DeeKay Kwon‘s animations in just a few seconds tell a story. This is the communicative power of his art and is what sets him apart in the NFT market. With a simple style with influences from the 2D gaming world of the 1980s-1990s, the South Korean illustrator and adopted American known on social as @deekaymotion is one of the world’s top-rated crypto artists. His has been a rapid rise that has taken him to the Web3 audience in just 12 months.

DeeKay has always been passionate about drawing and grew up developing a strong interest in 2D digital animation, which he then translated into work. For ten years he works for large companies including Apple, which he leaves in February 2021 after minting his first NFT. In the same year comes the turning point: Cozomo de Medici buys his work Destiny for 225 ETH – in 2021 it was worth approximately 830 thousand US dollars. The work tells the love story between two characters who, “thrown” like pinballs, meet by chance triggering love. Destiny sums up DeeKay’s now unmistakable style: colorful, ironic, simple but rich in details, capable of conveying concepts and messages through very short animations. For the artist, communicating a story (of love, life, friendship, social issues) is more important than aesthetics per se.
“I believe that story is more important than the art itself. I love making beautiful designs with beautiful animation. But I love it more when I am able to move people’s hearts.” he says in an interview with The Monty Report.

DeeKay’s success continued with the sale of the work Life and Death for the equivalent of $1 million U.S. dollars also to Cozomo de Medici. This work, too, follows the pattern of a classic 2d level game, depicting the course of human life, condemned to a pre-set pattern of growing up, studying, working, making a family and dying.
To understand DeeKay’s creative process, one need only look at his work Animator creating animation. In fact, the NFT shows a character placed inside a computer desktop creating animation of a boy in motion using Illustator and After Effects.
One of the most recent animated series is LetsWalk which ended in October 2022. The goal of the series was to create 100 characters coexisting in the same world. The work sold at Sotheby’s for $214,000.

The body and its sexuality belong to an intimate sphere that is delineated in endless facets and nuances. Sex, nudity, acceptance, sexual orientation, and a sense of freedom are some of the macro issues that many people have to deal with in the course of their lives. This “private” aspect is often hidden, silenced and in some cases repressed and stifled, if not even conditioned from the outside. The works of Canadian artist Nadine Faraj (1977) scream against this. Against deprivation and denial. Against the external control of the body, to return ownership solely and exclusively to those who inhabit it.
The people in Faraj’s watercolor works proudly and proudly exhibit their nudity during erotic, sexual and rebellious moments with an almost disturbing force. “Nadine Faraj’s art disturbs the eye and demands disobedience,” comments feminist author Mona Eltahawy.

Nadine Faraj makes works that are free, funny and raw at the same time. The style is fluid and colorful. The figures gain movement thanks to the watercolor technique that leaves the edges free, allowing the bodies to incorporate with the background. The highly erotic scenes are accentuated by explicit language and the blending of the bodies in the scene, which become one, emphasizing a strong romanticism. Sexuality is addressed without taboos, without censorship, and above all without shame because the “Sex is chaos, liberation, and joy.“

In the series Naked revolt Nadine Faraj takes a strong stance, addressing human rights issues, particularly those of the LGBTQIA+ community. Each work shows a single nude subject who through an inscription on her body communicates important messages: “Mi cuerpo mi decision” – “LGBT égalité” – “My pussy my rules,” are some examples.

Her latest series, on the other hand, entitled Pink Moon people, is set in the night. The composition is horizontal and the subjects take on increasingly intense and ethereal body colorations, such as fuchsia, purple or green. The proportional imbalance is increasingly distorted, and flashes of light break up the vibrancy of the palette. Perdition becomes freedom. Denial becomes acceptance.
Nadine Faraj succeeds in shouting loudly to her audience that no one needs the approval of others and that surrendering to desires is awareness.

© Courtesy by Nadine Faraj, Anna Zorina Gallery and McBride Contemporain

Artist Andreas Senoner (1982) was born in Bolzano and currently lives and works in Florence. His academic studies led him to delve into the technique of wood carving, a predominant material in his artistic production.
In his sculptural works the human figure is in dialogue with natural elements such as feathers, beeswax and lichens, which very often act as “invaders” of the wooden body. The strongly contemporary and aesthetic key with which Senoner carries out his research contributes to a strong artistic identity that is easily recognizable.

Part of Andreas Senoner’s sculptural production consists of static human figures, portrayed as motionless, soulless mannequins of which only the legs and feet are visible. The torso, arms and face are entirely covered by natural elements that have no specific function but attempt to highlight intimate components.
Complete human figures are flanked by sculptures in which Senoner chooses to focus on a single element. The artist “dissects” parts of the human body, particularly the extremities: hands, feet, legs and heads are taken into analysis and manipulated. Wood remains the material of choice, sometimes smooth and untouched, sometimes worn down by time and termites. Very often these elements take on animal and natural connotations, tending the human being toward transformation. A foot has spines, branches sprout from legs, two arms merge into a single block.

Human, animal and natural coexist and dialogue in Andreas Senoner’s artistic research, with the intention of investigating the concept of metamorphosis and inheritance. The materials chosen are in fact the perfect representation of these concepts: constantly evolving and collectors of memories.

The public art project CHEAP, born in Bologna in 2013 presented its latest project, the name is ICONS and consists of a call for posters dedicated to deceased icons, emphasizing the widespread fetishism for mass mourning. This latest project also reconfirms one of CHEAP’s goals, which is to reappropriate public space by covering it with posters and generating dialogues with those who walk through them.
“If mourning is really the product of collective representations, we are interested in trying to test them in the format of the poster in the public space of the city: we want to do this starting from one of the obsessions that intrigue us, that for the death of icons of music, cinema, and entertainment. – say from CHEAP – We think that this monomania, which lies between the disturbing and the seductive, deserves our attention.“

The ICONS project has no strict guidelines; it is free and welcomes all kinds of proposals. The only rule? The icon chosen must be defunct and the portraits must be unedited. Artists can approach the project with their own personal style: sarcastic, reverential, surrealistic, realistic, funny and even with black humor.
The first “headstone” to be made is that of the absolute icon David Bowie, the British singer and actor who passed away on January 10, 2016.
From 238 applications received from 19 countries, 54 posters were selected, installed in the past few days (March 2023) and will be displayed on the streets of Bologna until the end of April. The artists include Claudia Argento, Matteo Nuti, Arianna Martucci, Manuela Capelli, Giorgia Lancellotti, Chenwei Xu, Gregorio Tossesan, Irene Mazzoleni, Caterina Laruccia, Riky, Balottaslayer and Sara Brienza.