Fifteen minutes wishing I was somewhere else
130 x 80 cm, oil on canvas, 2019
We live in an age of envy—intensified by the curated realities of social media.
Endlessly scrolling through the “photoshopped lives” of others, we are left alone with the unfiltered truth of our own. The gap between who we are and who we present ourselves to be grows wider. We become strangers to our real selves—envious even of our own digital avatars.
Inspired by Instagram imagery, “Fifteen minutes wishing I was somewhere else” explores a feeling of longing and envy for what others have. It captures a psychological projection shaped by algorithms, aesthetic trends, and the pressures of online self-presentation.
The composition centers on a young man sitting in an armchair, deep in thought, his head resting against his hand. His face is partially obscured by a smear of paint—his identity both present and erased. His body, a surreal hybrid of geometric and organic shapes, dissolves into a pink trapezoid, symbolizing abstraction and fragmentation. In the upper left, a second figure floats above or beneath a plane of turquoise water—frozen in motion, his face fully blurred, fingers just touching the surface.
The painting is built from elemental shapes and structured space—part landscape, part emotional architecture. Vivid colours fill a scaffold of shifting geometries, evoking a sense of atmospheric tension. There is a dialogue between the rational and the expressive, between construction and collapse.
In this “aesthetic hallucination of the real”, we chase validation at the cost of authenticity.
As social media deepens our tendency to compare, compete, and curate, the work poses a central question: “What do we lose when our online selves become more vivid than the life we’re actually living?”
We live in an age of envy—intensified by the curated realities of social media.
Endlessly scrolling through the “photoshopped lives” of others, we are left alone with the unfiltered truth of our own. The gap between who we are and who we present ourselves to be grows wider. We become strangers to our real selves—envious even of our own digital avatars.
Inspired by Instagram imagery, “Fifteen minutes wishing I was somewhere else” explores a feeling of longing and envy for what others have. It captures a psychological projection shaped by algorithms, aesthetic trends, and the pressures of online self-presentation.
The composition centers on a young man sitting in an armchair, deep in thought, his head resting against his hand. His face is partially obscured by a smear of paint—his identity both present and erased. His body, a surreal hybrid of geometric and organic shapes, dissolves into a pink trapezoid, symbolizing abstraction and fragmentation. In the upper left, a second figure floats above or beneath a plane of turquoise water—frozen in motion, his face fully blurred, fingers just touching the surface.
The painting is built from elemental shapes and structured space—part landscape, part emotional architecture. Vivid colours fill a scaffold of shifting geometries, evoking a sense of atmospheric tension. There is a dialogue between the rational and the expressive, between construction and collapse.
In this “aesthetic hallucination of the real”, we chase validation at the cost of authenticity.
As social media deepens our tendency to compare, compete, and curate, the work poses a central question: “What do we lose when our online selves become more vivid than the life we’re actually living?”
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