House of worship

2026, Oil on Italian Linen, 101.6 x 101.6cm

This work considers the reverence attached to the artistic canon and the point at which cultural authority begins to resemble belief. Modernist abstraction, once radical, has become embedded within museums, markets and art history, where unconditional praise can elevate individual artists beyond critical scrutiny. Historical importance hardens into doctrine; admiration approaches veneration.

The intervention disrupts that authority by introducing another tradition of beauty, one more readily associated with decoration, ritual and domestic display. It challenges the hierarchy that separates high art from forms often dismissed as ornamental, while questioning who established that distinction and why it persists.

Within the broader series, value is again reassigned through intervention. Here, the issue is not simply whether an addition enhances or defaces an established work, but whether the canon itself has become a kind of belief system. The title points to the institutions, rituals and collective acts of faith through which artistic authority is preserved.