POETICS

June 2022

Contemporary art within the web3 ecosystem, has enabled many to develop new practices as either extensions of their existing mediums as painters, sculptors and poets or to try out new forms of audio visual experiences, for those already digitally native. These pieces find their lineages in the stories of Shakespeare, Classical painters, auteurs of Cinema, Romantic Poets, allegories of spirituality and philosophy reimagined ~ to create Cinematic, Fine Art Collaborations.

Through old languages, new means of storytelling are evolving and finding a life online. The speed at which online communities can generate a viral affect and proliferate culture has its pros and cons, trends peak and fade, but great art will always be valuable. Similarly, though tech and process is ever evolving, stories will always be universal.

Poetics exhibition is a reflection of how those traditional aesthetics and storytelling are being brought to life in contemporary culture. Everything is art forward, for audiences within and without web3. The tokens are cross-chain, a number of platforms are partnering with us as well as IRL galleries, to share the resources and technology necessary to put digital art front and centre. 

Featuring collaborations with the top artists in the NFT space and IRL, from the most respected painters of our generation; in the likes of Henrik Uldalen and Tania Rivilis to two living icons of cinema in Val Kilmer and Vincent D’Onofrio (both contributing Genesis pieces with their original poetry) to the breakout stars of the NFT space in the likes of Jenni Pasanen and all the collaborators featured.

The story begins with the genesis of actor / poet / movie star ~ Val Kilmer:

ACT ONE

Act One, series of four pieces in collaboration with Val Kilmer drops on June 17th across SuperRare, Form Function and Objkt ~ https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

Watching the Amazon documentary VAL it is clear that he has always been a passionate Renaissance man and that his poetry has been with him throughout his life. I see it as the most personal and authentic chronology of the man, unfiltered experiences and an openness akin to his best performances. 

These three collaborations with Val Kilmer @valkilmer are great examples of different ways I work with painters on cinematic, spoken word, fine art pieces:

“Sand” is my fourth collaboration working with painter Michele Petrelli @michelepetrelli, this time to create this turning point in the biography of an icon and in such an authentic and personal way, I am truly proud of this historic piece of art. Home footage of Val as a young actor in training appears from the shadows of this portrait of Val performing his iconic role of the poet rocker Jim Morrison and my performance of Val’s poetry. This was written and performed as Val’s audition piece for Juilliard where he went on to train as an actor in 1976. Truly the original Genesis piece, so it was really the only choice we could make for Val’s SuperRare Genesis. Halfway through the line “I’m sorry can I start over”, when his auditioners responded he knew he had done a convincing job of delivering a believable performance.

“Bird Poetry” is my eighth collaboration with Tania Rivilis @tania_rivilis, with every piece she has such a strong vision for the original painting and then the animation as well. It’s always a joy to find the poetic within her work and now to create the setting around Val’s quirky and vibrant poetry.

In “Shamrock Clock” the ruminations of a rebel torn between art and commerce as he deliberates the commodity he has become, living through the follies of notoriety. I’ve admired Goldcat’s @OriginalGoldCat work since early last year, but this is my first time having the privilege to work with her.

This tweet I wrote almost a year ago when the film first came out was expressive of my feelings about the man, his inspiration and legacy:

Perhaps it is a hallmark of a respect for the power of great writing that truly dedicated actors have, a love for the depths and expanses of the imagination and human’s capacity to communicate feelings that resides in the poetic.

The reading and performing of poetic language has absolutely been a love of mine since training in the classics which had an emphasis on cultivating the voice like an instrument. I know that foundation is something that Val and I both share, after his time training at Juilliard as a young actor, cultivating a genuine love for the craft.

Finding myself to in a position to give voice to Val’s words in these authentic and personal works of art that he has written throughout his life is not a responsibility that I take lightly, and that gratitude for the voice has only been affirmed. It is a great honor to include this series in the “Poetics” exhibition.

FALSE PROPHETS

False Prophets Trilogy drops June 19th on Objkt ~ https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

False Prophets is an exploration of influence in the art world, what is the difference between what is genuinely said to be valuable or “great” art and what is the truth? Working with thee GAN artists and one painter to create the visuals. There’s a lot of discussion this past year as to wether AI art should be considered art at all, so I enjoyed playing with the topic without judgment ~ though I do think the work speaks for itself in that AI can be useful elements to contribute to a piece, though not necessarily a finished work by itself.

Jenni Pasanen is an artists creating in a new medium, combining digital art with GAN. Her background with art is life long, she approached her dream and changed her career to become fulltime artists in the end of 2021. Before the career change she worked as brand designer & animator for 7 years, based in Helsinki, Finland. Currently her full focus is in creating art that she publishes as NFT's, she minted her first NFT in March 2021. She is best known for her creations combining digital art with GAN, her works can be found on multiple platforms including SuperRare, MakersPlace, OBJKT, OpenSea and World of V.

