Nice Try — When Winning Is Already Over

With Nice Try, I close a chapter that has been quietly unfolding over the past months: a figurative painting about perception, control, and the illusion of advantage. At first glance, the scene feels familiar — two figures face each other across a poker table. Cards are scattered, glasses half-empty, a Bitcoin lies casually among the stakes. Architecture rises behind them in fractured perspective, suggesting both grandeur and instability. But as with most games, the real tension lives beneath the surface. Look closer. One player hides an Ace of Hearts under his sleeve — a classic gesture of deception. Yet another Ace of Hearts already rests on the table. This single detail collapses the entire strategy. The cheater cannot play his final card without exposing himself. What seemed like a winning position becomes a dead end. And suddenly the narrative flips. Who has really lost? Who has already won? The title Nice Try deliberately leaves that question unresolved. It may refer to the player who thought he was ahead. Or to the one who engineered the trap. Or perhaps to both — caught inside a system where every move is already priced in. The Bitcoin functions as a quiet conceptual pivot: used here ironically as a “proof of stake,” despite Bitcoin operating on proof of work. It’s a small contradiction that mirrors the larger theme of misplaced trust — in systems, in signals, in appearances. Visually, the painting balances expressive line work with hard color fields, combining architectural structure with raw gesture. Oil crayon cuts through acrylic layers, creating a surface that feels both immediate and calculated. The surrounding white border (approximately 10 cm / 4 inches) allows the work to be stretched on museum-grade frames up to 5 cm thick without the need for an external frame — a practical detail that also reinforces the painting’s autonomous presence. Nice Try is not about gambling. It’s about asymmetry of information. About thinking you’re ahead while the outcome has already shifted. About playing inside rules that someone else quietly rewrote. The painting belongs to my current figurative cycle, which explores contemporary power structures through intimate, almost theatrical scenes — moments where personal psychology meets global systems. As always, the work is sold unframed and without stretcher bars, allowing collectors full freedom in presentation. Sometimes the most interesting stories begin exactly where confidence ends. Published on bertermann.art, the official website of artist Claus Bertermann.