Gustavo Andrade
Decidio, 2023
Oil on canvas.
59 x 46 inches
 
Deicidio — the killing of a god — is not a blasphemous painting. It is an honest one.
 
Set against gold, the color of altars and divine authority, the composition dissects the machinery of religious violence: a Christ figure fragmented into parts, faith literally divided and examined. A woman in red moves through the chaos not as victim but as presence — knowing, complicit, mythological. The checkerboard pattern that threads through the work suggests a game being played, rules being followed, while bodies fall.
 
Andrade is not attacking belief. He is asking what belief has been made to justify — the wars, the deaths, the suffering carried out in the name of something that was meant to prevent exactly that. The gold does not glorify. It indicts.