Arsch de Triomphe is a surrealist corporeal landscape that plays with symbolic conventions derived from Medieval religious painting. The personification of the earth is often envisioned as female; in this case it is ambiguously gendered. The painting is a playful reworking of the outdated notion of ‘Man’ as having triumphed over nature. I was a fan of Georges Bataille in art school – it seems his notion of ‘base materialism’ has crept into the work here, perverting the association of glory with colonial conquests.  On a more personal note, I’ve come to realize that the distant mountains and clouds evoke those in Vancouver, where I grew up, whereas the foreground is somehow more that of Southern Germany.