Hello, Everyone! It's your boy Sergio Mata and today I have some new art for you. This morning I  made this portrait of one of my favorite artist David Hockney. This makes 8 total portraits in my new series ART STARS . I love how his hat matches his tie, What a vision of fashion! I also liked staring into his innocent eyes. Hockney has some very beautiful art that I would love to see one day. He is the only artist in the ART STARS series, apart from myself, who is alive in the 21st century. I love following him learning about his recent body of work which embraces painting on an ipad! How fantastic. <3

In his CNN Style Article Steven Murphy writes about "How the internet changed the Art world".

I believe his view of the internet and the art world is correct. We live in a moment of extreme and sudden change. Artists and the art world are beginning to feel and describe the shock of this very recent event. We are in a new era; A digital age.

Steven writes about how the internet is the greatest invention since the camera. But I am willing to go further and say that the internet is so profound that it is the Gutenberg press that the internet has ultimately surpassed.

Artist now are more conscious of the culture change the internet and technology has caused. Artists now are beginning to produce new, original and creative works of art in it's wake. The art world is finally catching up after spending four decades in conceptualism (a now dusty and old way of looking at art, in my humble opinion). If galleries, curators and dealers are serious about the future they will follow art made in this digital era as our generations major contribution to the humanities.

My series "SUPERPAINT" deals with this change. My idea was to use digital imagery as subject matter for painting. I started in 2015 with painting on canvas early pixelated wingding characters that I blew up to reveal the bright pixels of the image. The peak was in 2017 of course with my masterpiece (and yes. I am that bold with self describing) "PAINT", which is a work that focused on digital art, viral culture and techadence (technolgy + decadence). "Paint" went on to gather over 133k likes and upvotes acrosss reddit, instagram and facebook. Right now in 2018 I am still creating Superpaint art works, but they are very private and I show them to close friends and family.

Stevens article ends with him talking about Rasa, "Rasa is what you must feel when you see a painting." I believe in this. The master artists of our time must attempt to pull from the soul and hearts of their audiences. Unfortunately, technology is cold and soul sucking. It is now the artist's duty to restore the spiritual like power of art back into the culture.

Thank you

- Sergio Mata

Hello.

I figured out a way to cut your confusion about art appreciation down by at least 55%.

I created art that will easily save you time and energy by showing you beauty. I believe art is appreciated by it's beauty. Gay men are known for creating beautiful things. And I am a gay artist so beauty is what I can give you.

Come back if you want to look at beautiful art.

Sincerely, Sergio Mata

While you're here, I wanted to show you one of my favorite poems. It's a poem about machines and nature. As I create digital portraits I think about this poem a lot. Focusing on human bodies gives me a sense of the natural. Using a machine feels less cold when I look into the eyes of my subject. It's really quiet fascinating. I feel as if I am getting lost in the digital age for some of the very first times. My body and mind are melting into the machine.

ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE
BY RICHARD BRAUTIGAN


I like to think 
(and the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.


I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.


I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

I just got back from my roadtrip to see Murakami! It was absolutely astounding! I have so much inspiration, joy and ideas about the show. I’ll have a hard time talking about everything I saw there because I think I’m incapable of communicating the splendor in one blog post. But WOW was it refreshing and I try my best to describe myself anyways..

Some of the major themes I loved was the merging of the eastern and western art traditions. Although Murakami’s style come from japanese anime/manga. His technique is absolutely western since he uses silkscreens on canvas. The japanese sensibilities were so fun to lose oneself. Like a candy shop full of sweet images that the eye can devour one after the other. I

saw the art that the artist made with the musician Kanye West and I felt the cool, american pop star glamour. In one room there were two sculptures of maybe six or seven foot tall anime characters. The characters were made in the 1990’s and one was named “My Lonesome Cowboy” and what shocked me about this piece was not that it was nude, but the sculpture was ejaculating! The semen swirled around the free standing male figure in a delightsome, fantastical gesture. His female counterpart had huge breasts the were as big as her already huge head, and produced milk that swirled around her in a similar delightsome fashion! I thought the sculptures were very chic and playful. The backdrop for the sculptures was a giant blue canvas painting with what looked like squirting semen or breasts milk. The painting was so huge it could have been appreciated as an abstract painting. I thought this was fabulous.

