exPunks — a dark expressionistic exploration to the world of mental disorders
The exPunks are a collection of 57 unique 1/1 expressionistic NFT art pieces on the Ethereum blockchain, created by “StaciVer”. The project is an exploration into the world of mental illnesses, such as crippling depression, severe bipolarity and dementia. The project was started in early march 2021 and is not affiliated with Larvalabs.
For pretty much all of my life I’ve worked as an assistant art dealer through a friend of mine. Outside of my work I’ve painted on canvas for years.
This is my first digital art project, and the idea for it came from my love towards painting and the violent and very unsettling works of Francis Bacon, and what would come if combined with simplistic and blockchain generated CryptoPunks. The result, after a lot of failed attempts, was what I had looked for: unsettling portraits of something that could be called a person, but quite isn’t.
All of the exPunks are created by first taking portraits (/w a DSLR camera, of my friends as models), then digitalizing simple mock-ups that I’ve made with oil on canvas of the said portraits and fusing them with GAN. The outcome is then taken and infused with original CryptoPunks by utilizing pre-trained machine learning models, making exPunks the first NFT collection to combine all static visual art forms of photography, physical paintings and digital art while utilizing neural networks.
Find exPunks on social media and OpenSea:
Discord: https://discord.gg/hySZ9Dcyfd
Twitter: https://twitter.com/exPunksNFT
