A cathedral interior stages the scene… a space built to sanctify belief and authorize order. Above, three women recline in repose, drawn from Penance, Humility and Truth by Giambattista Tiepolo, lifted from religious iconography and untouched by what unfolds below. The architecture holds. The sky remains beautiful. Distance is preserved.

Within the structure, violence is enacted without intimacy. A bound body, taken from Nicolas Poussin’s Martyrdom of St. Erasmus, lies open as a machine performs its task, arms extending with mechanical certainty. The device has no face, no history, no conscience… its screen offers illusion instead of vision, turning suffering into process, repetition, and function.

To the side, a woman straddles a column, lilies growing at her feet, champagne at her side. Her head is replaced by a television broadcasting war, not as proximity but as mediation. She does not cause the violence below; she consumes it. What she knows of the world is filtered, curated, and delivered in a form that preserves comfort and belief while keeping consequence at bay.

At a Comfortable Distance examines how systems endure by separating belief from responsibility. Authority is elevated. Bodies become material. Violence proceeds not only through force, but through insulation… sustained by symbols of purity, leisure, and sanctity that allow destruction to continue without touch, without interruption, without guilt.