“Weekly Top 10 Picks” can be contributed by anyone in the SR community. To participate send us a note here.
By Karina (karinaraf_)

Spring is here. A season of growth and reawakening. My picks this week include pieces inspired by nature and growth. 

The Wild Within – ‘Hollow’ by @ryankoopmans

‘Hollow’ captures the beauty of a historical abandoned place and adds a different kind of life back to it. You can see the effect of time on this classical structure. The insides have deteriorated, and nature has taken over. A gentle breeze is blowing and the flowers are swaying. I can’t help but imagine what this place was like before it was abandoned.

In “Everything that’s left”, you’ll notice a change of seasons. The leaves have turned into a beautiful shade of yellow and will soon fall. Two bright furry worms have found themselves in a place that seems abandoned. Their swift movements make me wonder if they’re excited or scared to be there. 

The Electric Nature series transports me to a dreamy world. I’m fascinated by the unique long table, with its ups and downs, extending to the end of the fields. There’s something about the abundance of lavenders that makes this digital installation look so serene. 

Ergin Ishakoglu: “The end of illusion tells the story of abandoning the shape we took due to time or other external factors and returning to the original form. It’s like coming alive, taking action. The things that I have been neglecting, as in my other jobs. When I was working as a vfx artist, I always had a voice inside me who wanted to do something different. After awhile, I decided to leave my job and follow this instinct, and such things started to emerge”

There are a lot of details in this artwork that catch my attention. The open suitcase lying on the floor. The pillows, vase, and flowers coming to life. The gold expanding from the plate like roots of a plant growing. It feels like coming home and following your truth. 

Lily of the valley is part of Luna Ikuta’s aquatic garden of transparent plants. There’s an eerie feel to these flowers. A plant that’s usually vibrant and planted in soil, is transparent and underwater. Look closely and you’ll see air bubbles clinging to the leaves and floating around. The subtle movements of the flowers remind me how calm and quiet it is underwater. 
Check out Ikuta’s Instagram(https://www.instagram.com/lunaikuta/) to view more of the aquatic garden. 

Orchids are quite delicate, but there’s no denying their beauty when they bloom once a year. The soft glow of these orchids and the iridescent liquid floating around it makes me want to stare at this a little longer.

This bouquet was inspired by the work of biologist Ernst Haeckel, who found art forms in nature. Peter Tarka has created a unique bouquet of flowers, with a neat combination of shapes and colors. Some parts of the flowers remind me of aquatic life. There’s a lot of beauty around us, even in unexpected places. 

Ariel Lu: “I’ve always tried to create something fresh although we’re living in an era where nothing seems original anymore. This series I’m working on, I feel like it’s the beginning of a more accurate definition of my perspective as an artist. The forms are inspired by nature. I was in the direction of exploring softness and roundness in terms of shape and materiality. Curious in how ‘strong’ and soft a round concept can be. Hope you enjoy this first artwork from the series – Sybmiont”

I’m intrigued by the combination of shapes, colors, and textures of this piece. Every time I look at this, I notice something new. I love how it’s both soft and rough at the same time. It reminds me of coral reefs, colorful and teeming with life.

I love this synthetic representation of nature. It is light and bright, and so full of energy. Nature has a way of being an incredible stress reliever. This is a beautiful combination of colors and textures. Every corner brings a sense of delight.

It’s easy to get lost in a daydream while watching clouds with their pillow-like fluffiness float by. When those clouds are replaced by actual pillows, it gets quite interesting. Which is why I’m drawn to this piece. Flower-shaped pillows are floating like clouds outdoors. The warm colors and lines created by the shadows make this piece feel dreamy.

“Weekly Top 10 Picks” can be contributed by anyone in the SR community. To participate send us a note here.

Weekly Top 10 Picks by jhsilvis70 (@SilvisJohn)

Distance Dance by @grif

‘Distance Dance’ finds it title from the social distancing guidelines outlined by the World Health Organization to mitigate the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. The subject explores his space, out-stretching his arms to embracing the emptiness. The infinity mirrors on either side represent both the monotony of self isolation, but also the seemingly infinite repetition of time & routine. The soft cylindrical fibers represent the catalyst of movement as it pulses through the body, creating a wave of expressive energy. The subject, overwhelmed with this new sensation of expression, becomes tangled within his own creation. The film combines motion-capture technology with dynamic simulations, and digital cinematography. Audio by Echolab.

