The Greeks believed that there was no punishment worse than fruitless labor; thus, the Gods sentenced Sisyphus to an eternity of hopeless toil, forcing him to push a huge stone up a mountain, down which it would inevitably roll.
In his famous essay, philosopher Albert Camus interprets the myth of Sisyphus as the logic of absurdity for the millions of working people.
In this piece, the artist renders his poetic interpretation of Sisyphus at work. It can be called poetic, given how the remarkable Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky described the task: "Shine always, shine everywhere, that's the motto of me and the Sun!"
The black figure beetle working every day, rolling the Sun up the mountain - to "shine everywhere" - is an optimistic interpretation of this well-known myth. The ascending and descending of the glowing orb resembles the cyclic movement of the celestial bodies in the sky: the cyclical movement of the sun and disappearance of the moon below the Earth's surface.