As she changed her career path in the end of 2021, she started building up her career in art from zero. So far she has created over 170+ one of a kind artworks and sold few to every piece she has published. Even though her career in art is still young, she has had her works displayed in Switzerland, Canada and later on this year in China, Italy and Helsinki, multiple interviews to online publications and magazine, also been a guest in podcast "Creative Respect". So far she has gained social media following of 13,000+ on Twitter and 137,000+ on Instagram.

Statement

“I create digital art using GAN as my paint, it works as a gateway to my heart and mind. Ever since I found Generative Adversarial Networks; AI generated images, better known as GAN, it has been part of my creation. For me GAN is a playground for unlimited imagination and inspiration, I love how it also challenges the way people think of art; Can AI create art as it's not a human? For me this controversy works as a tool; as machine does not have mind of it's own or emotions that could lead it on its decisions, I work as it's guide in creation and together with it I am able to create something new and intriguing that I could have never thought just on my own. For me it's not just a tool or expansion to my craft; machine is my muse.”

My Hand, With My Heart

https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

Adaptation of Shakespeare “The Tempest” in collaboration with Tania Rivilis x Jenni Pasanen x Cynthia San Luis via Xcollabz

XCOLLABZ is a Web 3 Art Gallery with a focus on curation and creation of fine art NFTs. XCOLLABZ unites artists from around the world through mediating and facilitating collaborative opportunities that empower artists and build community. XCOLLABZ seeks to represent both traditional and digital art forms. By promoting collaborations between artists of different disciplines, XCOLLABZ hopes to create a space where both seasoned as well as new and emerging artists will flourish. “My Hand, With My Heart” is a very special artwork created by three amazing Female Artists. Each artist has contributed to the artwork in a unique way to showcase their expertise. This is a perfect example of mixed media artwork where three different mediums come together to create a cinematic experience, where you can see the beauty of Traditional Art by Tania Rivilis, Digital and GAN Art by Jenni Pasanen and hear the voice performance by Cynthia San Luis.

My statement: XCollabz has an amazing vision in bringing artists together - and the creations are divine. I’m so thrilled to be working with them again and what a magnificent group to be a part of! “The Tempest” was the first of William Shakespeare’s plays that I had the honor to perform - and the first classical piece I ever did. It holds a special place in my heart. There is such a beautiful nobility in the purity of Miranda, the way she loves and cherishes and sees humanity at its fullest potential, “O brave new world, That has such people in’t!” Tania Rivillis paints with such gorgeous emotional depth. It was a joy to work with her again! The tenderness in her painting captures the vulnerability in Ferdinand and Miranda’s shared connection. “The Tempest” is thought to be Shakespeare’s final play, and also his most magical, set on an enchanted island. The brilliant Jenni Pasanen’s ethereal touch took the piece to the heavens. - Cynthia San Luis

HOME

“Home” drops June 22nd on Objkt https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

This poster above by Daniel Martin @DanielMartinNL & Pani Santiago @pani_santiago & Myself is currently being featured in newspapers & billboards across Germany to represent the Unblock @unblockgallery & Tuan @Anarchytect2 exhibition at Museum Angewandte Kunst 05/26 - 07/24 of art minted on the Tezos Blockchain. Around 200 pieces minted over the last year are represented.

When people scan the poster on the right with their phones the AR art and poetry piece on the left animates. This piece will be minted for charity 100% in aid of displacement.

“It has been my quest since the beginning of my NFT journey to find the cinematic in Fine Art & Poetry. Starting in March 2021, minting on Opensea, spoken word poetry collaborations with some painters I know in my real life. It was a way of working I had been interested in creatively for several years before having discovered the writings of my late father, the art critic Peter Fuller, and his secret desire to be a poet ~ as well as the writings of Baudelaire searching for a connection between painting and the verse. An instinct told me that had they the technology to work in a way that created a single piece out of a poem and a painting, they would have. 

I also remembered a trip to the British Museum with the art critic Matthew Collings who told me during our walk around the School Of Caravaggio exhibition, that he felt cinema had overtaken what fine art once was to the masses. It all made me curious if the combination of all these passions that had been so close to me all my life art, cinema, poetry and performance could find a place through a singular practice in a digital medium and in the vibrant new ecosystem of NFTs. There definitely seemed to be a real interest from the early collectors on ETH. 

