Living Room Extravaganza – Champagne Charlies is a theatre of moral collapse dressed in velvet and static. Two grinning silhouettes — the titular Champagne Charlies — lounge in tuxedos, locked in an endless toast while the world outside dies pixel by pixel. Laughter is the loudest sound in the room, not because it's joyous, but because it's insulated. The curtains are thick, the glass is full, and Gaza is starving — flickering in the background, broadcast like background music on a vintage screen that no one’s really watching.
This painting isn't just a juxtaposition — it's a confrontation. Inside: the intoxicated detachment of the bourgeoisie, red velvet walls sealing in a grotesque cabaret of decadence. Outside: smoke, hunger, a drone looming over a line of shrouded figures — the theatre of war bleeding in through the glitchy periphery. But neither interrupts the champagne.
The television at the centre becomes a false altar — an antique idol of awareness rendered impotent. The words “GAZA STARVES” appear almost ironically, as if truth can be flattened and served between commercials. This is existential satire at its darkest: the world suffers and the Charlies laugh, not because they’re evil, but because disconnection is easy when destruction is elsewhere.
Living Room Extravaganza – Champagne Charlies is not a painting, but a diagnosis. It captures the sick simultaneity of modern life — drone strikes and dinner parties, genocide and gastronomy. It doesn’t ask us to choose sides. It asks whether we even notice there are sides anymore.
It is the still life of a civilization that drowned in its own bubbles.
