Baku: Skulls From the Catacombs, Revealed at Their Own Pace

Baku calls the style minimal hyperrealism: faces, hands and bodies surfacing from, or sinking into, a milky white void. The main collection, The Void, is built around 1 question, "Do we sink, or do we rise?", and around what Baku calls "the fertile discomfort of not knowing." The artist also leads Suburbs Gallery, a digital art gallery based in the suburbs of Montréal.

Shedding, a triptych of The Silence, The Murmur and The Cacophony, is "an ode to what we choose not to see." A hand grips a pale, snake-like form that coils around the fingers; a calm face rests with a white snake across the forehead. Each panel marks a stage of a problem that is ignored until it becomes systemic: "In silence, it does not disappear. It becomes more voracious and intensifies over time." On October 24 a collector completed the triptych, and with it earned a key to mint a Remains skull.

Remains is "quiet traces of what survives after identity, flesh, and memory disappear." It began in the Catacombs of Paris: each skull is digitally painted using photographs of real human remains from the Catacombs as reference, and the series explores "what survives us: memory, symbols, reputation, objects, and the traces we leave behind." It is an ongoing gated collection of 1 of 1s on Ethereum, released through Manifold with no predetermined supply, where keys issued by Baku let collectors acquire works as they are revealed, "following the natural rhythm" of the creation process. Kleos, Skull No. 1, was made for the collector Basileus, whose name is the ancient Greek word for king: a laurel crowned skull held in ringed hands, "a portrait without a face." Kleos was the glory that outlived death, and on the night of its reveal, September 2, it was shown on a 25 by 75 foot billboard in Times Square, presented by One Love Art during NFTNYC week.

On October 25 Baku posted a single line: "Skull No. 2. Reveals next week." A day later Baku shared photos of the work glowing on a screen at MoCA L.I.ghts 2026: Night Visions, the pop-up projected gallery that ran October 22 to 26 in Patchogue, Long Island, as part of a festival that turns the village into an open air museum of projection, video and animation. The photos were taken by the artist Lampwrecked, whose own work was projected on the MoCA L.I. facade.

Sources

• Remains, Shedding and The Void, By Baku
• By Baku
• Remains by Baku on Raster
• Baku on Raster
• Kleos, Skull No. 1, Remains reveal thread, September 2, 2026
• Baku on Remains and the Catacombs of Paris, September 2, 2026
• Baku on Kleos in Times Square, September 2, 2026
• Baku on the completed Shedding triptych, October 24, 2026
• Baku, "Skull No. 2. Reveals next week," October 25, 2026
• Baku at MoCA L.I.ghts 2026: Night Visions, October 26, 2026
• MoCA L.I.ghts 2026 digital map, Patchogue Arts Council
• MoCA L.I.ghts 2026, Discover Long Island
• Thumbnail: Kleos, Skull No. 1, Baku, September 2, 2026