We create digital imaginary spaces where we would like to be. In this creation, we also decided to remove the mosquitoes. From our collection of favorites made in 2020.

Mosquito Acid Valley is an image created for the legendary Italian parties of 2005. I was invited to take on the character created by @superexpresso and remix it into a gravity zero moment of euphoria, love, and psychedelia. At the time, I was very interested in the use of digital airbrushing in Photoshop, and combining them with fluid shapes and cartoonish surreal images. /// I’m committing 10% of my gross sale of these works to Carbon180, a climate nonprofit working to create a world that removes more carbon than it emits.

A thousand years in the making, the legend of Tristan and Isolde endures. In this re-imagining of the epic romance, we place the lovers in the moment of their rapture: after drinking from the psychedelic potion that binds their souls and places the adulterous lovers in mortal danger. Tristan pulls Isolde back from the underworld, her breast filled with longing for her tragic, true love. He watches as she remerges, her face possessed by a kind of ecstasy that only eternal love knows. They will die in this moment, to live forever.

After exchanging glances several times, Tom and Lucy finally decide to meet for the first time at the carnival. She would like to escape and go elsewhere but something is holding her back, and she will probably watch Tom play to ‘Catch the mole’ endlessly continuing to chewing her cotton candy.

A boy finds himself within a vision of animated mutations. Their forms encroach so much they threaten to overwhelm him. At left are a mass of denizens, exhibiting mammalian, fungal, plant, snake, and bird characteristics, all in the process of a slow fermenting metamorphosis. The least mutated member of the group is a crow, mouth open and facing vertically in a soundless “kaw!” as it is absorbed into the mass. At lower right is a particularly toothy creature; something akin to a giant chlorophyll green membrane, thick and embedded with innumerable moving eyes setting above a dark maw passively laying in wait. In the middle beyond the young man an entity yawns wide a beak-ish mouth, around which are more spiny and pincer-like projections branching out of a segmented green skin existing corporeally somewhere between amphibian and plant. Its teeth are like maize covered in a thin cataract. It jiggles its beak and moves its pincers in a display that is somewhere between creepy and silly. Further still in the distance are a variety of strange sparkling eyes and a mushroom cap with human teeth. Hovering before the boy is a psychedelic alien, communicating via its manifestation as a nexus of colors, forms, and shapes spanning the spectrum from butterfly to bird to fish to mandrake vegetation and more. Its left side precipitates into glowing blue-green worm-like transparent fingers, from which a dancing broadcast of blue filamented energy engages the boy’s mind. The alien is dynamic in its expression, from blue auras, to busy writhing digits, to a radial fin that illuminates, to three upward facing beaks emitting energetic particles. Haloing the boy’s head is a dim cratered moon setting against a dark starry sky. His eyes and face are illuminated by an unknown and intense multi-hued light source. His hand reaches out timidly to touch the alien vision before him. The image speaks to a reflection of how personal transformation relates to identity.

Part of the Xavier series by James Owen. Audio by @gallahertz

Ceremonial Formality explores the post-human body under influence and in interaction with technology, the desire to overcome humanity. A surrender to an external higher force, the protagonist taking control via mechanics to reach an emotional state of empowerment. “Transcending the limitations of our natural condition.” This work was originally created for ShowStudio.

Rare photograph of the legendary Medusa at a young age. Can you resist her gaze? ///// friend_five is a visual artist from Austria (Europe) who collects old photographs from the beginning of the 20th century at flea markets. He digitizes the photos and edits them in a way to make them look fantastic and surreal. The title of this series is called DELUSIONS. His inspiration comes from dadaism, surrealism, literature, movies, pop culture, street art and so on. friend_five´s images invite you on a journey into a strange world that seems similar to ours but is completely different.

This piece is part of a series of 3D artworks depicting abstracted mycological ecosystems. It was created in 2015 and instantly became one of my most iconic artworks. “Mush” has been featured on platforms and blogs like Behance or Adobe Create. This artwork remains one of the most important pieces in my career and should be my first NFT listed on SuperRare.

“Weekly Top 10 Picks” can be contributed by anyone in the SR community. To participate send your weekly 10 favorite artworks on SuperRare to [email protected] and we’ll get your picks featured!

