin to become lubricant for the desk chair that some sorry fuck will have to inherit once you’re gone and carry on the same meaningless toil is really brutal. 

MBON: Tell us about the pieces you’re dropping on SuperRare today.

DWTML: These two pieces weave a tale of consumption and replication and legacy. The observation that we are both factory and product. Vapor and meat. And the inevitability that some day we’ll either be cases of pulverized animal parts spinning under a heat lamp or pollution impregnating a cloud already ready to burst.

MBON: How have you experienced the change in the NFT space over the last two years? What are some of your concerns and hopes for the future of the digital art market? 

DWTML: There’s been tons of it but I’m mostly indifferent, I’d be making this shit all the same. Just happy anyone wants to look at it at all. I will say I hope that artists keep making the shit they want to instead of bending to popular styles and becoming characterless beige orbs. Though I guess it’s never that easy. 

MBON: Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like to share with you collectors and fans? 

DWTML: Just sharing continued madness and hilarity. Oh, and potentially starting a TJ MAX franchise called TJ MAXXX and opening it right next to a Lions Den Adult Bookstore. And also creating a CBS dramedy called “no country for two and a half men,” and winning Americas got talent by sitting in a bath until all the water evaporates. Otherwise, nothing of note.