The Labyrinth, Dunes

A bird's-eye view of rolling dunes, washed in a sickly green light, with one small machine trudging across them. Follow the line of its tracks and you can see exactly where it has been: a thin, wandering trail stitched across the sand, past the stumps of dead trees that poke up like broken fence posts. The machine itself is tiny, painted a dull red, kicking up a little dust as it goes. Everything else is empty.

Simon Stålenhag is a Swedish painter who made his name putting strange technology into very ordinary landscapes, usually the fields and forests of his childhood outside Stockholm. His books Tales from the Loop and The Electric State were built on that contrast. This piece belongs to The Labyrinth, his bleakest project, set after a failed experiment blankets the Earth in a dark cloud and drives survivors underground. The green tint here is not an artistic flourish, it is what the sky has become in that story. His method is digital painting with a photographer's eye, wide horizons and low detail, which is why the whole thing reads more like a drone photograph than an illustration. The lonely little walker and its fading tracks say most of what needs saying.