Cirquonspect

This work features a stylized clown character, with a blank stare and a stitched smile, placed at the center of a collage saturated with circus motifs: vintage posters, roaring lions, garish typography. This contrast between the clown's supposed innocence and the latent violence of the visual environment creates an ambivalent tension, between nostalgia and unease. The background, made up of fragments of circus posters, evokes popular culture, fairs and a collective imagination that is both festive and disquieting. The character, Arsen's recurring signature, becomes an emblem of this fragmented era, where innocence seems lost in the din of the world. The work plays on absurdity, visual saturation and the anguish hidden behind bright colors.