The composition features four wooden Dala horses, each representing a different stallion in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; a melange of vibrant-coloured pills of different shape and size, based on the coat of the Dala horses; spring flowers; a near-empty pill bottle and a paint tube, rested in the palms of two motionless hands respectively. The Dala horses are styled in the direction of Victor Vasnetsov’s painting of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The white horse represents plague; the red one war; the black famine; and the pale one, death and decay. The instruments that their riders identify with are also illustrated on the painted horses [1]. The Christian apocalyptic vision is that the four horses will set off a divine apocalypse upon the world.
The work is about the greed of man. We do not realise the superficial ills that the horses portray can potentially be manmade. From the existence of biological warfare to the disruption of food supply as a result of poor democratic decisions being made, these matters are created and manifest themselves in the greed for money; the greed for power. The obsession to possess more has created a disproportionate divide of influence; with the one of greater influence being able to control physical resources, and eventually, the majority. The greed of man does not just allow man to play God; it allows them to be God.
We are often so caught up in our misery that we sometimes forget that man is human. For example, a lock of Elvis Presley’s famous dark hair fetched some $15,000 at an auction in 2009. The truth is human greed will one day get the better of mankind, and if not careful, will lead to the destruction of an entire species. Being human, being unable to resist temptations comes naturally. The “protagonists” in this illustration are shown to be overdosed on pills, a manmade invention; displaying the idea that man has indeed killed man. The inflated ego of man is portrayed by the huge disparity between the scalar proportions of the hands and the Dala horses, showing that man has outgrown the horses and the ills that they represent, that they are now able to manipulate these elements to their liking due to advancements in technology and the increasing influence of “the 1%”.
The spring flowers in the center of the composition are modelled after those in Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. In the artwork, the flowers float around the embracing couple, Zephyr and Chloris. As the hovering pair represents lust, comparatively the use of spring flowers in this illustration is meant to symbolise man’s greed for physical desire and the feeding the appetite thereof.
The paint tube in the palms of the bottom hand is representative of my art style. As many have likened my art to be “O.D.” [2] and avant-garde but yet visually breath-taking at the same time, these characteristics have become a personal signature of my own. The pills seem to be arranged to spell “overdose”, which can be abbreviated as “O.D.” as well. The letters “BAR” can be made out on the paint tube, until it disappears behind the crumples of the twisted edge. They could spell the name of the colour “barn red”, and could also spell “barbiturate”, a drug that is frequently involved in overdoses.
The composition obeys the Fibonacci number sequence. The Dala horses are arranged to face the center to lead the eye into the word. I adopted a complimentary colour scheme while maintaining a warm colour harmony as a form of irony to the ill-fated destiny of man.
[1] Bow, sword, scale, scythe
[2] Overdone
