Vice Americana

"She's looking up at a rocket ship and he's looking at her, and neither of them notices the world is on fire."
- Nat Berhe

A glamorous 1950s-style woman in a green dress leans coolly against a bar, a cocktail in hand, gazing upward as smoke curls from her lips toward a rocket launching off-canvas into darkness. Behind her, a gray monstrous face grins from the shadows, holding a martini glass, the unseen underside of the dream she inhabits. Berhe dissects the seductive mythology of American aspiration: the beauty of the fantasy, the predator embedded within it, and the launch toward progress that always leaves something burning below.

Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 60" x 72"