Fragile (protect from all elements)

FRAGILE (PROTECT FROM ALL ELEMENTS)
Every human being in transit deserves this label.
Fragile. Handle with care. Protect from all elements. Keep upright. This is the language we print on the wooden crates we use to transport things of extraordinary value — the instructions we give to strangers who will carry something precious through the world without knowing what it contains or what it cost to make. The irony, of course, is that we print these instructions on the boxes. Never on the people.
This painting was made on one of those crates.
Not despite the text already stamped into the wood — because of it. The word FRAGILE, the arrows, the warnings printed in black on raw timber: these are not decoration. They are the most honest statement the work makes, and they were there before the artist touched it. All he did was recognise what the material was already saying and decide to build the vessel inside it.
At the centre, the jarrón — the human being as container, as it runs through the entire collection — is painted in sections of gold and green, pink and purple, blue dots and waterfall and plant. Not a serene vessel. A complex one. A being that contains multitudes, that is beautiful and dense and contradictory and alive, that is trying to move through a world that offers very little cushioning to anything genuinely sensitive. The surrounding composition — fruit, water, plants, abstraction pressing in from every edge — is the world itself, indifferent to the fragility of what it contains.
The arrows on the crate point upward. That, too, is deliberate.
Growing spiritually and consciously in a world this dense is not a comfortable process. It is a passage that requires more care than the world is usually prepared to give. This painting doesn't ask for that care. It simply names the condition — honestly, visibly, on a surface that was always going to tell the truth.
You are fragile. That is not a weakness. It is the most accurate description of what genuine aliveness feels like from the inside.
80 × 80 × 4.8 cm · Acrylic, glue, spray paint, washi tape and Posca markers on reclaimed art transport crate · 2023 · One of a kind The crate's original FRAGILE markings and directional arrows form part of the work. Signed, titled and dated on the reverse. Certificate of Authenticity included.