DIGITAL SCULPTURES

Limbo is the first in a series of 9 collaborations between Laurence and Mwan 1/1s minted on the Ethereum blockchain scattered with clues to unlock the mysteries of the underworld: https://drophook.io/event/limbo

When environmental issues arose in mainstream media around April 2021, I started minting on Tezos as well, as it was an energy efficient system that had almost no cost to environmental impact. At first it was just to experiment with editions, but what kept my interest around this time were the murmurings of an underground art movement emerging on a new platform called Hic Et Nunc. At the time the first iteration of HEN was just starting to gain traction with events like #objkt4objkt where artists from around the world were exchanging pieces with each other for free (due to little to no gas costs). It started with a small group of developers in Brazil and then quickly expanded to communities across the world as like-minded individuals who were attracted to the art forward ethos gathered in a celebration of multiculturalism and expression. 

“Visitors” features visuals and sound design by Kopfgestaltung and original poetry and performance by Laurence Fuller.

Drops July 6th on Objkt: https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

April 26th I had the idea for a collection of adaptations of old master paintings animated and paired with classical poems. Much like the adaptations of Shakespearean and Classic texts I had come to love in theatre and film. Breathing new life into a Renaissance masterpieces has always been a life goal and something we’re trained to do, as bastions of culture at British Drama Schools. There was such an energy to being a part of the early HEN community and there was a feeling that it was all about the art wether crypto markets were soaring or dipping the euphoria was focused on the love and celebration of art. How to adapt the scope and breadth of something like Shakespeare into a two minute video? It would only be possible through poetry.

I wasn't worried about trying different platforms or even chains because my own priority has always been about the art first. As long as the tech works on the major chains, as it does, I'll use them. This way we can cultivate a culture for producing and celebrating the highest quality in art that will shine a light on the use case of Blockchain technology, attract the top artists and collectors in the world, scale and ultimately lead to the integration of this technology into our daily lives. This is how it becomes possible to collaborate with such high level movie stars as Vincent D’Onofrio and Val Kilmer, art first.

“Flood Of The Soul” collaboration between Ruben Fro, Henrik Uldalen, Laurence Fuller

and Vincent D’Onofrio drops July15th

https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

I also found a new interest in 3D and digital arts with the likes of Ruben Fro and Kopfgestaltung. Performance and conceptual art had always been a problematic area for me as a collector and now I could own conceptual and performance pieces by the painter Henrik Uldalen and fellow spoken word poets David Bianchi and Ana Maria Caballero. GAN visions reforming the given through artificial intelligence and reimagined with the human touches of Jenni Pasanen and AlonerOne training machine to create beauty. The gothic photography of Victoria West. All proved to me that a true culture was growing and thriving.

This adaptation of Orson Welle’s “The Lesser Evil” in collaboration with 3dlyfer and Xer0x is a wonderful example of cinematic fine art utilizing mixed media ~ please find a teaser clip below:

HOUSE OF SIN

https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

I’ve enjoyed minting & collecting on Ethereum, Tezos, Solana & VeChain and like most collectors I really enjoyed taking part in and helping to shape in whatever capacity, the culture. I think it’s fair to say that many look forward to a multi-chain future ~ for me I just collected everything that caught my eye as being genuine art, produced by a talent who was passionate about developing their voice and career. Or projects and collectors backed by artists who are serious about seeing through what they set out to do. It didn't matter to me medium of the art or the process behind it so much, although I’d had an upbringing in the traditional art world working in my mother’s gallery from an early age and then auction houses and writing for magazines, as well as developing an extensive private collection of old master prints and contemporary paintings and sculpture.

This is why I chose “Ash Roses”, an adaptation of three unpublished poems by my late father as my ASH Genesis.

33 editions @ 33 ASH

Sign to Reserve

https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

And of course for my own craft as an actor and a poet to be considered fine art in its own right, has been revelatory. Aesthetically I turned to my late father’s books for guidance, whose writing on art was so passionate and deep that it encompassed the entirety of the modern movements and the classical aesthetics of what he called ‘The Last Romantics’ of the Pre-Raphaelites, who took cues about their visions of the world from spiritual subjects and experiences. Though it seemed the Modern world and it’s megavisual traditions of mass corporate advertising and the like were reframing the Contemporary eye towards pop art and sensationalism (things designed to annoy). Certain realms of the human experience we once considered essential to our nature were forgotten altogether. Art discourse in magazines, even focused it’s gaze instead on the political, polemicists with theories that took front and centre in place of the art itself. 

However a resurgence came about in painting and sculpture in the 80s and every few years it seemed this resurgence in popular culture and a hunger for the search for beauty was plucking the bows of the zeitgeist. Such storytelling that only a human voice can tell about human life.

https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

Of course the media tends to focus on the sensational aspect of NFTs, being cartoon-like characters fetching millions. But the very real cultural movements in the arts both underground and established arts scene has thus far rarely gained the interest it rightly deserves. World class painters, poets and special effects artists have also been out here in web3 putting in their best work and they deserve to have a light shone brightly on what they are creating. 

