Evgeniy Lapchenko

Jester King with a Basketball, 2024

Oil on canvas

€13,000

A jester-king with a basketball, painted into a basilica of bishops, fools, and quiet witnesses. Lapchenko paints the present with the gravity of medieval allegory. At the centre, the artist himself — jester, king, player — trying to score in the middle of medieval madness. The bishop conducts the noise. A woman cradles a smoking cat. Rodman watches with a hot dog. At the bottom, a slave kneels in golden shackles, his chains so beautiful the world pretends they are not chains. A painting about a society where every figure stands for something — and someone is still trying to score his ball, despite all the theatre around it.