My latest NFT artwork – “Astronaut and airdrop” – minted on the Hive blockchain
Today’s artwork will be the last for this year, though more will follow in the next month or two. That makes a total of 23 such collage artworks minted this year of 2021 as NFTs (non-fungible tokens), almost two a month. I’m happy with my output and the quality of the works overall, even though only a few have actually sold. My familiar style is recognizable by now and this kind of art for art’s sake is a personal creative outlet, more than a desire to make money from the works.
I have continued the technique of cutting out old magazine photos and pictures from two or three decades ago using a pair of scissors, and then pasting them into a new remixed collage artwork with glue on a piece of A4 paper. I then scan the finished product and upload it as an NFT. By far most of them are minted on the HIVE blockchain at www.nftshowroom.com/julianhorack/collection with only two minted on OpenSea via the MATIC sidechain to eliminate the expensive gas fees demanded by Ethereum.
Today’s piece is called “Astronaut and airdrop” and is yet another in the theme of sci-fi or fantasy landscape. As a kid I was attracted to such images and writings, and so am pleased to be able to create my own now. The image shows an astronaut in space suit as the main subject, situated at the top left corner. He is being observed by an old Catholic monk or priest from the Middle Ages via telescope from the bottom right corner of the image.
They are connected via a long white cord, which wraps around the telescope much like a serpent around the Caduceus of Mercury. The cord connecting the two main subjects is like the usual cord that astronauts have when doing a space walk, and in this particular scene it creates a surreal connection between the two subjects which totally defies spatial distance. It’s a way of breaking down the concept of depth perception which I also aim for in such landscapes. I like to create a sense of depth perception, as if the viewer is looking at a landscape, yet at the same time I aim to deconstruct the concept of realistic depth by using these little techniques.
The same technique is seen when the golden chain which comes from the golden compass in the bottom left corner seems to wind along the contours of the landscape below and then also join up with the astronaut’s ring. It looks like an old pocket watch on a chain, as if the astronaut is using it to check his direction.
The gold theme – a recurring one in my works – is prominent in today’s piece. A gold airplane flies through the sky while a golden reference to $10 000 drops with a parachute down to the ground below. This parachute package is the airdrop which makes up the central subject in the scene. Also the golden sun is present, and the astronaut is surrounded by a ring, made up of some golden coins, some golden circular sculpted little heads, and another type of reference to a time piece or compass dial.
In fact the golden coins both show the recurring theme of compass or sun disk with rays. The overall theme of this work ties up with the current bitcoin and cryptocurrency bull market cycle where prices are climbing to new all time highs in the cryptocurrency sector. The airdrop is a familiar concept in the world of crypto, where new projects that launch may give away free coins to newcomers who sign up, as if dropping free money to those lucky few who are in the right place at the right time and follow the leads.
Also the astronaut is an allusion to a crypto holder who is at new stratospheric heights in coin values, much like we see at this particular time in the crypto market cycle. We have the popular image of “hodlnaut” for example, implying a long term holder of crypto who sees the value of their coins and portfolio going “to the moon” as the saying goes. In this case the image shows him going to the sun.
Indeed the prices of our cryptocurrency coins are all making new highs, including HIVE token, which is the blockchain hosting this NFT. This is the apparent peak of the four year crypto cycle, so to depict that I have used the astronaut and the airdrop of $10 000. The astronaut is surrounded by his ring of gold coins which circle him like planets circling the sun.
I like to create these landscapes as windows to another dimension, with surrealist or fantasy themes, and I know they will make awesome additions to any collectors gallery, especially those who are familiar with cryptocurrency, as most NFT enthusiasts obviously are. You can check out the work at https://nftshowroom.com/julianhorack/collection/julianhorack_collages-julescape-q4-2021_astronaut-and-airdrop where only three editions have been minted and two are for sale for 21 HIVE each, the third one being for my own personal portfolio.