This token is created from a physical painting I produced in 2015.
The work is inspired by Honoré de Balzac's short story "The unknown masterpiece" and is an attempt to reproduce Frenhofer's "masterpiece" described in the work. In the story, Frenhofer was an aged master of impeccable artistic ability, who had devoted more than a decade to creating one "perfect" work of art. When the artwork is revealed in the end of the story, to the two protagonist's surprise, it is a mess of brushstrokes and colours from which a life-like painted woman's foot emerges. His pursuit of the impossible led to failure and despair, and the final sentence of the story revealed that he had died after burning all his canvases. Balzac's novella explores in a profound way the vicious cycle that experimental and groundbreaking artists face when pursuing their vision of "beauty" or "perfection" which leads to ever more experimentation, itself becoming a force of uncertainty and doubt with destructive concequences.