Looking for the Wheel Nut, 1992

In Looking for the Wheel Nut, the horrors of the everyday way of life of our age are described. A young man, enclosed in a strict outline and suffocating in his framework, is searching for the wheel nut of his motorbike, which can just be made out in the upper part of the picture. The expression on his face betokens his bewilderment, terror, exhaustion in the face of the modern world which is smothering him, his despairing attempt to find the wheel nut and mend his motorbike so that he can leave, escape. The stressed black outline constricts the figure even more; the technique, close to the Byzantine tradition, with the attack of the colour tone with small parallel brush-strokes on a dark sub-stratum, is reminiscent of the portrayal of the ascetics and martyrs of ecclesiastical iconography.