Icons of Collapse.
We built our myths from things designed to disappear.
Now they are outliving us.
Icons of Collapse examines the contradictions at the heart of contemporary consumer culture: our desire for more, our dependence on symbols, and our remarkable ability to turn almost anything into an object of worship.
At the centre of each work stands a familiar cultural icon — removed from its original mythology and placed into a new one. Figures associated with freedom, power, progress or collective belief become protagonists in scenes of transformation, contradiction and collapse.
Surrounding them are the physical remains of consumption. Real packaging, once designed to attract attention and trigger desire, is torn apart and rebuilt into dense visual landscapes. Coca-Cola, Pringles, candy wrappers and countless other fragments cease to function as advertising and become archaeological material — evidence of a civilization telling its story through what it consumes and leaves behind.
Gold leaf introduces another layer of contradiction. For centuries, gold has marked the sacred: icons, altarpieces, power and permanence. Here it meets disposable plastic and mass-produced packaging. The precious and the worthless occupy the same surface, questioning who decides what deserves to be preserved and what is destined to become waste.
This tension runs through the entire series. Beauty meets destruction. Sacred imagery collides with commercial language. Cultural ideals confront the material consequences of the culture that created them.
The works are not predictions of some distant dystopia. Their collapse is already present — hidden beneath bright colours, familiar logos and the seductive surfaces of everyday life. And yet, destruction is never the only possibility. By taking what has lost its purpose and giving it another, the works themselves become acts of transformation.
Icons of Collapse does not reject consumer culture from the outside. It is made from its remains, fascinated by its imagery and implicated in its contradictions. The question is therefore not simply what our culture destroys.
It is what we choose to worship, what we choose to discard — and what the remains will say about us when we are gone.
How much can we carry before progress becomes a burden?
Overload is the second work in Icons of Collapse, a series exploring how consumer culture shapes our myths, identities and sense of value.
At its center stands Atlas.
For centuries, he has been depicted carrying the heavens on his shoulders — an enduring symbol of strength, responsibility and impossible burden.
But in Overload, Atlas no longer carries the world.
He carries what we have made of it.
Above him rises an enormous sphere of discarded packaging: boxes, labels, wrappers and fragments of everyday consumption compressed into a new kind of planet.
Atlas is still holding it.
But he is on his knees.
The distinction matters.
Overload is not simply an image of collapse. It captures the moment before it — that uncomfortable point at which the weight has become almost unbearable, yet somehow we continue to carry it.
More products.
More convenience.
More choice.
More consumption.
And inevitably: more remains.
The materials surrounding Atlas are not representations of waste. They are waste — fragments of objects designed, purchased, opened and discarded, now physically transformed into the world he is forced to carry.
Behind him, the recurring golden circle of Icons of Collapse gives the scene an almost sacred quality. Gold traditionally represents permanence, value and transcendence. Here, it exists alongside materials whose intended lifespan may have been measured in days or even minutes.
That contradiction raises a simple question:
When did having more become carrying more?
As the second chapter of Icons of Collapse, Overload continues the conversation begun by Self Destruct.
Where Self Destruct confronts the erosion of the ideals we once built to endure, Overload turns toward the consequences of the world we have built around them.
But Atlas has not fallen.
Not yet.
Perhaps he will collapse beneath the weight.
Perhaps he will find a way to put it down.
Or perhaps we will simply add one more thing.
OVERLOAD
Icons of Collapse · No. 2
2026
Original artwork · Unique work (1/1)
Acrylic, discarded packaging & metal leaf on canvas
Canvas on wooden stretcher frame
80 × 80 × 4 cm
31.5 × 31.5 × 1.6 in
What happens when the things we create begin to consume the things we believe in?
Self Destruct is the first work in Icons of Collapse, a series exploring how consumer culture shapes our myths, identities and sense of value.
At its center stands the Statue of Liberty.
Confident. Upright. Almost defiant.
Yet she is standing on a burning pyre.
Around her, fragments of real consumer packaging form a chaotic landscape of brands, promises and discarded desires. Packaging designed to be opened, consumed and thrown away surrounds a monument designed to endure.
That contradiction lies at the heart of Self Destruct.
We surround ourselves with things that were never meant to last — while slowly sacrificing the things we once believed were eternal.
Behind Liberty, a circle of gold elevates her almost like a contemporary saint. But the surrounding debris tells a different story.
What do we actually worship today?
Our ideals — or the endless cycle of wanting, buying, consuming and replacing?
The fire offers no simple answer.
It can mean destruction.
But fire can also mean purification and transformation.
And Liberty is still standing.
Icons of Collapse places familiar symbols of civilization inside the contradictions of contemporary life. The series is not simply about waste. It asks what happens when progress, consumption and desire begin to redefine what we consider valuable — and what we are willing to leave behind.
Perhaps Self Destruct isn't really asking what is happening to Liberty.
Perhaps it is asking what is happening to us.
SELF DESTRUCT
Icons of Collapse · No. 1
2026
Original artwork · Unique work (1/1)
Acrylic, discarded packaging & metal leaf on canvas
Canvas on wooden stretcher frame
80 × 80 × 4 cm
31.5 × 31.5 × 1.6 in