Cocaine

I painted this large oil painting as a moment caught between intoxication and reality — a scene where the boundaries between play, escape and gravity are beginning to blur. The figure bending over the table is not just a person, but a symptom. A mirror. Around him you see the laughter, the glances, the social glue — but also a distance. They are present and somewhere else at the same time.

For me this work is about Generation Z. A generation growing up in a constant stream of stimuli, where intensity often replaces closeness. Everything has to be felt strongly, quickly, immediately. But what happens when the silence comes? When it is no longer enough?

I have used strong contrasts — the dark table against the almost luminous white powder — to show the pull towards the extreme. The cocktail to the side stands for the aesthetic life: the beautiful, the shareable, the staged. At the same time there is something disquieting in the surrounding glances, a kind of silent acceptance.

This picture is not a sermon. It is an observation. A quiet wondering about where we are heading, and what we are trying to fill the emptiness with. Generation Z carries both an enormous awareness and a vulnerable longing. This painting lives in the span between the two.

Artist

Trond Berg-Nilssen

Technique

Oil on canvas

Size

100 × 80 cm

Price (excl. art royalty)

NOK 17,500

Edition

Original work — 1 of 1

Signature

Trond Berg-Nilssen

Represented by

Trond Berg-Nilssen gallery

Shipping

Personal delivery in Southern Norway, guaranteed shipping via Posten elsewhere

Framing / other

Without frame