Douglas de Souza’s practice unfolds through oil painting as an arena of tension—where seduction and vulnerability, power and ornament, collide. Drawing from the visual language of mass culture, kitsch, and consumer fetishism, his works reference porcelain figurines, chromed automotive surfaces, and other objects engineered to project durability and desire. These materials, however, are inherently fragile—susceptible to denting, shattering, or decay. It is within this contradiction that de Souza locates his central inquiry: the instability of identity beneath polished surfaces.

Operating through a queer lens, de Souza interrogates the binaries of virility and effeminacy, strength and delicacy. His paintings present surfaces that appear immaculate and reflective, yet function as vulnerable skins—thin membranes that barely contain what lies beneath. Symbols historically associated with dominance and power are softened, destabilized, and recontextualized, revealing desire as something fluid, performative, and exposed.

Color plays a crucial role in this tension. His chromatic intensity carries a digital sharpness that heightens the artificiality of the image, amplifying beauty until it becomes uneasy rather than comforting. In de Souza’s work, beauty is not an anesthetic; it is a site of friction—one that challenges cisheteronormative ideals and proposes desire as something malleable, contradictory, and deeply human.