Divine Comedy is a series of 100 unique artworks that tell the tale of an artist’s journey through life and crypto art, each correlating to a canto of Dante’s classic work. Handcrafted over the course of 6 months using vintage Kid Pix software from 1993 – my first digital toolset!
The entire series is now available to collect, each work editioned on the blockchain as a unique erc-721 NFT.
http://divinecomedy.xyz
ARTIST STATEMENT
“In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray”
The Divine Comedy – Inferno, Canto I
The idea for this project came to me in the summer of 2024, after I read the book The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck. While I’m not typically one for the self-help genre, it came recommended as life-changing, and I felt like, yes, some change sounds nice.
The book uses Dante’s Inferno‑Purgatorio‑Paradiso arc to map the climb toward integrity. The author means this not in the sense of moral virtue, but rather the idea of aligning your inner and outer self. I was hooked by this notion, because, like Dante, I too am midway on life’s journey, having found myself lost in a dark wood of error.
The Dark Wood of Error. Inferno Canto 1 of Sarah Zucker’s Divine Comedy.
First, you are stopped in your tracks. Then, you go through hell reckoning with the error of your ways. This is followed by purgatory – a liminal time of healing, a fulcrum between the past and the future. And finally, you reach paradise, where you get to enjoy the outcome of your efforts and see how much richer your life can be when you are finally living in alignment with your truest self.
I have been editioning my art on the blockchain for 6 years, since April 2019. The hype and excitement around NFTs that exploded in 2021 brought a lot of new attention and support to my work, but it was also like trying to surf a tidal wave. The sheer force of it has been staggering.
I was well positioned for the moment. I had already found my voice, honed my craft, and steeled my resolve over many years working as an artist. I understood and had a genuine belief in the technology. And, as a mischief-maker at heart, my psychedelic worldview served me well in navigating the many twists and turns of the experience.
But, the wave finally broke. I found myself far away from where I had started, left to pick up the pieces and make sense of all that washed up alongside me. Asking myself, which adaptations truly serve me, and which were just survival strategies to keep my head above water? Now that things have settled: what kind of artist (and human) do I really want to be? What do I want to let go of, and what do I want to nurture from here?
The artist as a young artist-child (avec beret)
I knew I wanted to go back to basics for this project. After testing a number of workflows, I chose Kid Pix Studio (1993), my first digital art tool, to tell the tale of my own personal reckoning and transformation. This choice has meaning beyond the aesthetic, as the series acts as a channel between the adult artist and the inner child.
The works contain the same DNA as my long-running Videopainting style, as KidPix Studio and my Sony Videopainter originate from the same early computer graphic era. I relish the charge of minting these archaic pixels to the still-nascent future of the blockchain.
The day I got Kid Pix in December 1992.
And so, I set out on this quest in November of 2024, making an artwork a day (with some syncopation), until I completed the series in April 2025. There are 100 artworks, each correlating to a canto of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
I have woven a great deal of meaning into it; linger on the series as a whole or zoom into the details of any single canto piece and you will begin to see the hypertext throughout.
This is the tale I want to tell, not only of my personal experience, but of our collective journey. If you are in the world of crypto art, my hope is that you will see your story here. We’ve seen some weird shit, and now it’s time to reflect.
But, even in hell, it’s good to stay playful. To view even our own misdeeds and suffering with a wink. It is all equally sacred and profane – best to try and have a little fun with it.
Divine Comedy is composed of 99 still JPEG tableaux painted pixel-by-pixel, and 1 analog video artwork representing the ecstatic “Beatific Vision” as a grand finale. Each work is a single edition, minted as an erc-721 on a standalone contract.
The works are now available to collect. Existing collectors of my work are allowlisted, and new collectors may inquire to collect.
The Integrated Self. Paradiso Canto 29 of Sarah Zucker’s Divine Comedy.