The mixed-media installation Gang Killer is set within a purpose-built spatial structure that incorporates paintings, wallpaper prints, found images, readymade objects, and decorative motifs to evoke the feeling of a nighttime piano bar from a bygone era. Focusing on the tendency in pop culture to romanticize killers as brooding, calculating souls who are soft at heart, the imagery hearkens back to the familiar characters of 1980s and ’90s mass media such as John Woo’s classic Hong Kong film The Killer (1989) and Ryoichi Ikegami’s manga series Sanctuary (1990–95). The installation’s latticework arrangement of images recalls the efficient assembly of backgrounds, characters, and contexts found in comic books. But instead of expressing a definitive plotline, the work captures an intuitive mood or heightened affect, while also hinting at the scenario of an assassin just seconds away from executing a mission.
