David Cahill
December 24, 2009 
I've grown attached to David Cahill's paintings, for reasons that at first were tricky to parse. They ruled, yes, but there had to be more. A week after discovering his work, I began to see the shape of what was a subtler affair, a moral slight of hand that dug well past my 140-character attention span: Cahill's paintings, they accused.
A recurring theme in his work is a critique of self-medication, and the lengths gone to achieve it. Here Cahill renders lonely stages where the trivial vices of modern living--pills, malt liquor, and NES controllers (and DC hardcore?)--all converge, recast as,
"...culture's desire for social isolation."
This according to his artist statement, which makes a case for Skeletor as scathing indictment:
"40-ouncers, headphones, cell phones, prescription drugs, television and videogame controllers symbolize our desire for solitude. Objects like toys and skulls represent both the humor and gravitas of this act. This imagery provides a vanity mirror into our obsessions and fears."
Having hung up the coozy myself (via an awkward summer), what I found in Cahill's work was a rare prompt to re-examine my own (and many) intoxicated ways.
Reader Comments (1)
It´s been a while since i posted something, but this atwork is very creative =)
Why He-man and Nintendo controllers becomes a representation of solitude? If noone explain it i would thought he was representing homosexual childness .
(i got a new blog where i link a buch of your stuff here http://svarti.tumblr.com/)