Hopeless machines
2026
Mixed media (oil and acrylic) on linen canvas
25.5 x 32 inches
The third painting of the series « Fractals under Surreal Constraints », « Hopeless Machines », refers to the human condition, to men endlessly repeating the same mistakes, defective machines trapped in a cycle of infernal self-destruction, with no hope of escape.
It is existential hell, human alienation, and the inherent violence of the species. Children, conditioned from an early age, take up arms under the averted gaze of ghostly parents, immobilized by a system that gradually erases them.
In the cosmos, the luminous star, encircled by rotating copper wheels, reprises the classic visual symbol of the atom, with its electron orbits. Its fourth wheel evokes an impossible atom, a deviant fundamental structure, an ambiguous entity no longer recognizable.
Extraterrestrial UFO? Dyson sphere around a star? Ophanim angel, Throne of “God”? It is the unknown, the “other,” which one wants to annihilate before even knowing who or what it is, the fear of the incomprehensible. Human machines, desperate and despairing, end up firing at the messenger, at their god, or at the entire universe.
The painting also evokes the civilization of the atom, nuclear energy, and the hidden peril on our own planet, armed with atomic bombs ready to explode. But humans look elsewhere, frozen, passive in the face of the impending catastrophe.
It is finally, also, the fragility of the child, plastic machine gun in hand, confronted alone with this direct threat: the next generation, for whom war is a game.
