Piano with Flags 1985

Don Ivan Punchatz made this eerie and unnerving painting of a piano with flags and symbols using a controlled, almost photographic style that's really something. The surface is so smooth, it almost feels like you could touch it without leaving a mark, yet, the way the imagery is arranged makes it incredibly disquieting. There is a piano and its keys, but the colours of the flags are slightly off-kilter. The heavy-handed rendering of the piano almost gives the impression that it's about to collapse under its own weight, or maybe from the symbolic weight of it all! This painting seems to have some of the disturbing atmosphere of Odd Nerdrum, but with an advertising illustration twist. It embraces not just ambiguity but a full-on collision of meanings.