Bad Glitches Only

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Curator notes:

I was asked by SuperChief to be a co-curator for this show/drop by choosing 5 artists to include. My selection process was to pick artists who are at all different stages of their career and different styles of Glitch.

My definition of Glitch art is pretty loose and expansive: any art that is intentionally disruptive to a system - technological, psychological, sociological, or any other form of disruption. There can be unintentional disruption, but I think ultimately an artists should have autonomy over how they are labeled.

Some have criticized this definition as encompassing ALL art. However, there are plenty of art styles and forms that REAFFIRM the status quo and programmatical narratives of established networks. When I'm looking for glitch, I seek those who disrupt and push boundaries.

This post is only for those artists I curated - not all the other artists nor my work which will be exhibited. I will share my work at a later date <3

Ultimately the 5 artists I picked were:

All of these following works will be available May 6th on Foundation through SuperChief’s Bad Glitches Only world.

Max Capacity

The achievements of Max in his career pre and post-crypto are lengthy to list and he will be the last person to tell you about them. An early adopter of utilizing analog glitch techniques in his career, he became Tumblr famous for his shitposts and dope art which lead to international honor and glory - ie press and exhibitions. He entered the crypto art scene in early 2021 and quickly carved out a name for himself with his art and eventually DosPunks - a small but mighty derivative collection of cryptopunks that bridges pure art and degen communities. From the success of that, he founded Dos Punks DAO to help continue uplifting artists and most recently has help co-found the Analog Video Union - a group of video artists coming together to demystify analog video art in an increasingly digital world.

The pieces he created for this exhibition are from an Italian 1980s action film Light Blast that he did his analog glitch magic on to achieve his decades honed iconic psychedelic colored lofi style.

Epic Thundercat

Epic Thundercat is a talented, driven, outspoken and tenacious artist who is rooted in the illustrative realm, however over the years of knowing her I have watched her expand into animation subgenre I call “Illustrative Glitch”. How I define Illustrative Glitch is work rooted in more traditional sensibilities of painting and drawing - using either traditional or digital medias, however adds aesthetic elements that pull from glitch that create unexpected moments animated or still - in other words disrupting traditional notions of illustration.

This is the first international exhibition for the beloved Portland Based artist, which is long overdue in happening. The two pieces she created: Grief’s Arrow + Cat Distribution System, show the sensitivity and caring to mental health issues that thematically runs through all her works. This shouldn’t be a surprise to those who know her, since her day job is as a social worker.

S0mfay

Somfay is an analog and digital glitch artist from Ontario, Canada who creates seamless, color bursting feedback loops from various found and created source materials. Somfay’s toolkit is unique in that he creates his own devices through circuit bending - name the Hither Dither + Spectraloom - which are gaining a strong fan base within the glitch community as accessible but robust devices as a must have in analog glitch artists repertoire from any skill level.

For this exhibition, he created his first Pepe titled “Bubble Trouble” which is a transparent Pepe head with a skeleton seemingly encapsulated in it leading to a surreal and layered visual experience bridging 3D and 2D technology that entrances while watching it loop.

Özge Gülbakan

Özge is a multidisciplinary artist from Turkey whose colors, rendering and collage elements sit at an intersection of many art movements within cryptoart - illustrative, glitch, memetics and trash to name a few. Her work has astute but subtle references to the dynamics and dramas that are happening within her world, cryptoart and a larger art world that lends one to fall into scrolling through her works to understand the interwoven narratives.

As she says, colors are her trademark, which is exemplified in the works she created for this exhibition - illustrative glitch portraits of Van Gogh and Andy Warhol.

Marjan Moghaddam

Marjan is as OG as anyone can come to digital art creation - first creating experimental works in 1980s NYC scene. With decades of creations, exhibitions, and achievements its absolutely impossible to write out in this short thread the profound impact she has had in digital art, but I encourage all to dive into her history. I had the pleasure of meeting Marjan in NYC last month in her home with robness and stellabelle, where she educated us on not only her career and work but early 80s NYC art scene.

Her works are a masterclass in 3D glitch. She developed her original and unique style of 3dCG figuration, 3d glitching and Chronometric Sculpture over the decades, which she uses to create Glitching Pepe in Glitchlandia + Glitching Pepe in A Glitchscape - her first Pepes ever.

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