Weekly Top 10 Picks by Karina (karinaraf_)

69 carat by @planttdaddii

🐛💎🐛

When problems come in droves, there’s no time to strategize. You try dodging the 1st, 2nd, 3rd.. Until you realize everything is overflowing. You surrender and let it go through you. Your new shape, polished by the mud, shines solid and calm. ❧ SOAK is the 3rd of the 4 pieces from the EMOTION PARADOX series. This series aims to visualize strong complex emotions, difficult to describe with just words. Looking at them “in the face” is a good way to start coexisting and accepting them, a part of us .·:·.✤.·:·. DIGITAL PAINTING based on a previous series of my own, exhibited at Pictoplasma’s “Form follows Empathy” (Berlin 2015) .·:·.✤.·:· 4500 x 3500 PNG (Uncompressed)

I remember as a kid catching myself thinking, well in 200 years I won’t be breathing. Imagining, what the Nothing is like? the Void. That is some scary feeling. Seems it’s part of one’s existence to gaze into the abyss at some point in life. I wanted to capture that feeling with this piece, the dance between the mesmerizing void and the constant call of the present moment. This piece is a 1080x1350px loop. Art and Sounds created by the UntitledArmy.

Have you ever seen bugs bug? Available in its amber case which should last, at least, a few millenniums. 1200*1200, .mp4.

Can you see what I see ? Created in Illustrator, After Effects and Cinema 4d. 2000px × 2000px

Air was fresh and sweet and luminous petals flowed in the warm breeze. Plants and trees bloomed in magnificent colors, so much beauty to take in. The hero strolled among the giant trees as they whispered to her the stories of the past. They were the ancient guardians of this dominion that had dreamed through the ages of what’s to come, and they were finally awake to witness the world changing. The hero recognized melancholy among the muttering excitement, the longing for tranquility for just a little longer that she felt. She had many places to go to, but here she felt at home, hidden until she wanted to be found. Sun embroidery on her cloak glittered as she continued, hope and luck woven into the magical cloth, her travelling companion. She paused, as she heard rustling in the thickets of leaves-a small head popped out, it’s eyes observed her with friendly curiosity. —— Adventure series is a journey about discovery, persistence and personal growth, set in a fantasy world that takes life of it’s own.

1920 x 1920 | 30 FPS | Seamless Loop | Sounddesign by un.studios | Generative simulation inspired by corals and marine plants

need for sleep. twice a day. made with procreate.

Scenes: Mom, my flip-flops broke! To be a child is to live running and breaking flip-flops. To save durability, a piece of wire or paper clip. Creation process: acrylic paint, collage with colored paper and digital editing. // Cenas: Ser criança é viver correndo e quebrando chinelos. Pra salvar a durabilidade, um pedaço de arame ou clipe de papel.

An abandoned classic Porsche 911 in the desert is overtaken by a wave of energy, re imagining the steel shell as a fertile garden. Part of the Equinox Collection

March 29 – April 4

Weekly recap of the highest digital art secondary sales on SuperRare.

#8 Conducting Research by @dangiuz was sold by @bob_dub to @stewiethepro for $50,982
ROI: 46%
Artist royalty to @dangiuz: $5,098

“Weekly Top 10 Picks” can be contributed by anyone in the SR community. To participate send your weekly 10 favorite artworks on SuperRare to [email protected] and we’ll get your picks featured!

Arseny Vesnin (Twitter: @designercollector), founder of Designcollector Network (2003) and curator of the Digital Decade initiatives, exhibitions and online collaborations. Interdisciplinary mediator guiding artists and communicating the future of art. Based in St.Petersburg, Russia. 

Sneaky by @floraborsi

DC: You’re already a successful and well established artist, what made you pursue NFT art as a medium? 

FB: NFT is the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen! I’m so happy to see artists who made art just for fun and for their followers are selling for thousands of dollars! Somehow with my moving imagery I couldn’t fit into Photography nor Digital Art, so NFT was the perfect solution for me to monetize my Animations.

DC: Tell us a little about your work 

DA: Back in 2015, I created Ultra – Fusion, a seven minutes long animated loop. It was my follow-up project to Zombierina and my second sculpture after I’ve decided to focus more on the aspect of sculpting and sculpture in virtual space, rather than doing character animation. Being able to delve into form, light, texture, and materiality with all its artificial intensity was a very appealing experience for me. Now six years later Ultra – Fusion making Its way onto the blockchain through a nonfungible token, or NFT.

