The Pretender
2026 · Archival pigment print · Edition of 8 · 80 × 66 cm framed
available
This series updates a classical studio tradition. Tintoretto and Poussin engineered miniature box-theatre sets — teatrini — peopled with wax figures to plan their compositions and test light. Here that method is rebuilt digitally: each scene is constructed as a three-dimensional theatre set in which 3D scans of real horses are staged for dramatic light and depth, then layered by hand with high-resolution photographs of the artist's own studio canvases and historic landscapes from museum archives. The Court is a suite of four formal portraits — The Patron, The Pretender, The Duchess, The Heir. A single recurring horse holds the central role while the series adopts the staging and ranks of dynastic painting, its themes bloodstock, lineage and aristocracy. Stripped of human presence — the riders rendered as vacant, hollow vestments — classical portraiture becomes a silent theatrical spectacle in which the animal stands permanent while human authority vanishes.
