Rather than depict violence, this series questions how it is assimilated—through screens, through systems, through the language we stop hearing. I call this dialectical assimilation—the slow, rhetorical conditioning that transforms tragedy into terminology.
Each painting in the series is titled after a phrase echoed across news cycles, headlines, and military briefings. One piece takes the form of a triptych, echoing the insignia of an army rank—folding the language of hierarchy into the composition.
These works are executed using paintball guns, a material and gesture that mirrors the absurdity of simulated war. The splatter is both mark and trace, echoing a trigger pulled and a body struck—yet mediated, symbolic, distant. The paint is non-lethal, but the suggestion is not.
Gotcha is a phrase of conquest. In this series, it becomes a critique of spectacle: a culture where games imitate war, and where war becomes just another channel.