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The Universe

Oil and sand on canvas/ 25 x 15 cm Each / 2024-2026 

The Universe is a series of oil paintings that reinterprets the smartphone home screen as an exploration of contemporary digital culture. The work transforms the grid of app icons—social media, messaging, entertainment, and productivity platforms—into richly textured, abstracted compositions.

The paintings incorporate sand mixed into oil paint, creating a granular surface that evokes digital pixels through physical, tactile form. This material choice bridges the virtual and tangible, referencing screen resolution while existing firmly in the real world.

The series examines how smartphones function as personal universes: contained ecosystems housing entire networks of communication, creativity, and connection. By rendering digital interfaces through oil and sand, the work creates a deliberate tension between smooth, intangible screens and rough, physical surfaces, inviting reflection on the intersection of digital and physical existence in contemporary life.

The work bridges expressionism with an investigation of the modern grid, exploring color through popular culture icons—Facebook, Gmail, Instagram—that have become symbols carrying personal and collective meaning. These everyday digital markers are recontextualized as subjects worthy of painterly inquiry, questioning what holds significance in contemporary visual culture.