Protest. Triptych

Eight bottles—beer, red and rosé wine, Armenian cognac, a bitter tincture, two vodkas, and a box of matches—stand crowded on a battered wooden crate. White rags hang limply from several necks like exhausted flags, and each bottle is numbered to match a handwritten price list scrawled in red across the black backdrop.

Cool greens and browns model the glass and labels against near-total darkness, with a single raking light picking out worn wood grain and rusted nail heads on the crate. The paint is built in dense, textured strokes typical of hyperrealist still life, giving the ordinary bottles an almost monumental, unsettling presence.