HOMO
A series by DALOV
There is a painting made in Rome in 1593 depicting a sick young man.
It is Caravaggio a self-portrait in a moment of fragility, pale face, tired eyes, a bunch of grapes in hand.
The fruit of Bacchus. Natural pleasure. Life, even when it hurts.
Four hundred years later, DALOV takes that figure. Not to copy it. To empty it. The face is removed, replaced by an anonymous blue oval ageless, genderless, without identity.
The posture remains. The golden background remains. The red table remains. And one single thing changes the object the figure holds in its hand.
From that moment on, everything is in that object.
HOMO TECHNOLOGICUS – (2016)
The figure bowed. The head tilted downward. In hand, a smartphone black screen, Apple logo. Caravaggio looked at his illness.
Homo Technologicus looks at his screen.
The posture is identical. So is the dependency.
HOMO ENERGETICUS – (2016)
The figure holds a can of Red Bull as one holds a chalice. The gesture is ritual, almost sacred. The bunch of grapes natural pleasure, real vitality has become artificial energy in a can. We drink to exist. To perform. To never stop.
HOMO EROTICUS 2016 – (2016)
The most direct. The most courageous. In hand, a vibrator. Solitary, mechanical pleasure in place of natural, shared pleasure. The prosthetic has entered even intimacy.
HOMO LUDENS – (2026)
The hand forms a gun the gesture of a child playing war. Innocent. Irresponsible. Universal. The title echoes Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens, 1938. Man as a playing being, the foundation of civilization. DALOV in 2026 shows where that game has led.
Those who govern the world do so with this gesture. No eye contact with those who die because of their decisions.
HOMO …OMOH – (2016)
The figure holds its own head in its hands. This is not Narcissus gazing at his reflection in the water it is Narcissus in reverse. The reflection still exists but the original has disappeared. The title reads the same from left to right and right to left because it no longer has a direction The man who has lost himself. The void at the end of the journey.
AN OBSERVATION
HOMO is not a denunciation. It is not a sermon. It is an observation silent, precise, without comment. DALOV takes the most vulnerable figure in art history and brings it into the present. Caravaggio's illness was physical. Ours is different made of invisible dependencies, of surrogates that replace the real, of power exercised like a children's game. Five works. Same structure. One element changes. Those who look bring the rest.
DALOV 2016/2026
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