Shock and Awe Art Print by Michael Tauschinger-Dempsey

Printmaking: Screenprinting on Canvas.

The centerpiece of the show is a large 2 x 3 meter silkscreen on canvas collage titled Shock and Awe. The collage is composed of repeating and overlapping print fragments of 9 different silkscreens depicting the remains of suicide bombed cars, mainly from Iraq and Afghanistan, but also from Syria, Libya and Russia. One of the most prominent silkscreen prints shows a torn up car wreck in the foreground and a superimposed comic strip “KABOOM” with corresponding pop art-style explosion graphics in the background. The work is a hat-tip to the fetishization of violence and warfare as entertainment and the blurred lines between real and video game (i.e. U.S. military recruiting techniques/industry subsidies) bloodshed. The choice and style of these graphics and font refer to the work of pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and his large-scale comic book super hero paintings, which elevated pop culture artifacts to what in German is known as Wertschöpfungsketten, literally global art market value-adding chains.