False Profit
FALSE PROFIT will be available for sale at the March 18 launch at Drifters Cafe & Bar in Bandra. Join me there at 12 pm for fantastic beer (I dig their IPA) and food. And support my launch by taking home a limited edition print!
False Profit is a personal piece that I don't mind talking about at the expense of ruining someone's own interpretation of it. Well, sometimes that's just the way it goes. I don't mind going out on a limb if it's my own limb. With the exception maybe of another image in the Aksa Collection that's a deep devilish red, this piece is the only one that's dark and runs the risk of not really fitting in. But it was originally created from the same set of images at Aksa Beach - I only found a darker interpretation of it as I began to strip out the color. For me, this could be the backside of a dystopian US One Dollar Bill. The front side would probably just be of the vacuous and ironic motto that's been attached to American paper currency since 1957: In God We Trust.
As for the imagery, one figure stands apart from the others. This isn't intended to be a lonely figure, a shunned figure, or someone who is distant from the community. This person is the false prophet, the truthmaker, the one who represents the all-mighty dollar and the marriage of something that's supposed to be divine (a belief in a god) and something that's the furthest thing from it: the State and money. Hence the name of the piece, False Profit.
In my view, green shouldn't be the color of "cold, hard cash", it should be black. Our collective worship of CEOs and celebrities is as empty to me as In God We Trust and it's really something cut from the same cloth. But there is one powerful truth in the way things are: the only way to discern the truth, especially in American politics, is to follow the money, not empty words uttered by politicians on both sides of the supposed political divide. There is no divide. There's only money and its influence. This condition is one of a powerful duality: On one side, money lies when wielded by the powerful. On the other, you can attempt to follow the money back to the source to decipher the intention, the ultimate truth: the wizard of Oz is but a man behind the curtain, a false prophet.
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