DC: What inspired the work in your first NFT drop? 

DD: The first NFT drop will be the series I shot with Daft Punk for Lemon Magazine. 6 images in single edition, no other copies have been sold until now and no other copies will be sold. These images will only remain in the blockchain. When thinking about Daft Punk I had this coming to mind: Does the intervention of machines / masks on our bodies enable us to get closer to whom we truly are? So I proposed the magazine to shoot them integrating a 3D cyborg woman into the existing pictures, thus proposing my own vision of an augmented human being. For the little story the cover was a Daft Punk tribute to David Bowie “Heroes” album cover. But I recently discovered on the net that a few years later, in 2014, David Bowie shared the photo on his FaceBook account during the London Music Week Award. And magazines published the image the next day saying that he was wearing Daft Punk’s helmet. But I can confirm it wasn’t him but the Daft Punk. 

DC: Is it important to you to be a part of a creative community of people?

ST: The audience feedback is very important for me as an artist. And not only from like-minded people and other artists but from strangers and admirers. As I dedicated the main part of my life to photography art it is important for me to be a part of the community and find new sources of inspiration, and to be the same for others, and to earn for living. That’s why I follow trends, communicate with followers and clients and run collaborations. 

DC: Tell as a little about PiO? 

AC: PiO – Your personal informational organism, inseparable friend and adviser. It is your personal trainer, doctor or even a guardian angel. A team of dozens of bioengineers, neuroprogrammers, biochemists, pharmacists, immunologists, biochip and cutting-edge software developers worked in laboratories to build an organism capable of providing all your needs for information, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, security, and even needs that you don’t know you have yet. Forget about the constant search for a charger, you no longer need wires! This new, unusual device is a hybrid of a leech and a smartphone; it feeds on the blood of the owner, thereby maintaining its working capability: simultaneously it collects medical data (e.g.,monitoring heart rate and blood pressure, carrying out blood tests) and if necessary, it can synthesize various substances, such as insulin, and introduce them into the blood of the owner. Dare to wear it? 

DC:What is behind the work? 

DM: This animation is influenced by the events in May, 2020. We live in a great time where people have all the means to live a full and safe life, so we must not let our basic instincts take over. I’m against any violence, both by the police and by the demonstrators. Only love and kindness can make the world better and the people stronger. 

DC: What inspired the work in your first NFT drop? 

SM: My genesis piece for SuperRare is my first ever NFT, it’s also the first installment in my new series ‘Verses’. It explores the afterlife, reimagining classical paintings with an emphasis towards South Asian futurism and the surreal. 

I am interested in the potential of 3D animation, digital representation, and the Metaverse to create diverse futures that act as modern historical reenactments and rewritings. ‘Verses’ questions the european view of classical painting through highly dimensional, futuristic tableaus focused towards digital humans of color. 

DC: Tell us the concept behind this great work 

PL: {Guild of the Fallen} is the upcoming NFT project dedicated to the artistic view on myths and legends of fallen angels. The first angel is Gaderel and all other angels to be released later this year. Gaderel is cast down from heaven to earth by higher powers, and is frozen in the atmosphere in a dramatic moment of triumph when some Gods win over others. Between heaven and hell, an angel reaches its genesis. The Awakening is the first chapter in the ‘Verses’ collection, a digital mythology born out of moving chiaroscuro paintings. Each piece is realized through bespoke motion capture, animation and 3D lighting techniques. This work is a part of collaboration with Dmitri Melnukoff.

DC: Speechless.. 

SK: Indeed, because it was inspired by the Aphrodite ritual performed on a full moon. The purpose of the ritual is awakening of self love and acceptance and celebrating feminine sensuality and beauty. Note it! 🙂 

DC: This is a great piece from your Equinox collection. Tell us about it 

SG: We follow a skater as they perform tricks and stunts in a skaters paradise, located in the Utah Great Basin. The idyllic sunset scene bears witness to the transfer of energy between this floral figure and the contrasting graffiti-soaked concrete environment beneath. The figure, acting as a catalyst, pollinates the park causing nature to reclaim the concrete.