This painting began as a still life of fruits and vegetables. When I finished it, something felt off—it looked dull to me, lifeless. I put it aside behind the sofa, thinking that one day I might paint over it entirely. For a while, it existed in this in-between state: not valuable enough to keep, but not yet destroyed.

One day I took it out again and started thinking about how objects can lose their original meaning and gain a new one. An old T-shirt becomes a cleaning rag; it stops being “a T-shirt” but gains value through its new function. I wondered, what could a failed painting become? Then the idea came: it could be a desk mat. I placed some of the things from my table on top of it—and suddenly I liked what I saw. The painting transformed into an image of a desk mat, and through this transformation it unexpectedly became meaningful again.

This work is about how things shift between value and meaning. It began as a painting that lost its purpose, was close to disappearing under a new layer of paint, but instead found a new identity—and through that, regained its value as art.

In the corner, I added a small piece of JavaScript code. This is the first painting in which I’ve used JS as part of the artwork.