«The prince is on a white horse. The twenty-first century is a deconstruct of the image of an „ideal man“ that exposes him as a product of mass culture, inventive fantasies and superficial self-improvement.
The romanticized image of the ideal man, which has existed in culture for centuries as a symbol of salvation, strength and hope, is deliberately weakened, deprived of heroic monumentality and placed in the context of modern reality, where illusions often replace authenticity.
The central figure is a young man sitting on a white horse who, when carefully considered, turns out to be a pony rather than a great horse. This visual dissonance highlights the fragility and artificiality of the ideal created by society and mass culture. The hero is surrounded by the attributes of pseudointellectuality and pseudopsychology, a pile of books that represent a superficial desire for self-awareness and spiritual development, which in fact becomes only a decorative feature of the image. The character seeks to demonstrate «rightness» and to avoid aesthetically harmful habits, but the Kalyan present in the composition is a symbol of compromise — an attempt to maintain the illusion of control over life, allowing only socially acceptable weaknesses.
Crushed with hoofs, apples become a symbol of trampled temptation and lost promises. The apple traditionally involves temptation, desire, and romantic hope, but in this work it turns into a sign of destruction — a visual indication of how ideals can destroy their own appeal. The painting explores the phenomenon of modern romantic myth, showing how digital culture, self-presentation, and superficial forms of self-development shape a new type of hero, which is apparently attractive but internally vulnerable and removed from reality. The work raises questions about the nature of expectations, the boundary between the way and the person, and the price to be paid for trying to meet imposed ideals.
The image of the sparrow is particularly important in the painting. He’s a metaphor for girls who fall in love not with the real person, but with the image he created. The dead sparrow symbolizes the broken expectations, emotional exhaustion, and inevitability of the frustration created by the clash of an idealized vision with reality.
«The prince is on a white horse. 21st century» 100×140 cm Holst, acryl, pencils, oil chalk