EGO

In Ego, John Black examines the seductive pull of self-admiration through the language of vanitas. A skull crowned with daffodils — symbols of vanity and renewal — becomes both mirror and memento mori, reflecting the fragile boundary between beauty and decay. Gilded in gold leaf, the image radiates with the deceptive glow of excess, where allure quietly transforms into dissolution. A transparent acrylic layer, etched with the artist’s signature pictograms, introduces a spectral dimension — a coded presence of identity and illusion. Here, self-love is not affirmation but erosion: a gradual unmaking in which vanity reveals itself as a refined form of disappearance.