"False Profits": Steven Gagnon Subverts Iconography of American Empire

Dissident Art, which critiques the Ruling Class's perfidies and crimes against humanity -- whether in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union or Bush/Obama's America, has a long and significant role in western art history. What comes to mind? George Grosz. Picasso's Guernica. Goya's Saturn Devouring His Children. Banksy's Fuck the Police.

In today's N.S.S.A. or National Security States of America, a/k/a the American Empire, Steven Gagnon's work may be considered Dissident Art, since it is simply an in-your-face commentary on the economic and political realities of living in the U.S.A.

His show called "False Profits" at Vertu Fine Art in Boca Raton (March 22 - April 22, 2012) appropriates the traditional symbols representing America, including the U.S. Dollar and the American Flag, as well as mega-corporate logos to point out the realpolitik of today's corporate-government frauds.

"False Profits," of course, is a pun on the "false prophets" of bible fame, referring to religious leaders who deceive their followers by pretending to have insider knowledge, while taking advantage of their blind obedience and their money.