Two YouTubers III 2026 – 24 x 30cm, oil, acrylic, spray paint, pencil on canvas
This painting splits dramatically between two incompatible systems forced into contact. The left side maintains complexity: while nested frames below show the typical picture-in-picture structure, a blue inset screen with its gestural face, a larger sketched figure above.
The right side is dominated by a massive red field, aggressive, confrontational, unapologetically present. The color of emergency, of alarm, of blood, of electoral maps. Too insistent to ignore. The thick, textured surface has physical weight, almost geological.
Parameter lines are indicators of margins, of borders, of multiple levels of discourse, utilizing the inset frame as a departure point for material intrusion, the digital made palpable, the analogue fighting back.
The weakness of international rule of law has been on my mind of late. Its very foundations have been knocked out by the right, who are colluding with corporations to hollow out not just institutions but democracy itself. These YouTubers are very necessary, but they too exist at the margins of mainstream media, pushed to the edges, like the left side of this composition, while the red overwhelms careful documentation, drowning out analysis with sheer chromatic volume.
Democracy ist being overwhelmed by something external, massive, unstoppable, Republican dominance, emergency broadcast signal, the suffocating presence of crisis, the color of fascism creeping across the map.