NOTHING BUT ABSURDITY (Original)

In Nothing but Absurdity, the canvas is split not by line but by collapse. The upper half is crowded with bananas, suspended as if falling, dissolving or surrendering to gravity. As they descend, they merge into thick swathes of yellow impasto - paint applied with deliberate excess, tactile and unresolved. The transition is not abrupt but corrosive, as though meaning itself is melting.

The banana has become a recurring symbol in my work, rooted in the absurd elevation of Maurizio Cattelan’s taped banana - an object whose value was directed not by substance but by institutional approval. Here, the banana represents the absurdity of a culture that often mistakes provocation for profundity and novelty for depth. The impasto beneath is not simply abstraction; it is a critique of it. The thick, gestural paint references a contemporary art world increasingly dominated by inauthentic abstraction - work that gestures toward meaning without ever arriving there. It is paint for paint’s sake, expression without honesty, surface without soul. In Nothing but Absurdity, the bananas dissolve into this material language, suggesting how irony, spectacle and emptiness are absorbed and normalised rather than questioned.

The painting is intentionally uncomfortable. It asks where meaning ends and parody begins, and whether repetition has dulled our ability to discern the difference. It questions a culture that celebrates the absurd while neglecting sincerity, and an art world that too often rewards cleverness over courage. 

Ultimately, Nothing but Absurdity is not an attack on abstraction itself, but on the absence of authenticity. It is a visual reflection on what happens when irony becomes doctrine and absurdity replaces truth - when everything means something, yet nothing truly matters. 

Material: Oil on Canvas
Size: 80 x 100 cm