As Venice Approaches, Arch Hades Tracks His Transition From Verse to Visuals

Arch Hades is a woman of words. Many of the words in the newspapers are carefully written and printed at the end of each year, boxed up and stored in his library of 6,000 books. Some of these words were displayed in his recent solo show in London, “We All Pass,” as part of his Confessions series. “I find myself mourning the gift as if it had become a memory”; “the things you love are the things you’ll remember” were expanded and re-engraved in acrylic polymer and fiberglass to resemble crumpled pieces of paper. After all, Hades is a poet, so the words stand out.

He’s not one to take words lightly, though. He was born in Russia, fled from St. Petersburg went to England when he was young after his father was killed. At first he could not speak English, he lived in a quiet country. It was during this growing period in his life that he truly understood how important language is to communication and interaction.

Be it poetry or visual art, his ultimate goal is the same: to connect. However, the transition from poetry to visual arts was not what he expected, until the pandemic, when he faced a canceled book tour. In 2021, he collaborated with his friend, the artist RAC, to edit his fourth volume of poetry, Arcadiain NFT. “We all have bills to pay,” he said of the partnership.

The move was not unprecedented; they were successful with an NFT postcard a few months ago, featuring a handwritten poem by Arch, which sold for $71,410.76 at auction. But that was just a warm-up. Arcadia sold on a November night at Christie’s in the form of a nine-minute, 48-second fuzzy animation, tracked with ASMR-esque electronic music for $525,000. It was “the first integrated interdisciplinary art NFT to come to auction,” as the press release put it, and made Hades the world’s highest-paid poet.

After such a crescendo, there is inevitably a pause. What’s next? With his earnings, he decided to buy a house in the British countryside where he would think about taking the next step. What made him trade pen for paintbrush, however, was a series of personal betrayals from four different people in quick succession. “I was very frustrated, and I had to find a different way to express everything I was feeling inside,” she told the Observer.

Her therapist suggested she try a creative outlet without the pressure to succeed. Hades recalled enjoying doing art for GCSEs. Yet his perfectionist tendencies would not rest. Instead of treating painting as a normal hobby, he began to teach himself the craft: experimenting with brushes, palette knives, gesso, mediums and varnish to understand the effects that each one could create. His main source of education? YouTube. After a year of practice, “the drawings started coming out.” It might have remained a hobby if his friend, a prominent art collector, had not insisted on buying one of his works and urged him to take his work seriously.

The paintings in question recall Edvard Munch, with figures standing alone in front of large bodies of water or stand out from the crowd. They also clearly show a love of the Surrealists, another group of artists known for playing with words, with some of his paintings including his framed prose. For example, in Figthe three figures in the mirror become static and invisible as the eye moves from left to right, the appearance of fruit and a bowler hat evokes René Magritte. The outline reads: “My hope is a ripe fruit, rotting in my bosom.”

Hades freely acknowledges the influence of other artists on his visual language. “I’ve never had the first thought in my life,” he said jokingly. Hades understands that he is a product of what he eats but he also has the ability to give his opinion, to inject it with new energy, to be part of the conversation. He looks at what came before him to redefine and build upon that work, remaking it in his own language. But he’s also likely to use images from his everyday life, whether it’s a carnage of crows he encountered on his local beach, a photo of an abandoned suitcase he took in London or a group of clothed figures he found online.

In terms of color, a very different and controlled palette is visible: black, chrome, gray, red, white and a rare hint of yellow. There is almost a Gothic sensibility to the works, a sad Brontë-esque worldview. “I never really felt like a child, so I was never attracted to bright colors,” she said. If anything, they emphasize his meditation on existence, loneliness and the human condition.

His take on the artistic lineage is exactly what Venice can expect from his debut, “Return,” which opens on May 7 at the Scoletta Battioro e Tiraoro di Venezia (the abandoned church on the Grand Canal). Hades was inspired by Gustav Klimt’s long-lost Faculty Paintings, and his site-specific work, which includes 22 panels and stretches 13 meters, will depict 63 life-sized figures, at once alone but intermingling with each other as they are shown into the abyss in the center. In the sculptures, which pay homage to Greek and Roman sculpture, there are all kinds of human experiences and emotions.

“There are few times in an artist’s life when you get the chance to develop,” he said. “Venice is a beautiful place that I love very much. I wanted to do something very special for it.” The work will be installed in a derelict church, a place he felt was a natural fit for the themes of life, death and transcendence. What is more appropriate than those articles in a space like this? I knew I wanted something remarkable—something worthy of Venice.”

Next to “Return,” you will present The Sphinxan immersive installation of sculptures, as well as new works from his ongoing Confessions series. The sentiment that runs through the latter is one he often returns to: vulnerability is inseparable from connection. Or as Hades himself puts it, “vulnerability is the price you pay to be connected.”

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