Hacktao x Fontana - BEYOND THE VOID

“It requires the overcoming of painting, sculpture, poetry and music. An art major is needed in accordance with the needs of the new spirit”.

(Buenos Aires, 1946, Blanco Manifesto)

If it is true that art speaks of the spirit of its time, precisely of the new spirit, the artistic duo Hackatao embraces its condition par excellence. As it was formed, in 2007, with experiments through the contamination of physical and digital art. As it has evolved, coining a unique and unmistakable style. Since the first day the duo was characterized by experimentation, which accompanied them until 2018, when they entered the world of digital art and specifically the one of cryptoart. Never losing sight of that inclination towards the possibilities of the new.

“Man is exhausted with pictorial and sculptural forms. His experiences, his oppressive repetitions attest that these arts remain stagnant in values ​​out from our civilization, without the possibility of developing in the future ".

(Buenos Aires, 1946, Blanco Manifesto)

The interest and propensity towards the most contemporary languages ​​of the art world has always been the protagonist of the duo's creations. From the beginning, the idea of ​​digital had been present in their art, the experiments with photography, the vector and the Commodore Amiga, as well as the attention to the use of new technological tools of creatio, such as the smart contract.

“The quiet life has disappeared. The notion of rapidity is constant in the man’s life. The artistic era of colors and paralytic forms is over. Mankind becomes more and more insensitive to images nailed down without any signs of vitality. The ancient motionless images no longer satisfy the needs of the new man”.

(Buenos Aires, 1946, Blanco Manifesto)

It is 2018 when Hackatao had the first contact with an artistic movement at its dawn. The two artists understand the importance of using technology, specifically the one of blockchain, as a means not only of expression and creation, but also of accessibility and fruition. They understand its revolutionary nature, which proposes new economic schemes and systems that are more sustainable especially for its authors. In the era of web communities, a place devoid of space and time, the “new spirit” finds its home on the net, on the Internet, among groups of people who can communicate from any place and at any time; who can exchange ideas and create together, collaborate. A digital place, of the purest and most contemporary creation, open to everyone and where everything they experienced for years finally found meaning. Blockchain technology came to the rescue of the pioneers, of the artists with broader views, of the far-sighted, of the creators who needed to be part of this "non-place", of the "new man".

Hackatao thus began their long adventure in the most innovative artistic space of the last decade: that of cryptoart.

“The position of rationalist artists is false. In their effort to superimpose reason and deny the function of the subconscious, they only get that its presence is less visible. In each of their works we note that this faculty has worked. Reason does not create. In the creation of forms, its function is subordinate to that of the subconscious. In all activities man functions with the totality of his faculties. The free development of all these is a fundamental condition in the creation and interpretation of the new art ”.

(Buenos Aires, 1946, Blanco Manifesto)

The Hackatao's style is unmistakable. The drawn part is complementary to the colorful flat style that dictates the boundaries and traces the figures and shapes of their works of art. The flow of drawings arises and develops from the unconscious. It is detailed, it is the vision of the world that the artist gives back to the universe after filtering all the stimuli and inspirations of everyday life and the more spiritual one. The presence of a recurring small Podmork symbolizes those Daimon who sometimes awaken from our subconscious and continue to visit us in our dream dimension.

“We conceive the synthesis as a sum of physical elements: color, sound, movement, time, space, which integrates a physical-psychic unity. Color, the element of space, sound, the element of time, the movement that develops in time and space, are the fundamental forms of the new art, which contains the four dimensions of existence. Time and space".

(Buenos Aires, 1946, Blanco Manifesto)

In cryptoart, time knows no units of measurement, it is simply "blockchain time" that flows hyperfast. The space dissolves and at the same time takes shape in the metaverse. In the paradise of contamination, Hackatao's art is completed. It comes alive and enriches itself in the mergers with other artistic and creative disciplines, such as music. Frequent collaborations with other artists are the prototype of that synthesis that is a mirror of our most contemporary expression, as artists and also as individuals in society.

“Art is eternal, but it cannot be immortal. It may live a year or millennia, but the hour will always come, of its material destruction. It will remain eternal as a gesture, but it will die as matter. Until now, artists have always confused the terms of eternity and immortality, consequently looking for the most suitable material for each art to make it last longer, that is, they have remained conscious or unconscious victims of the matter, they have made the pure eternal gesture decay in the lasting one in the impossible hope of immortality”.

(May 1947, First Manifesto of Spatialism)

What matters in the art of Hackatao is not the medium. Rather the possibility of these tools to be understood, reach everyone, communicate and speak a current language. Hackatao enjoy making their art come alive with augmented reality, in video games, in virtual exhibitions or by creating artistic interactions using the technological possibilities of the blockchain in a creative way, such as the creation of avatars, very representative of the crypto community.

"It is impossible that man from canvas, bronze, plaster, plasticine does not pass to the pure aerial, universal, suspended image, just as it was impossible that from graphite he did not pass to canvas, bronze, plaster, plasticine, without deny the eternal validity of the images created through graphite, bronze, canvas, plaster, plasticine. It will not be possible to adapt to these new needs images, already fixed in the needs of the past ".

(May 1947, First Manifesto of Spatialism)

For Hackatao it is a constant research, is a passion, a curiosity, a pure creative force. It is a continuous movement, which accompanies them on their journey as artists, a perpetual journey of discovery.

Art may not be immortal, but their gesture is eternal.

BEYOND THE VOID, Hackatao, 2021

Digital animation, tokenized on SuperRare

“The term LIGHT refers to the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum visible to the human eye. Diffuse reflection from surfaces is the main mechanism by which objects reveal themselves to our eyes.

Hackatao’s artworks, among many other peculiarities, are characterized by the presence of many eyes with their eyelids always open, like cracks, cuts.

In this ARTISTIC EXCHANGE between Hackatao and Fontana, the main character is everything that goes BEYOND and that is captured by and through the gashes as well as by the eyes themselves. That light that lies beyond our universe or reality, as we perceive it, to which Fontana has opened the way with an act of CONSTRUCTION rather than DESTRUCTION, like that of his cuts.

And today it is precisely those gashes to be the point of contact which brings both Hackatao and Fontana in the same space at the same time; thus giving us back the opportunity of an all-round vision of what transpires behind and beyond the CANVAS, of two different and dual entities, two surfaces, two worlds.

In BEYOND THE VOID these cuts are both black holes and/or glimpses; the precise point at which the universe congeals”, explains curator Eleonora Brizi.