On the wall, left of Subtopia’s main building, is an artwork from the Dutch artist Sidney Waerst, known as SIT. His paintings are characterized by a sense of discomfort and show the loss of beauty. The mural painting at Subtopia is a piece that describes our present time and humanity’s unfavorable search for happiness and success.
The artist’s figurative work often has an undertone of social criticism, and he mainly works with black, white, and gray as his color scale, which is a symbol of the lack of color and beauty in human life. In the artwork you see in front of you, greyhounds, wearing muzzles, are chasing a fictitious rabbit. SIT, who has a background in the advertising business, created his piece based on his experiences of a world he refers to as “the rat race”.
Today, the artist wants to create a dialogue and show his opinion of what is right and wrong in society. He asks himself if human vanity stands in the way of an ethical life. Dogs become a symbol and representation of the world we live in, where we are programmed to chase a goal we know, deep down, we won’t reach, and even if we did, would that make us happier? In the sister piece of artwork 1, we see a dog who is no longer chasing and has sadness in his glance. SIT calls the ambiguity between the lure of beauty and our constant will to abuse it the driving force behind his work.