I often wonder at what point in our fast-paced world the blessings that the digital realms provide for art and artists don’t also become their own curse. There seems to exist the never-ending hunger from social media for new, digestible content and the growing pressure on artists in the NFT space to mint and drop faster and more. This work, Modern Prisoner, by 3D artist Auguste Le Fou, felt almost like a reflection on this. The artist, whose work often feature a central faceless figure one can perceive as an alter ego, explores consumer culture and mental health issues in novel, often breathtakingly graphic and darkly self-deprecating ways.
In this work we can image the artist himself, a prisoner to the need to churn out an endless new stream of images and works. One can wonder at what time the very visible brain will get squeezed to the max and only the empty shell remains. For me, I take the message from this to take care to not succumb to this societal need to produce or be forgotten and for each person and artist to find their own space of value and escape these modern and sometimes self-induced shackles. Auguste’s work poses important questions or at the very least makes you stop and think, a quality many aspire to achieve, but few actually do.
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