Cryptik Movement: The Art Campaign that Supports Humanity and Transforms the Urban Landscape

“Art teaches nothing except the significance of life”, said the American writer Henry Miller in the last century. Looking at and understanding contemporary artistic Cryptik Movement, this sentence seems to come to life.

Nobody knows his real identity, except that he comes from Los Angeles; Cryptik does not want people to focus on the idea of “the cult of personality”, as he said last March during an interview to Inked Magazine. In his opinion, what matters is disseminating messages of human unity and “a collective consciousness of peoples moving in similar paths intertwined for purpose”.

How could it be more suitable when nowadays more and more democratic countries are closing their borders to human beings who are asking for their help?

He does not want to become a famous artist: he wants to share his passion and make it a useful tool for other people. He is satisfied with “creating something bigger than myself that anyone can be a part of: the Cryptik Movement”. Nevertheless, like it or not, he is starting to make himself known almost everywhere among Urban Artists, mostly because of his wonderful spiritual art and his use of calligraphy mandalas, or Mantradala, as he likes to call them, and of universal (religious and irreligious) themes, symbols and people in his work, such as Gandhi, Dalai Lama, Ganesha, Bob Marley and the Bodhisattva.

Inspired by traditional Tibetan thangka painters and by ancient scripts such as Arabic, Sanskrit and Hindu, Cryptik Movement is entirely free of any religious or political agendas. He composes his works with several methods, such as stencils and stickers, but freehand too, particularly when it comes to geometrical and calligraphy drawings, which often recall healing mantra, Buddhist chants and spiritual teachings, inspiring beauty and peace.

The main objective of Cryptik Movement, who everyone can join, “is to challenge people to think of other possibilities and to see a different reality - one that encompasses many ideologies, philosophies, and belief systems - in order to help us better understand our place in the universe”, Cryptik reveals on his website.

Despite the fact that he was raised Catholic, but never really a practicing one, he tends to lean towards Eastern philosophy, the sacred, the occult and esoteric knowledge. In a reality where iwhat you own and earn is more revered than who you are and what you and others feel, Cryptik Movement is “a public art campaign dedicated to helping humanity”, is a way to put art in people hands, who cannot afford to own an artwork, so “bringing blessings and positive karma to all”.

Currently, it is possible to come across his works walking down the street of Los Angeles and San Francisco, at yoga studios, on bumper stickers, skateboard decks, phone cases, murals and scrolls. Cryptik also works on tribute murals, such as the last one to Muhammad Ali for the Special Olympics: World Games, painted in June in Los Angeles; whilst in July, he was in Mexico with the good folks at PangeaSeed for 2015 Sea Walls: Murals for Oceans Expedition.

As regards his personal belief system, he does not adhere to any one particular, but he claims to have found meditation to be a useful tool free from dogma: “The most important practice comes from everyday life in dealing with situations and people with as much compassion, toleration and understanding as possible. This is something that all religions can agree on.

At the end of the day, it’s about keeping an open-mind and finding truth & beauty in all teachings and accepting that no one religion, philosophy, or belief system has it all figured out”, he recently revealed to Inked Magazine.

Someone once said: “Happiness never decreases by being shared” and Cryptik Movement has wonderfully taken it literally.