PAUL SELING

Drawing fast to avoid “Reason”

This was an experimental 1.5-hour ad-lib drawing session — creating without any preconceived idea or plan. My aim was to challenge myself by caricaturing a certain class of people who hold key positions within the post-communist system.

I see this group as a kind of social caste, corrupted to varying degrees by their roles inside the political and social web. Their influence in local communities grants them a particular sense of self-importance, compelling them to perform according to certain public expectations about their image and persona.

Tainted personalities, tainted design

We remain “lucky” enough to witness their anachronistic attempts at projecting good taste, fashion, and style — from hairdos to clothing — which often become the subject of amusement and gossip among connoisseurs. In this series, I aimed to capture, detail by detail, these hollow performances: the forced effort to look good, cool, or trendy, and to be publicly accepted despite the glaring artificiality.