Existential Angst - 2023

Acrylic, marker, chalk and charcoal on canvas

70 x 50 cm

Installation view photo: Alma Ben-David


Painted after watching a documentary of George Condo and after attending a course about Vanitas. This painting frustrated me quite a lot before being finished. I aimed to create a versatile use of acrylic paint - watercolour see-through qualities in blue vase, wax qualities in the candles, precise delicate in the candlestick and all-out oversaturated on the character. This work is about anxiety and waiting, being in the moment. The candles are out, with digital advertisement like icons. The roses are still alive but with borrowed time as they have been picked- they are the same colour as the character for these reasons and also resemble his eyes. The bottom of the painting is a black ledge/ line, like an unknown abyss beneath but also as a hommage to the Trompe-l'œil common in the Vanitas traditional painting.

In the second photo (Intallation view) the work is hanging mid-air with two cords, in limbo, between life and death.




Birthday Boy - 2024

Acrylic, pumice and charcoal on canvas

Pedestal from cardboard and plastic

30 x 40 cm

The heart of the exhibition, also named Birthday Boy. Portraying the anti climatic celebration of ending the fun part - university and childhood. 
In the right side of the painting a clown with a comically long candlesque birthday hat looking at the viewer and at the object in front. Hes colourless and sitting in an uncomfortable manner yet still smiling. On the left is a red candle that could also function as a comically cartoonish dynamite stick or a birthday cake.This painting is about anticipation, having fun and pictorial balance.
The pedestal is readymade cardboard and plastic cylinder from an industrial printer. It used to be inside the cardboard on which I painted 'Untitled (Spider)'.The pedestal is a post-vandalist cheap version of the classic greek column.