The loop is a slow rotation of a young man. He stands expressionless, motionless inside the digital black. The hint of a moon above his head, a gnarled log passes at his knees. The young man palms two figures against his chest, one inward like a blade while the other unfolds, a newborn. This is A Look Through the Eyelids by Moscow-based digital artist Alexandr Sub Sensus (SUB Sensus on Twitter).
Sub Sensus crafts the figure with accurate anatomy — there is a true skeleton beneath his flesh, his skin the rubber of a child’s toy. The design of the figure leans into realism as the rest of the image is pure fantasy, his existence expressed as an explosion of shape and color. Small figures push and pull into the young man, blood-red droplets orbit his fractured spine. There is a sense of movement in all of this — we are spectators to his endless deterioration. The privacy of the young man is exposed. His conscience no longer lives inside of his body but is held within his own hands.
A Look Through the Eyelids could not exist in any other medium outside of an NFT. We need to see the serpentine shapes on the young man’s back as much as we want to see what is happening at the front of his torso. The haunting melody grounds the piece with an emotional stake. To take a single frame of the piece and attempt to make a print of it would miss the point of Sub Sensus’ stunning work.
