KING'S COIN

HELLo Again!

It’s been quite some time since I last updated this space, but I promise I come bearing something incredibly special. Well... A brand-new DROP of exciting, physical art that I am thrilled to finally share with the world.

Allow me to introduce you to "KING'S COIN"; an art-toy/netsuke figure and most recent addition to my online shop.

Poor Little Regan

This project started as an exercise in ZBrush. I was simply messing around in that powerful creative sandbox, letting my hands figure out a shape, when inspiration struck. Maybe I had recently re-watched William Friedkin's horror masterpiece The Exorcist, or it just came to my mind... I really do love that film very deeply, it's so darn COMFY... in any case I found myself browsing around the web looking at Mesopotamian artifacts—specifically, historical figurines of Pazuzu, the demon that possesses poor little Regan in the film, spins her head around and all that fun stuff.

THIS handsome mofo, you remember

There is such a specific voice in the figure. He has stood thus for millennia and, after you and I are dust my friend, he... will remain standing!

A Self-Portrait

As I sculpted my own interpretation of Pazuzu, something strange happened. The features shifted, twisted, and smoothed out until the piece began to look like a distorted self-portrait. It was as if the boundary between the maker and the myth started to blur. Such are the ways of empathy. Such is understanding that to understand another is to understand him as part of our project. During the process, Pazuzu started talking to me. Or rather, he made it clear that he wanted to speak, leaving it up to me to grant him a voice. More specifically, to grant a SHAPE to his voice. I found myself obsessing over a singular question:

What sort of ancient lore, wisdom/blasphemy could such a being intone?

That is the exact mystery that drives my creative practice. I don’t want to dismantle or minimize mysteries; I want to deepen them. As I´ve said many times; the work of people is to solve problems, the work of artists is to CREATE THEM.

After much thought and toil I did find something for dear Pazu to say. I had him COIN a powerful statement, one imbued, on many levels, with the power of the most powerful thing in existence... THE CIRCLE of course.

I sort of look like that IRL (minus the halo and wings)

TO COIN A PHRASE

Pazuzu, the king of wind demons is speaking. But Pazuzu does not merely speak, dear reader. He mints, he coins. His breath literally hardens into a gold coin bearing his own likeness, front and back, creating a totally self-referential loop.

Think about that for a second. This is the "framing" that people that study political dialog often talk about. Something we all, knowingly or unknowingly do.

In the ancient world, the act of "coining" was the ultimate flex of absolute, sovereign authority. It was what ancient kings did to stamp their power onto the world. By putting their own faces on currency, they dictated the metric of value for everyone else, they made themselves the very measure of value. For Pazuzu, speech behaves with this exact type of imperial tyranny. It brings us squarely into that whole Marshall McLuhan "the medium is the message" thing. The actual words he is uttering matter less than the physical vessel carrying them. The message is the currency. Language is stripped of its fleeting nature and hardened into an economic transaction. You aren't listening to a message; you are buying into a system.

This is actually what we all do, as we measure all things through ourselves. The reality of empathy is much deeper than merely "being nice to others". Empathy is the act of projecting yourself onto things, of seeing things only insofar as they relate to your PROJECT.

One Pazuzu

A Game of Spaces

By having a sculpture "speak" and its speech take the shape of its own flattened shape, a fascinating dialogue between two totally different dimensions takes place: sculpture vs bas-relief.

The figure of Pazuzu occupies our physical, three-dimensional space. He casts shadows. He demands room. He "walks" among us... Yet, his voice—the coin—collapses that space entirely. Art history tells us that freestanding sculpture simulates immediate, breathing life, while bas-relief has historically been the medium of the sarcophagus, the tomb, and the monument. It is the art form of fossilization. By turning his speech into a coin, Pazuzu is literally compressing living, 3D flesh into a flat, 2D code.

Think about it.

Words don't exist in our physical, volumetric reality; they exist in a strange, abstract, flattened space. Language is a ledger. By speaking in bas-relief, the demon takes the chaotic vitality of the 3D world and flattens it into an unmoving, permanent historical document. The sculpture creates the coin, but the coin summarizes the sculpture, trapping a living entity inside its own geometric, encrypted text.

A dialog of different circles

And

If you look really closely at the imagery stamped onto that flattened disk, you’ll find a much deeper, purely philosophical theology at play.

At first glance, those radiating lines behind the figure echo classical solar motifs—the kind of symbols historically tied to divine kingship and light. We understand this on a basal level. We are all children of the "sun"—the sun being the ultimate metaphor for God, for the absolute unity of all things, the boundless, undifferentiated source from which all existence flows. In that original state of perfect cosmic unity, everything is one, everything is infinite, and everything is completely formless.

But look at what Pazuzu is doing on that coin.

His silhouette is positioned directly in front of the sun, utterly ECLIPSING the very source of the rays bursting from behind him.

This is where the true, adversarial, "Satanic" gesture happens. It isn't a statement about malice or evil; it is an exploration of how individuality itself actually works. In Paradise Lost, Milton essentially frames Satan as the radical principle of individuality. To exist as an individual, to have a self, is to be in a state of natural antagonism with absolute unity. By the very act of living, we are fighting the undifferentiated whole. We are stepping out of the collective light and into a specific, limited shape. Just like you did at birth.

A back to project onto

Think about the mechanics of an eclipse. The only way to declare "I am here" is to eclipse the sun, meaning to cast your own distinct shadow across reality.

This limitation is precisely how we launch our own empathic project.

Value doesn't come from some abstract, universal measuring stick hidden in the universe. It comes from the self. The empathic project requires you to first define your own boundaries, to step in front of the light and say, "This is where I begin and end." Only after you have firmly established your own shape can you begin to define the world through yourself. Things are only "big" or "small," "near" or "far," in direct relationship to your scale. By truncating the infinite sun, Pazuzu isn't just obstructing light—he is creating the coordinates for perspective. He proves that identity requires boundaries, and that we only discover meaning when we stand in front of the light, look out at the world, and become the measure of all things and the heart of all value.

Of course, what I’m laying out here isn’t meant to be the last word about this piece. Not in the slightest.

There are so many more secrets and dynamics lurking within the work—complex, moving gears that engage with each other in a way that creates a genuinely "living" object, rather than some static, preachy "message." This isn't a lecture pinned to a pedestal. The multiple limbs, the clashing spaces, and the shifting shapes that compose this Pazuzu chimera all talk to each other, constantly whispering and producing new emotions and ideas. If you have the will to listen closely, you will undoubtedly receive them. They are legion!

My deepest wish as an artist isn't to hand you a finished answer, but to create a companion for your travails—a presence that can walk and grow alongside you, offering entirely new insights as time rolls its endless, circular course.

The KING'S COIN figure is officially LIVE, fully realized, and ready to haunt your shelves, lovingly conceived, sculpted, printed, sanded, painted and weighted by yours truly. You can purchase your own little demon right now, available in three distinct colors and two different sizes to perfectly fit the landscape of your world. If you are ready to invite this entity into your own space and begin that dialogue, head over to the store.

I will bring more figures to you in the future, not just comics, so look forward to that!

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post at least as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

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Catch you later!