Trevor Jones proved early that painterly aesthetics had a place within the digital art landscape. As animated fine art, Augmented Reality and utility were the beginnings of a new kind of story for those aesthetics to expand. 

“Ruins Of Ballatine” Laurence Fuller’s SOL Genesis drops July 9th on Form Function

https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

Henrik Uldalen, a painter was the first artist I noticed who created a performance out of the drop itself ~ adding a new dimension to what the revealing of a painting can be. Arguably the first superstar from the traditional art world to drop on an alternate chain on April 26th, 2021 ~ For a painter of his caliber to be involved in this underground movement more akin to street art, gave the culture a lot of legitimacy and attracted a wave of brilliant artists from the traditional contemporary art scene from around the world. 

It was actually through Henrik that I discovered the works of Ruben Fro and his incredible Dissolving Paintings series reimagining the classics with special effects and 3D environments that looked like major film studios had hired an entire department to create. 

What often gets lost in all the noise is that Romanticism was the foundational riverbed underneath flowing rapids of popular culture. And poetry has always had a viral affect in the ancient world and of course the 1800s. Its utility in human life was its effectiveness to deliver with language, an emotional punch akin to reading a novel in two short minutes. That metaphors and the instigation of the imagination can last and derive meaning for all people regardless of circumstance ~ therefore the value of an image or a piece of poetry lay both in the emotional impact to the individual and its viral affect in culture. All of song and lyricism are arguably a primal form of poetics. Now poetry can also find a life outside the constraints of traditional publishing world and be considered fine art.

John Berger thought in Ways Of Seeing that releasing the image from the physical object, with digital reproductions in magazines and the like, would therefore make it valueless. However he did not account for the development of digital assets. His point of view was a Marxist one as he was strongly against the commodification of art ~ but I would wager that was mostly because I believe he felt such things overshadowed the story. Much like the process; the tech and the chain can overtake the discussion which should ultimately be on the substance of the work itself. Still images of paintings, drawings and sculpture serve much like digital reproductions, lithographs and the like, animated works also take on a life of their own in the digital realm and become digitally native (works that do not exist in any other form but the digital) ~ there’s various options if a collector is curious about the materiality of the works that ultimately end up as jpegs or mp4s, and as in all the arts the end results supplant the process. 

“Masks” collaboration between painter Stephanie Fuller and poet Laurence Fuller drops July 4th on Form Function https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

The human touch, the human voice within the art of technology, is where we can find ourselves anew.

As an actor in film we are constantly finding our own expression within a camera frame which is reproduced and it’s value in memory ~ though great works of cinema are no less intangible or dispensable for it.

Our attempt with the exhibition is to place art and story, first and foremost. All pieces are carefully selected to include artists who are both serious about the longevity within and without web3 and have demonstrated exceptional abilities within their respective mediums. Their visions of beauty paired perfectly with music, poetry and performance, to create cinematic fine art.” ~ Laurence Fuller, May 2022

In April I had the great opportunity to represent David Hockney on HBO’s “Minx”, Hockney was one of my late father’s best friends and widely regarded as celebrated painters in the world. Who’s sales record of $90Million for a living painter was only recently surpassed. It was a difficult character to shake so I gathered three of the best painters I know Tania Rivilis, Preslav Kostov and Francien Krieg and we created this fine art, spoken word poetry piece out of portraits of their portraits of the man and my poetry.

https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller

Senses by David Bianchi

David Bianchi, is an actor/filmmaker with over 100 professional film / TV credits. He is the creator of the Art Genre Spinema™ (spoken word cinema) minted the first Spoken Word film as an NFT getting the attention of the largest collectors and Forbes.

David’s focus on the crypto art space is social and human impact. He has quickly become one of the leading voices for socially conscious art on the blockchain.

His third Spinema film NFT became the first film to red carpet premiere in the Metaverse in Decentraland. Attended by 2,000 and became a solo exhibit at the Makers Place gallery.

He is a top-tier SuperRare artist and has been curated by Art Basel Miami and TIME Magazine at NFTNYC. He is one of the first digital artists to display NFTs at the LA Art Show in 2021. He has spoken at top-tier blockchain events and is widely considered a thought leader in the space. His most recent 1000 NFT release is the first-ever poetic audio-visual generative collection on the blockchain-(co-produced by Async) based on his original 100 poems inspired by the five human senses. The series is in collaboration with global DJ PLS&TY and technologist/code artist Dogan Demir.

https://drophook.io/Laurence-Fuller