When Art Stops Being Comfortable
Some works are born to decorate a wall.
Others are born to disturb.
The Ring of the Destruction of Individualism was created precisely for that purpose.
The piece was presented outside the artistic studio Kitsch & Huis, inside a cultural center surrounded by contemporary, conceptual, and experimental artists. Ironically, the first reactions were not directed toward the composition, the symbolic reinterpretation, or the discourse surrounding the cycle of art. What many criticized first was the sink.
Not Venus.
Not the circle inspired by Shiva Nataraja.
Not the fragmentation into four panels.
Not the dialogue between destruction and reconstruction.
The sink.
And that was the moment I understood the work had arrived exactly where it needed to arrive.
Because the sink was never just an object.
It was the ego.
Destruction in Order to Rebuild
During my trip to India in 2025, I discovered the figure of Shiva Nataraja, the cosmic god dancing within the ring of fire. A figure that destroys the ego, not through empty violence, but through transformation.
The most important aspect of Shiva is not destruction itself.
It is what comes after.
Rebuilding.
That idea stayed with me for months. Eventually, it transformed into this work.
However, in my personal reinterpretation, Shiva disappears. In his place appears Botticelli’s Venus. The classical symbol of the birth of Western beauty replaces the Eastern god of destruction. Both become united within the same temporal circle.
But the true transformation happens below.
The ego is no longer represented by a human figure.
Now it is a Rococo sink overflowing with flowers.
A beautiful, exaggerated, decorative, and superficial object. A false contemporary shell from which the new Venus of today’s art is born.
Art and the Era of Individualism
We live in a time where art has become deeply individualistic.
A banana taped to a wall can be worth enormous amounts of money.
A stone or a glass of water can now be called art.
A minimal idea can be elevated into a masterpiece solely because of the discourse surrounding it.
I am not saying conceptual art has no value. That would be absurd.
What I question is the extreme we have reached.
As an artistic director, I have lived alongside both figurative and conceptual artists. And I have observed something very particular: many conceptual artists depend entirely on text to sustain the work. The concept becomes so important that, without explanation, the piece ceases to exist.
And that is where the fundamental question emerges:
What carries more weight?
The idea or the form?
The Irony of the Conceptual Audience
The most interesting moment occurred during the exhibition.
Many conceptual artists criticized the sink almost immediately. Some considered it banal. Others thought it was too decorative. Some even believed it “broke” the aesthetic.
But precisely that discomfort was part of the concept.
The superficial object was designed to provoke those who live inside the discourse of harmony. The piece became a mirror.
Because the sink represents exactly what art has often become: a luxury aesthetic, a brand, an appearance, an identity constructed around artistic ego.
And yet, those same criticisms ended up confirming the work itself.
The provocation had succeeded.
Four Panels, Four Elements, One Single Cycle
The work is divided into four wooden panels. To me, they represent the elements, but also the current fragmentation of art.
Figurative and conceptual art seem like opposing worlds.
As if one invalidated the other.
But both belong to the same circle.
Many figurative artists reject concept.
Many conceptual artists reject technique.
And perhaps the problem begins precisely there: in the inability to meet one another.
The destruction I speak of does not mean eliminating conceptual art. Nor does it mean returning to the past. It means accepting that art is entering an inevitable transition.
Every cycle ends in order to begin again.
Closing Your Eyes to See
After hearing so many opinions, I understood something even more important.
The individualistic artist always tries to impose their own vision. They want to explain, justify, demonstrate. They want the work to be understood according to their own rules.
But perhaps the most powerful art appears when we stop looking through ego.
When we close our eyes.
Because there are things that do not need to be seen in order to exist.
And perhaps the true problem of contemporary art is not the lack of technique or the lack of concept.
Perhaps the problem is that nobody knows how to contemplate emptiness anymore.
