Houses 

Gregoire Boonzaier captures a cluster of houses, their forms softened by the artist's hand. Note the high horizon line, forcing a sense of immediacy, the same that we witness in the frescoes of Pompeii. The most striking feature of the painting is the omnipresence of cubic forms; the buildings and walls are all squares and rectangles. This motif appears throughout the history of art, as far back as ancient Mesopotamia, where structures were imagined as embodiments of geometric order in the human world. But in this case, it is hard not to consider the relationship between these houses and the horizon behind them. This dynamic evokes a collective longing for harmony, a yearning to find or impose order upon the chaos of the outside world. These dwellings are not just buildings; they are vessels of cultural memory, echoes of human efforts to create order and meaning. This is a reminder of the timeless human quest to shape our environment, imbuing it with symbolic weight.