In the picture "iPhone" (90x50 cm) by Svyatoslav Ryabkin a man prefers playing with this tool, one of the last technologies by Apple, rather than getting on the boat with the white sail behind his shoulders and leaving worries inside his house.


Steve Jobs' presentation of the first Apple iPhone at Keynote (2007) concerned an innovative product that was much more than a phone, almost a computer. The audience was surprised and a bit lost. "It is a phone without a keyboard: it will not succeed because it is not practical!". Many people thought this, including Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. However already in 2012 the iPhone sales were over 33 million of units covering nearly 4% of the world market for mobile devices.


In the picture "iPhone" the man with the big bald head is dressed as a poor and he has got the object of desire in his hand: a mobile phone of the latest generation. Dear Readers, do you know that some big Californian companies give a Smartphone to homeless to fight poverty, what do you think about it?


This man reminds us of the "new poor", for example the separate fathers who pay the child maintenance allowance. On 4 millions about 800,000 live below the poverty threshold and in Italy are 63% of the homeless (source Eurispes, 2016). Who knows, maybe he is looking for a work on the net; it is known that after the 40 years it is even harder. He has all our support!



The external poverty represented here reminds us of the poverty of content and human relationships that is often caused by the misuse of technological means. WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, has been called "WhatsApp Homewrecker"! The treason is a threat around the corner if it is favored by so much simplicity and immediacy in conveying messages: the winning features of this mean of communication!



Today we have an infinite ability to transmit any message even in the absence of a real message! These luxury objects, which have become the symbol of our society, sometimes seem to be born especially for this. On the other hand, do you remember the spot Telecom with Mahatma Gandhi that aired on Italian TV in 2004? He, the spiritual guide that brought India to the independence, has shown to the world its greatness before the advent of the new communication tools. Who knows how he would divulge his message if he had a mobile phone and access to the social networks!


How much we talk about social network! Some people can not live without them and some people hate them. However, we all think that there is no longer an age limit to start. Children are curious by mom and dad's mobiles and they approach the virtual world for game even very soon.

They are sympathetically defined as "digital natives" because they grow with these devices and become teenagers always connected for different reasons: school research and the passion for the music, for example. It is not over here, nowadays we talk about "mobile born"! These children were born with smartphone and tablet in their hands. Our very young grandchildrens have a predisposition to handle these tools by simulating adults, often when they have just learned to stand! They do not even come to the television but they lengthen an arm to widen the image on the screen by moving their thumbs and forefingers as adults do. Wow!


When the Ukranian artist Ryabkin painted the picture "iPhone" (2017) would imagine that the man was listening to his favorite Ukrainian songs. Jamala's bewitching voice is divine! The singer Jamala won the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 with the track "1944"! If you do not know it, you have to listen!



In "iPhone" the bare room has brackish walls that seem moldy. The wall has a hole in which a mouse holes up and from the ceiling a bulb sways off without the chandelier. The predominant color is green (on the walls, the shirt badly buttoned and the reflection on the surface of the sea). So much coldness is broken by some yellow touch on that one sock, alas laundry, the sun and the bulb.


The window is the symbol of freedom to escape from a poor reality but the man turns his back to the brightness of the outside environment that contrasts with the darkness inside the room. The sea would like to transmit quiet and the sun would like to transmit heat but he is too absorbed to notice. If the window was a virtual pass it would indicate the access to the world of social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Snapchat) in which people communicate, meet, share their thoughts and homologate theirselves to the system. Beware, it is not good to isolate yourself in a virtual reality that looks better than the real one.


This beautiful natural image of sea and sky could also be one of the other paintings of the artist Ryabkin. It is big to fill the emptiness of solitude and shining to illuminate the gloomy room. Therefore, it can represent only the idea of the escape from the reality because it shows a painted landscape that it is not real as the world inside his mobile phone with the difference that the first is static whereas the second is dynamic. This man with no way out is between the screen of his iPhone and the picture (that looks like a screen) so he is hopeless in a poor present. Now we are really curious to know your interpretation about it, dear Readers write to us!


Bye bye with the definition of "real" from the film Matrix. Gorgeous!