PHARMAKOS / The Sacrifice
(Souper Du Roi ) (detail)
[oil on canvas, 2026]
A body of work in progress, (in painting, drawing, writing and film) exploring a relationship between art, power and substance, through the metaphor of the King’s Feast.
Souper Du Roi, or The King’s Soup (which plays on the Latin word, ius, standing for soup and justice), reveals the King’s form, to be a container for the oppositional (doubling) form of the pharmakon (the medicine/poison and sacrifice). The King, is represented through the son, who has replaced the father; one now king and the other scapegoat. One the promoted societal medicine, the other the poison which has been sacrificed in order to (in theory), bring harmony back to the social body. The painting is not a faithful rendering of historical events, but the attempt to present a concealed structure.
PHARMAKOS / The Sacrifice
(Souper Du Roi ) (detail)
[oil on canvas, 2026]
The Kitchen/Macellum...
(engraving from The Illustrated London News, 3 December 1842)
