This oceanic equine has been spotted in the mangrove forests of South America, sporting a spiny suit of luminous flames – a dapper, irreverent fellow who reads Rilke, Proust and Rimbaud, albeit, soggy in the shallows – he is the avatar of things to come, the irradiated, eradicated sea where dreams foment and roll into the shore to die, yet he rides the waves nonetheless in brilliant luminescence, his tiny bowtie skewed slightly to the left as he floats past the heavily burdened sperm whales and the needle nosed sharks. He is the true “dandy of the sea” the original model for The Kink’s famous song “Dedicated Follower of Fashion,” as he wears the moniker well. Seahorse Yellow is the only fish who can gallop full tilt while remaining perfectly and deceptively still, barely skimming the surface of the water, yet swiftly pivoting around with a half-smile only to continue, ever so idly, in the opposite direction.

More often than not he rivals the brightly colored fish that surround him – the Queen Angelfish has suddenly fallen in the ranks and the Flowerhorn has most definitely wilted. The Moorish Idol is suave and sometimes lachrymose, having finally relinquished his pride at the altar of the spindly Horse of the Sea, yet there are moments of near Shakespearean confusion when, like his namesake, Othello, the fish is completely undone. The Royal Gramma protests yet again she is NOT a grandmother as the Striped Sweetlips swims dangerously close, coming in for a kiss. Only the Lionfish puts up a good fight, sporting a mane of solid gold and swimming in fierce and erratic circles for optimum effect.

But Seahorse Yellow is a quaint and solitary fellow, preferring his dandified ways to the boorishness of other fish, and for this reason he is and always will be, alone, bobbing along in brilliant attire past the Lumpfish and the Gulper Eel, the Sheepshead and the muscled Frilled Shark, into the deep and bottomless ocean beyond.

  • Paul Mogensen, No Title, 2018

  • Evan Nesbit, "Attachment Measures," 2020, Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects Los Angeles California

  • Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, "Portrait in Yellow," 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects Los Angeles California

  • Joan Mitchell, "Salut Tom," 1979

  • John Altoon, "About Women," 1965-66

  • Elaine de Kooning, Untitled, 1981

  • Wangari Mathenge, "The Acendents (Now and Then)," 2019, Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects Los Angeles California

  • Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat, "Paramount," 1984