“Skeletal Garden” explores similar concepts but more quietly—the art shows a skeleton awash in golden light over a backdrop of night skies and deep indigo mountains, dark turquoise grass dotted with white and blue flowers. It appears to be growing from the ground and simultaneously sinking into it, at rest but somehow alive. The sentence “Congratulations! You managed to grow a beautiful garden…” floats in a text box. As Criptocromo explained, the piece considers how death can bring life, how a decaying creature can help produce a thriving garden by giving itself back to the earth. “It’s more to see the transcendental part,” he said.
He similarly explores the relationship between life and death in “Xiuhtecuhtli.” In “Xiuhtecuhtli,” the eponymous Aztec god, known as the god of fire but also associated with life after death, rebirth and transformation, crouches low over a flame as if about to lower himself into it, grinning with his arms crossed over his knees. And in “LuciferChrist,” Jesus and Lucifer are depicted as a single being, with red skin, horns, and a flashing blue halo. A text box below quotes John 14:6: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Criptocromo continuously coaxes harmony from the space between seemingly conflicting forces, be it life and death, people and nature, good and evil. I asked him about the presence of spirituality in his work, but when he suddenly became bashful, I realized that through our language difference and the spotty audio connection of our video chat, he thought I asked him about sexuality in his art instead. I didn’t correct him because I thought that either way, his answer would provide fascinating context. He said it wasn’t a focus of his work, but “I love the symbols,” sharing that he’s become interested in lucid dreaming. “It has more to do with grading your own language and symbols and trying to make sense of your own imagery.” He added that artists should listen to the dark sides of their personalities, as creatively those are “routes where great things are hidden.”
