Artist Spotlight 004 - Max Osiris
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Welcome to the fourth edition of the Artist Spotlight. This week we sat down with Max Osiris, an OG, and a front runner digital and NFT artist. His work I feel is best described as living at the intersection of spirituality, tech, and altered perception in what he calls trandimensionality . Max Osiris stepped into his practice in 2016 and minted his first NFT on SuperRare in 2018. So without further ado Max Osiris.
SVS:
What is your name? (also your artist handle?)
MAX:
Max Osiris
SVS:
When did you first get into art?
MAX:
At 7:07 PM on February 29th, 2016 I officially christened myself as a full time artist at a small show opening in LA by lighting a stick of copal resin. On August 8th of 2018 I minted my first NFT on SuperRare using Ethereum which began my crypto art journey
SVS:
WOW, that is pretty deep. I dig that I wish I could have been there to see that. What was the catalyst or moment that pushed you to take it seriously?
MAX:
Studying the particulars of blockchain mechanics and realizing this is the future of art collecting, right before I started minting on SuperRare. The article by Artnome about “What is Cryptoart” was a huge part of that aha moment, when I realized provenance and blockchain were the perfect match.
SVS:
What themes or ideas tend to show up most in your work?
MAX:
What I call trandimensionality - the idea that we perceive everything through multiple players of meaning and past experiences. The most profound moments delivered to me by psychedelics and master plant teachers are a huge part of my work - attempting to communicate ideas and concepts from the other side or other dimensions that I have lived and experienced. It’s a blend of shamanism and spirituality as it deals with the screens that are all so much a part of our lives. I like to think of myself as a sort of guide taking you along on a visual tour of non-linear and non-dual reality that also traverses moments of our current reality in ways that you could ever really understand if you were astral projecting between planes of existence and time itself.
SVS:
How would you define your art style…in your own words?
MAX:
Neo-surrealism, Transdimensional pop, now moving more into hyper dream visualization as well as real time audio and visual interactive procedural art using mathematics and ontological momentary experiences. Glitch.
SVS:
I really like the name Transdimensional pop! That is a vibe, right there. How did you discover NFTs, and what made you decide to participate in the space?
MAX:
I intuitively knew this was the future. And I wanted to be a central part of the revolution. I’ve been happy to have had such a significant influence on the culture especially in the early years before the commercial Hollywood types came in and pissed in the Cheerios to extract as much for themselves as they could. But the space is still nascent and malleable, as long as we shame and kick out the main grifters trying to centralize it and build their own little siloes.
SVS:
Yo so that is pretty deep. It sounds like it is all about keeping the art for the real artist. Anyone can get into art, but a lot of others want to try to hog it all for themselves, and dictate and manipulate the market. We don’t need more than that, we need to protect the art. So what platform(s) do you primarily use to sell your work, and why?
MAX:
SuperRare (they’re OG, even though we have had and continue to have massive spats). Manifold (because they give control back to the artists). That’s pretty much it right now. Others have folded (KO), or have become irrelevant (Rarible) or have sold out artists along the way (OpenSea).
SVS:
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned as an artist so far?
MAX:
That everyone who tells you how to make art is a douchebag and you should tell them to fuck off immediately. Create your own roadshow. And the fact that the traditional art world is even more disgusting and dark than anyone even knows about. Hence the need to create something much much better - and much more artist and collector focused without vampiristic middlemen trying to slide their way in and make everything worse.
SVS:
Bro, you are really speaking to me and it is very timely. I am so glad you are sharing this not only with me but everyone else; but this leads me to my next question. What’s something about NFT culture that outsiders completely misunderstand?
MAX:
When we were lighting the fires, everything was moving so fast every day, at a million miles an hour, and the actual culture of what created the boom was nothing like what you now read about by the people who came after the fact and have tried to canonize it and when they did, it looks nothing like what it actually was. It’s all now smoke and mirrors. And carefully placed self-biased propaganda. The actual on the ground revolution was something profound and beautiful to behold and be a part of. Now most of what passes is crass commercialism and bad marketing with a billion pfp’s in tow, most dying on the vines of artificially pumped opportunism.
SVS:
So it sounds like we need a spark to get us back to how it used to be or to just carry that tenacity with us, and continuously tell the story of those who came before us. So then do you see your work as art, assets, storytelling, or all three?
MAX:
Definitely all three and then some. It’s a record of my existence viewed through the prisms of my meta cognition about the world I am living in. All us artists are shamans and see-ers and we see and record to the best of our abilities the matter, the spirit, and the forms of our own tooling and understanding. We’re historians and glitches in a matrix of otherwise controlled and inhumane systems. The painting and the creating are our sovereignty laid bare, for the world to see and hopefully get inspired by to do the same - to live, create, and be in the moment, instead of being propagandized endlessly and consuming otherwise commercial trash made from the bones of a dying planet.
SVS:
Bro my mind is literally blown right now, but I have to ask what advice would you give to artists who are curious about NFTs but hesitant to jump in?
MAX:
I generally hate advice, I think it’s way too presumptuous to pretend you are walking in another person’s shoes when you haven’t even started to understand them or who they as an individual, much less their life story. Having said that, I would say the field is super saturated now - which could either be a challenge or a bummer - depending on your personal view. Like any good adventure of heroes journey though - know it will be challenging and if you are dedicated and find new angles at which to come in, please do come in - and show the world how you see, think, draw, and mash your particular light into the larger whole of human creativity
SVS:
Thanks homie, so one last question. Just for fun! What kind of music do you listen to? (pick one genre) And is it the same genre while you are creating?
MAX:
DJ NoFi has been my jam - not even sure what to call it - dirty dance trance - hourlong sets. Just bangin’. High vitality and fun. If it’s a long project I’m working on, I think good quality trance is the way to go, but it’s so hard to find really great music in that genre, which is it’s own quest and challenge. Though despite any genre, just like in art - you can find a good funk, rap, jazz, downtempo, whatever - that makes you forget categories. Also, Lithe - speaking of just gooooood music. But overall it’s still NoFi and Lithe for me, I think. And rando ass obscure wub wub mixes on Soundcloud to get the heartbeat up.
Max Osiris isn’t just documenting his reality, he’s inviting you to step through it. His work stands as both a time capsule and a living signal of where digital art can still go when artists retain control of their vision.
Explore more of his universe here:
https://opensea.io/maxosirisart
Follow him on X or on Farcaster
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If you’re an artist, even an onchain or digital artist and would like to be featured in a future Artist Spotlight; I’d love to hear from you. Reach out to me and let’s share your story. Much Love!
Serenus
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