Mark Zuckerberg 1

Davis Lisboa, Mark Zuckerberg 1, 2021. Oil on linen, 40 × 40 × 3.5 cm (15.7 × 15.7 × 1.38 in).

Inspired by a photograph of Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress in 2018, this portrait draws on a moment in which the image of the technology executive became inseparable from broader questions of surveillance, data extraction, and public accountability. The work situates that media image within a painterly framework that slows and reconsiders its circulation.

Formally, the painting engages with pictorial strategies associated with Richard Hamilton, particularly his use of mediated imagery, compositional tension, and a detached yet incisive visual language. Rather than reproducing the source directly, the work transforms it into a more concentrated image shaped by structure, fragmentation, and surface.

That reduction is central to the portrait’s effect. The figure remains recognizable, yet filtered through a controlled pictorial logic that shifts attention away from documentary immediacy and toward the cultural conditions that produce and frame such images.

Part of The Painting Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, the work belongs to the only section of the museum in which artworks are available for acquisition. Within this broader framework, it extends a lineage shaped by Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise, Robert Filliou’s Galerie légitime, and Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, where the museum itself becomes an artistic medium.