Alotta (TRAITS), 2022

French Art director, motion designer and creator Alotta Money (Phillipe Fatoux, 1973-2022) was considered a pioneer of the Crypto Art space, particularly with his work in NFTs and virtual world CryptoVoxels.

Self-professed ‘Photoshop priest’, he began to find celebrity for his banner designs and virtual architecture commissioned by tech entrepreneur John McAfee (1945-2021).

The hallmarks of his work was an absurdist humour, parlayed into visual gags with a surrealist flair.

His spooky yet delightful upside down world showcased an obsession with John Cleese and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. With a helping of Ed Gorey-tinged Gothic this set the tone for his curiously lit futuristic Bosch-like hellscapes utilising a particular colour palette rife with pinks blues and purples. Like a candy coloured Blade Runner, this distinct imaginary world was manned by anointed infantes cross-eyed with greed and bubble blowing chimeras.

This aesthetic comedian was generous of spirit and wallet, supportive of other creators whom he admired; acquiring as well as promoting their work. Even with a huge fan base and great success with pieces regularly selling into USD tens of thousands, he remained humble and consistently upbeat.

Known for his incredibly high output, his last project, undertaken while he would have known he was very ill, was ‘THC (Thousand Header Coterie)’ for platform Async’s ‘Blueprints’ endeavour. He passed away from Cancer in early March 2022.

The TRAITS series is fairly self-explanatory, being shorthand for ‘portraits.’ Each is painstakingly built up from thousands of small pieces relative to the subject; their personal traits.

In this piece Alotta’s iconic profile picture, a four-eyed Cleese on a tomato background is recreated from the variety of odd and appealing motifs he often used in his work; distorted aristocrats from paintings of antiquity, UFOs and flying machines, strange rocky outcrops and castles, dinosaurs and octopuses, bananas and bowlers, mixed with neon signage and contemporary tech imagery, currency symbols and of course his namesake dollar bills.