Meet optimystic
Soviet-born and television-raised, Earth-based artist OptiMystic (Daniel Zed) creates transmissions directly from the heart.
about #Priorityslaps
FIRSTEDITION.XYZ proudly presents #PrioritySlaps, the NFT debut of OptiMystic (Daniel Zed). Priority slaps are a graffiti subculture that uses United States Postal Service address label stickers as miniature canvases that can be "slapped" onto surfaces. OptiMystic crafted each priority slap using a set of 20 felt-tipped markers and an address label measuring just twenty square inches. With the digitization of these snail-mail labels, OptiMystic makes his ironically analog debut in the NFT space.
With Priority Slaps, OptiMystic invites his viewers into his journey of self-discovery and healing. For years, Daniel Zed, a designer by trade, stopped creating. The artistic process had become too painful. He needed to heal before he could come back to the drawing board. Through psychedelics, inner-child work, and reiki training, Daniel re-integrated. He learned to lead from his heart after years trapped inside his own head. Establishing the reassuring support of strict parameters, he initiated work on the series that would become #PrioritySlaps. With each new day he brushed the edges of his comfort zone. The character features and colors of every new “slap” evolved, emerging from the pen with increasing clarity and extroversion.
Through his healing journey, Daniel has been working towards higher levels of reiki certification. He shares with FIRSTEDITION.XYZ the origins for #PrioritySlaps. “I learned that you can send reiki to yourself in the future and the past, and I sent myself reiki during a break to receive later in the day during my shower. I realized I had actually sent myself a message in the past to get the priority mail stickers and make the collection. I ended up going to the post office and getting a bunch of stickers and buying a pack of markers, completely ignoring my iPad. I know now that the uniqueness of the pieces is that they are this ubiquitous analog art turned into a digital asset.”
The emergence of digital art NFTs is bringing about a new epoch of art-making where the current prevailing aesthetic is brooding, otherworldly, synthetic - a meticulously rendered 3D digital imaginarium.
#PrioritySlaps by OptiMystic stand in fascinating contrast. Each careful marker stroke is visible: the depth and whimsy of one human’s journey hand-drawn on snail mail labels. #PrioritySlaps document one artist’s heartfelt journey back to his creative power and form his ironically analog bridge into the digital art metaverse.
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