RedruM, "My Way”. Courtesy of the artist.
Art in Blazing Red
Art
Web 3
Experimental
We explore some of the works of RedruM, an artist committed to digital art and AI.
Controversial and disruptive. As powerful as the red that represents their work.
author
Luciana Trost
Date
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RedruM, "GM”. Courtesy of the artist.
Who would have imagined, just a few years ago, that the seven deadly sins could be represented as digital art, as AI-generated illustrations? Dante Alighieri depicted hell itself through the famous nine circles in The Divine Comedy. In that book, those sins—pride, greed, lust, wrath, gluttony, envy, and sloth—are also described as vices of the soul rooted in the Christian tradition and regarded as the source of negative human behavior. RedruM, who defines themselves as an A(I)rtist, traverses hell in order to return it to us in the form of artworks.
These creations do not go unnoticed. Not only because of the striking red used throughout—which, of course, is part of and evokes the artist’s own name—but also because of the disturbing yet beautiful scenes portrayed, most of them particularly sublime, understood in the Kantian sense: that which generates tension, lacks form, or appears infinite in magnitude, beyond our sensible intuitions, and yet still draws us in.
RedruM, “Obscura”. Courtesy of the artist.
RedruM, “Veltheia”. Courtesy of the artist.
Among these works, faces abound that invite us, with a single image, to perceive hyperbole, the extreme expression of the seven deadly sins in a worldly register, rendered both ridiculous and terrifying: faces with perverse laughter; humanized animals depicted with feelings of rage; a deep crimson sky from which an eye emerges, suggesting that it sees everything, like Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984; a young woman elegantly dressed and lying on a sidewalk in a posture of anguish; death in a suit and dejected.
There is a clear impulse to push the depiction of these vices partly toward the absurd and partly toward humor, bringing them into a hell that is not necessarily located in the most remote depths but is instead earthly.
RedruM, “Red Days”. Courtesy of the artist.
RedruM, “Hide”. Courtesy of the artist.
On the website’s homepage, RedruM presents what appears to be a manifesto and states:
Step into the universe of "Seven" where the power of the "Red Lens" beckons.
As a guide through this enigmatic journey, I place in your hands the lens to unravel the intricate threads of human existence.
Envy, lust, pride, wrath, sloth, gluttony, and greed seamlessly blend within the tapestry of everyday life.
Seize the lens, turn its perspective like the unpredictable twists of a narrative, and traverse corridors where the Seven Deadly Sins silently resonate.
Let the lens reveal a narrative where the ordinary morphs into an extraordinary story, painted with hues that defy the mundane.
If, like Dante in The Divine Comedy, we must pass through this “purgatory” to cleanse our souls, then RedruM fulfills that purpose. Moving through a viewing of these works, in any of their manifestations, tends to purify the soul. And that, dear readers, is precisely what art aims to do.
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