Claudio Bel is a multidisciplinary artist, who creates intimate compositions with symbolic meanings, as a reflection of himself and his story. While he is a man of science, he has always shared a powerful connection with the Arts from poetry to painting to singing and playing guitar. In this regard, it is not surprising that Leonardo da Vinci is one of his favorite artists, as he practiced art under the guidance of science. According to Claudio, the combination of science and spirituality is the key to living well, since science is the basis for life, and spirituality is the knowing of something greater, and neither one can be achieved without the other. Nowadays, it is crucial to redirect our concerns towards understanding the importance of spirituality and science, since they often appear to contradict one another, due to modern skepticism.
Following his story, as he experimented with video games, 3D art unexpectedly entered his life. At first, he experimented with videos and 3D's potential, but it wasn't until March 2021 that he decided to explore NFT's world. Claudio was in search of a way to unite audio and video and 3D gave him the freedom of expression and the ability to experiment with a wide variety of elements. Furthermore, Claudio stated that he drifted away from poetry and music to animation and 3D, in order to better express the magic of his psychedelic experiences.
When we try to approach his artistic compositions, we understand that the recipient of his art will need to follow the tale and read his works by diving into a deeper layer of understanding it, in order to uncover it’s secrets. We watch him explore worlds and ideas beyond our own, captivated by lucid dreaming and the concept of other realms and dimensions, and how everything is interconnected - this oneness. His art is a window into the artist's world, and what we see and experience speaks to our inner truth, and somehow, it's the artist's very personal expression that creates a very personal connection with the viewer. He explains:
‘’ I am influenced by psychedelic themes but I don't fancy using the classic psychedelic style, as I think that the most beautiful visions in psychedelics belong to what I call the 8th layer, in my artworks i try to describe what exists in the 9th layer, beyond the world of colors and happiness, the fractal geometries, there Is an deep universe of information, that’s less shining and more mysterious. Also, I get my inspiration from visual art, poetry, music, cinema and more. I think the arts should influence each other going beyond the mediums.’’
Claudio seeks to build connections and in a world where art is constantly in an identity crisis phase, he goes back to Plato's thoughts, specifically the theory of forms, where the role of the artist is questioned since art imitates a copy of a copy of a form. He believes that his purpose, as an artist, is to bring the experience of the real world (the world of ideas) to this world by finding ways to bridge these two worlds. It was this search for like-minded people that ultimately led to the creation of the Psyfam community back in May 2021, which led to PSYDAO. Their mission is to promote scientific research on psychedelics for the sake of humanity as well as to give shelter and support artists as they want to unite and empower all psychedelic artists. Ultimately, they want to use their art to unite people and help them. Psyfam was started by Claudio but the artists GummyLSD and Vinnikiniki helped the community grow faster while Cosmonutty , initiated the PSYDAO’s idea.
In conclusion, it is indeed quite difficult to fit Claudio’s fluid and mysterious art into a scheme, the only way to experience it, is to dive into one of his artworks and see, listen and feel.
Check out his art: https://www.claudiobel.xyz/
on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClaudioBel2
on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cl.audio_bel/