In one room there was a small abstract painting with word "VIRAL" written on it. I thought how powerful this painting was because the work was made in 2018. I felt the rush of energy since in my own body of work I have one viral painting.

I also was drawn to his "SuperPaint" paintimg which included a series of multicolored eyes. This was a superb work for many reasons that I can't quiet verbally explain..

There was also another sculpture of Murakami as an arhat. It was maybe about two feet tall, and a surrealistic self portrait of the artist The sculpture was wearing distressed clothes and bare feet that looked like needed a pedicure since they were very dirty and split nailed. The idea of the self portrait sculpture came from the “Arhat” who are buddhist shamans that bring comfort during times of chaos. I thought how very decadent of him to represent himself in this way. THe whole exhibit was decadent similar to the rococo period, lots of pastels, small details, emotional, and not space left empty, but filled with womderful looking art.

Also, in the museum I saw many Andy Warhol paintings. The flowers series and a marilyn monroe. The immense power and reverence I felt was very intense. I love Warhol and I felt the reverberation of his spirit in the room.

After that museum A an I went to the Kimball art gallery next door. It was free to attend which I thought was absolutely fabulous! There were three sections, an asian one, a european one and an african/americas section. This was a refreshing gallery to get into because of how canonical the works were. In the Japanese art room it was exciting to see the influences that Murakami had with the ancient japanese golden artworks featuring flowers, gold, silver and nature. A theme common in Murakami’s work. What I also loved was the European section which had many famous names. I saw a bernini sculpture for the first time! Caravaggio was also there. Also El Greco, Rembrandt, Picasso, Mondrian(who was so cool and chic) and Vincent Van gogh among MANY others. I loved this because I was seeing many great major artist for the very first time! And finally getting to see the works with my own eyes instead of reading about them in books was astounding. *sigh* it was such a lovely time! <3

​

Steven Murphy's Wrote about how the internet changed the art world. I feel so happy about this confirmation since I have been making art about the digital age since 2014. When my painting "Paint" went viral in the summer of 2017 I felt a confirmation stamp on my body of work. Finally I had achieved with hard work and luck the nearly impossible. I have a surge of energy to continue. 

He talks about how the reproduction of images through the digital lens provides art lovers the same experience one gets when standing in front of the original painting. I believe in that reproduction process. The art world is changing because of how the art no longer remains in the establishments or hidden in the dark storage rooms. The art now has a digital soul that can transcend and enlighten in the heaven like internet. It is a new step forward no only for the art world, but the world in general. 

    A is taking me to see Takashi Murakami, the Japanese pop artist, this Sunday! I am soooooo excited! We are going to be traveling to Fort Worth, Tx to The Modern Art Museum which has an exhibition of called "The Octopus Eats It's Own Legs". I've been reading "Pop Art: A Critical History" and I've been watching Japanese cinema such as Akira Kurosawa movies. What i'm going to be looking for in this show is pop-art aesthetics such as using mainstream culture and highly saturated colors. From what I've seen online Murakami uses an extraordinary world of colors, which as a colorist myself I am completely in love. Next I'm going to be looking for residual spiritual themes in the art work. I know Buddhism is the major religion in Japan although I'm not sure what Murakami's religious background is.  I'm interested in seeing if and how religious iconography emerges in a Murakami art work. 

Apart from this previous ideas and feelings I am completely open to whatever the art provides me. I have been following this artist since the the mid 00's. Now that I get a chance to see his work I feel completely enthralled. <3

My explanation of vaporwave is essentially this: gazing into the past using the digital eye. When I first started painting in 2014 I asked myself what would the master artists of art history paint today. The answer was technology since this was the newest invention full of ideas and aesthetics. I then started down a path of googling images of greco-roman sculptures so that I can paint them in bright pinks and blues. This aesthetic was called "vaporwave".