American Schadenfreude

Created in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq War, and the Southeast Asian tsunami, these paintings examine the theater of catastrophe. They are less about the disasters than about the audience they created—millions of viewers suspended between compassion and fascination as twenty-four-hour news transformed suffering into an endless performance. These paintings are not about celebrating suffering, but about confronting the unsettling ways mass media can blur the boundaries between compassion, voyeurism and entertainment.