Today I'm thrilled to be speaking with artist SHL0MS about his work, his theories and philosophies, and his upcoming NFT release, FNTN. Make sure to stay tuned to his website for the countdown and release date of this exciting new work.

So- to begin, can you introduce yourself to our community? Your name, where you are based, and the sort of work you are interested in making?

Sure, hi community! My name is SHL0MS and I mainly live in the metaverse. My work is hard to describe but I like to push boundaries and challenge perceptions of what exactly constitutes art. I think the NFT space could use a lot more weird conceptual and Dadaist art, and those are probably the genres that would best describe my work.

I see that thread come through very strongly in everything you put out. Who are some of the artists from the past that inspired you? And then- from the present? Who's work is catching your eye?

I’ve always loved Duchamp’s work, especially his “Readymades”; a lot of art tends to ignore the banal but there is so much beauty in it and I think Duchamp had a masterful eye for that. He was also a master at getting just the right amount of criticism while maintaining the overall consensus that he was a genius and not an idiot (for a conceptual artist, the ideal amount of criticism is non-zero). I love the NFT space but, as mentioned earlier, I feel that it has a lot of room to aesthetically mature and a lot of artistic boundaries left to break.

Duchamp recognized a similar dynamic in his time and submitted “Fountain” to a prominent exhibition, which promptly rejected it, and the fallout from the rejection is ironically what propelled the piece to everlasting infamy. That’s pretty much my end goal and that’s why I thought it was the perfect piece to reinvent for our current artistic renaissance.

Another historic artist I admire is Yves Klein. His Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility, a series where he sold conceptual void spaces, in some ways is very similar to some of my pieces that use the file itself as a medium and play with the concept of digital space. He also had a wonderful approach to incorporating ritual into art, which is something I’ve tried along with my Duchamp-inspired project FNTN and discovered is incredibly difficult to integrate correctly but can add a whole new dimension of meaning to an artwork.

As far as present artists, I would of course have to say Pak. I get a lot of (very flattering) comparisons to him but he’s always so many steps ahead of the game in a way that’s almost hard to comprehend what exactly he’s doing until months or years later. I aspire to that level of meta-narrative but it takes time and a massive amount of effort and planning.

Some other current artists I’m following: Nahiko (thoughtful approach to ’hacking as art’), Jonathan Tchomko (digitally native performance art), Loafgren (just the right amount of lo-fi Dadaist absurdity), Satoshi Aizawa (generative art with an astonishing breadth of styles).

Let’s shift gears for a second- I would love to hear about about your upcoming drop- whatever you are willing to reveal about what we can expect from your latest endeavors in the cryptoart space.

Of course! I’ve just announced FNTN, which is my modern, crypto-native rendition of Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’. I hosted an underground ritual where we physically fractionalized (AKA smashed) it, and then had a professional product photographer create these beautiful close-up rotating videos of each shard. We then sorted the shards by their size and interestingness and will be selling them as a quasi-collectibles drop, with 120 at flat prices and 30 at auction.

I would venture to guess it’s the first physical sculptural work “fractionalized” this way, and I know it probably seems like just a play on the concept of fractionalization but I think artistically it goes a lot deeper than that. Duchamp took a banal object formed by humans to fulfill a specific everyday purpose and presented it to the world as art. What I’ve done is stripped away that human-made facade (that the collection of materials ordered in a certain way constitutes the said object) and revealed the parts of the sum.

Put another way - I’m inviting people to, for the first time in their lives, consider the beauty of the materials and forms that make up the banal everyday objects they tend to overlook. And some of these shards are absolutely beautiful. To add another element to it, I incorporated Yves Klein’s ritual layer by allowing an audience to create the art for me. The specific forms of the shard are therefore inextricably linked to the people who happened to show up to the dimly lit parking garage where I held the ritual, which is something I find really cool (and almost generative, in a very irl sense).

That’s absolutely fascinating. So well studied and thought out. I feel like you move in this space with a lot of intention. What was your earliest exposure to NFT technology? Did it immediately click or did you discover it’s potential piece by piece?

I’ve been “in” crypto since early 2017 so the first NFTs I ever heard of were CryptoKitties, probably followed by CryptoPunks and Decentraland. Needless to say I unfortunately did not buy any. I thought they were interesting projects but the potential to leverage that technology for introducing scarcity to digital art definitely did not occur to me at the time. Early this year some of my twitter mutuals (shout out @jongold, @hyumankind, @jstn) started making some really cool NFTs which got me really excited about the creative potential. The financial aspect is of course incredible, but to me the ability to be valued creatively and create something unique that people enjoy is the most incredible feeling in the world and will always be first and foremost. Even if the entire market crashed and burned tomorrow and I never made another gwei from my art, this space will have changed my life forever because it has revealed a part of me that lay dormant for most of my life and proven to me that there are people out there who deeply appreciate what I have to say.

I feel the same way- the best gains from this experience have been the friends I’ve made, and I’m honored to have you among them. Lastly- any advice for an artist earlier in their creative journey? And perhaps a bit of advice for those entering the NFT space now?

I would say there is of course value in taking lessons from the choices of others but don’t forget to identify and amplify what makes you unique. Keep iterating on that until it resonates, and then double down!

As far as advice for those entering the crypto space, my personal philosophy is to not worry about FOMO-ing into trends or trying to time the market. In the long run I think you win by being thoughtful and methodical about your art and putting out work with a high degree of conviction.

Excellent advice, and best of luck on the upcoming drop! To the reader, keep up with SHL0MS by following him on Twitter.