Cool Vertigo captures the precarity of the modern human condition, using the physical discipline of the acrobat as a metaphor for navigating an era defined by climate crisis and global conflict. By anchoring the background in the text of the April 1921 New York Dada Magazine, and adding a fractured geography of New York state, the collage visualizes a world in a state of disorienting, perpetual flux. Yet, the stacked acrobats offer a powerful, defiant counter-narrative to chaos. They embody the essence of a “cool vertigo”—the radical, hopeful act of maintaining equilibrium, focus, grace, empathy, and mutual reliance precisely when societal logic and metaphorical gravity seem to fail, that being the breakdown of the fundamental, stabilizing forces we usually rely on to keep our world predictable and safe. The acrobats don't fall. They create their own stability by holding onto each other. Their balance remains dependent on their mutual trust, strength, and focus. It shifts the source of hope from world leaders (those fractured and absurd, like the maps and Dada text) to human connection and resilience.

Acrylic on canvas

Size: 24 x 36 x 1¼ inches

Price: $2300