New Man
Year
2025
Type
Digital Sculpture
Software
Blender
Size
Print at any time, with no size limit
Don Quixote has long stood as a quintessential figure of idealism, defined by his unwavering pursuit of “justice,” “honor,” and a “better world.” In the 20th century, communist discourse re-coded this figure into a symbol of the “New Man”—an ideological construct: one who remakes the self, renounces personal interest, and devotes himself unconditionally to the collective ideal.
In the 21st century, this abstract model has taken on an unexpected, materialized form: the “delivery rider.” Clad in uniform, they operate within flows of data and algorithmic coordination, performing mechanized tasks that sustain the standardized rhythms of urban life. Though still referred to as “knights,” the term now bears a distinctly ironic edge. These riders respond to systemic demands through individual effort, embedded within structures of technological governance, endlessly summoned by the logic of platforms.
The fading shadow of idealism has been reduced to a reflex of labor—a gesture performed out of habit rather than hope—becoming a symbol of post-utopian survival: agile, silent, and never truly one’s own.
The pose adopted in the work directly references a classical sculpture of Don Quixote, yet the lance has become a takeaway order, the steed an electric scooter; the heroic departure is now just another accepted delivery task. When a figure once charged with idealistic conviction reappears in reality in such an exhausted, solitary form, we are compelled to ask:
Was it the ideal that failed, or has reality altered the way ideals are permitted to appear?
Must ideals now be expressed only through exhaustion and depletion?
And more urgently: has the world already lost the capacity to accommodate the ideal in its original form?
