Cold War is over, yet the menace of nuclear war is still present. Beside the five 'nuclear weapon states', internationally recognized status conferred by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, India, North Korea and Pakistan are catching up. An absurd and absolute competition heading for constant threat and highhanded destruction.

War, weapons and violence: These are the main subjects in Christopher Cannon's work. Facing the 'bomb', all comes second. Good or bad: Facing the ultimate destruction, the complete erasure of the world, moral concepts don't matter anymore.

Mysterious constructional drawings, maps and phrases recited like a mantra in the background; cartoon characters, excerpts from dictionaries, and fragments of adverts in the foreground: Cannon uses the collage to combine catch phrases and catch images to confusing compositions of fear.

His works are biting comments on the world today, where everybody seems to be involved in the 'Atomic Behaviour.' Even children are participating in the vicious circle of violence.

Fear is a profitable business. Looking for ultimate safety for you and your family? Buy a private bunker! Blatant sales promotion is omnipresent. What is most confusing in Cannon's work: He gives us a strong notion, that everybody is victim and doer at the same time, in many ways. Fear and aggression, panic and violence: Two sides of the coin. But facing nuclear weapons, violence is a relative term.

Cannon refers to advertisement, like Pop-Art legend Roy Lichtenstein did decades ago. Lichtenstein depicted stereotypes of men and women praising commodities in noisy advertising. Cannon updates these old-fashioned characters, their special aesthetic, into his striking collages and prints. Instead of home appliances and convenience food in Lichtenstein's pictures, they're now promoting death. Lichtenstein reloaded...

Aggressive advertisement in mass media publications is intruding people's brain and consciousness like a cancerous virus. Inexorably spreading out, the disease is destroying health instead fulfilling its mendacious promise of salvation. The terror of words concentrated in an ulcer infecting the neighbouring synapses: Visible on Cannon's newest collage works presented in his current exhibition INFECTED PLACEBO at Gallery UNO, Chicago.

CHRISTOPHER CANNON received his BFA in 2003 from the Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and his MFA in 2006 from the Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois (Major: Printmaking). His works have been shown in numerous exhibitions across the United States. Since 2006 Cannon has taught Design and Drawing classes at Northern Illinois University and several community colleges in Illinois. His works are included in private collections and several university collections such as Purdue University and University of Wisconsin Green Bay Print Archive.

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