YouTuber XV 2026 – 35 x 50cm, oil, acrylic on canvas
This painting inverts the conventional relationship between mark and surface. Rather than copying a source drawing onto canvas, a black ground was laid down first, followed by a cream oil layer, the image was carved out from there. The figure emerges from darkness rather than being built upon light, excavation rather than construction.
This process mirrors the attention economy’s extractive logic. Just as YouTube’s algorithm mines users for engagement, scraping away at selfhood to extract monetizable content, the process literally scrapes away material to reveal what lies beneath. Each carved line depletes the surface, removes substance. The figure isn’t built up through accumulated marks but hollowed out, worn down through repeated incisions, a formal analogy for creator burnout, for the way platform capitalism exhausts its subjects.
The scratched, carved lines have a quality entirely different from drawn marks, more urgent, more physical, more violent. The dense cross-hatching that fills the composition creates a visual static, like interference or signal noise, the figure barely coalescing out of the chaos. The main head is punctuated by the figures hand, possibly raised in defence, the surrounding lines appear as psychological pressure rendered visible.
Two inset screens on the right create a telling contrast. In the upper one, a figure has been scratched out, it is barely visible. The lower screen is painted in looser, more lyrical brushstrokes, compared to the above the figure, this one has relative clarity and composure, a figure at a desk, the professional YouTube setup rendered with some control. Two screens, two registers of the same performance, one still maintaining the broadcast face, the other already disintegrating.
The carved main figure and the brushed inset screens set up a dialogue between two methods, excavation and application, destruction and construction. The main figure is being uncovered, unearthed from beneath the surface, while the screen figures are being built up. Perhaps the “real” self is what you dig down to find, while the performed self is what gets painted on top.