The Worked Shoot explores the intersection of ancient political stagecraft and contemporary pro wrestling. The project centers on kayfabe—the collaborative maintenance of a staged reality—as the primary engine of both classical and contemporary populism. By treating time as a static block where the past and present interlock, the work positions modern political theater not as a new phenomenon, but as a recurring loop.

To ground this conceptually, I map Aristotle’s cycle of government (anacyclosis) onto the modern  "squared circle." Aristotle argued that states rotate inevitably from virtuous monarchy to corrupt tyranny. I visualize this structural decay as a revolving wrestling ring, where political "heels" (villains) and "faces" (heroes) perform their predetermined roles within an ancient script of societal collapse. Within the framework of the Block Universe, these historical cycles don't merely repeat; they exist concurrently.

Technically, the work bridges the aesthetic gap between realism and the visceral, muscular immediacy of Abstract Expressionism. By rendering modern demagogues through the lens of classical oratory and aggressive, physical mark-making, these paintings force a confrontation with the permanence of the historical record versus the volatility of live performance.