Orange is the Power: A Monument to Absurdity

A satirical portrait in bronzer-orange, where ego, costume, and empty slogans replace identity.

Orange is the Power Painting - cm 40 x 40 - Acrylic and Oil on Canvas

Then I made it… ahahah. I love visiting the USA (not “America”, let’s be precise: America is a whole continent, though many U.S. citizens assume otherwise). After a few articles I’ve written, I’m convinced ICE is already plotting to deport me. What they haven’t understood (come on… anyone doing that job isn’t entirely ignorant, right?) is that I’m in Italy. And here I’ll happily stay for the next four years, even if we have our own flavors of fascism to deal with.

I spent a long time thinking about this painting before it came to life, and then, like a small miracle, like the blood of San Gennaro that famously liquefies once a year, the work seemed to dry and un-dry depending on the day. I blame it on the nonsense phrases that keep oozing out of the Orange One.

Some portraits try to reveal character. Others attempt to capture the soul. Orange is the Power does neither. It simply lays out the uniform: a flat blue suit, a red tie swollen with self-importance, and a vast, suffocating field of orange. Not the warm orange of Sicilian citrus, not the tender glow of a Mediterranean sunset. No, this is something else entirely. This is the artificial shade of industrial bronzer-orange: the color of denial, the hue of television makeup that has replaced identity itself.

And yes, it can be traced to an actual formula: Bronx Colors Boosting Hydrating Concealer, shade BHC06. That Swiss-manufactured “Ego Flame™” bronzer so aggressively orange that it stained shirt collars and collapsed entire supply chains when the website briefly crashed. If you or I wore this makeup in daily life, people would whisper that we’d lost our minds. But with this very color, someone became the most powerful person in the United States… well, the second most powerful. Let’s be honest: the Pope still outranks him in the cosmic hierarchy.

At the top of the canvas, just visible, hovers the inscription: “I AM THE CHOSEN ONE – MY IQ IS ONE OF THE HIGHEST.” Words that sound like parody but are, tragically, documentary. They hover over the orange void like graffiti in a public restroom, desperate for validation.

The Gospel of Nonsense

The brilliance of the painting is that it doesn’t invent ridicule; it merely repeats it. The entire oeuvre of the subject could be reduced to self-quotations:

- “Windmills cause cancer.”
- “Nobody knows more about drones than me.”
- “I have the best words.”
- “Nobody loves the Bible more than I do.”

- “I’m a very stable genius.”

And of course, more classics from the archives of self-worship:

Bragging / Self-Glorifying

- “Nobody knows the system better than me.”
- “I know more about courts than anybody.”
- “Nobody’s ever been more successful than me.”
- “I understand nuclear weapons better than anybody.”
- “Nobody has better toys than I do.”

- “Nobody’s ever had crowds like me.”

Weird & Absurd

- “The noise from wind turbines causes cancer.”
- “I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters.”
- “It’s freezing and snowing in New York – we need global warming!”
- “The concept of global warming was created by the Chinese.”
- “My hair is real. Maybe I should use hairspray?”

- “I’ve had a beautiful, perfect phone call.”

Religious & Messianic

- “Nobody reads the Bible more than me.”
- “I’m the chosen one.”
- “Nobody has done more for Christianity than me.”

- “Nobody loves the Bible more than I do.”

Classic Trumpisms

- “Make America great again — again.”
- “We’re going to win so much you may even get tired of winning.”
- “I have the best temperament.”
- “I have the best memory in the world.”
- “Nobody knows more about trade than me.”
- “I’ve always had a very good brain.”

- “I’m very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words.”

Each line is more absurd than the last, and yet each was delivered with absolute seriousness. Taken together, they read like a Dadaist manifesto rewritten by a game-show host.

Orange is the Power Painting in Red Frame - cm 40 x 40 - Acrylic and Oil on Canvas

The Tie That Swallowed the Man

The red tie in the painting deserves its own commentary. Stiff, oversized, descending like a guillotine, it devours the figure. It is not an accessory but an ego in textile form, a scarlet arrow pointing down into nothingness. The suit and tie once symbolized authority; here, they symbolize costume. Patriotism reduced to haberdashery.

Framing the Joke

Without its frame, Orange is the Power feels like propaganda gone wrong: a poster nobody bothered to finish. But once it is locked inside a thick red frame, the joke hardens into monument. Suddenly it resembles an artifact from the future, destined for the Museum of Historical Errors, displayed between a wall of VHS tapes and the world’s last can of asbestos paint.

The frame elevates the absurd to heritage. The message is clear: even stupidity, once repeated enough, can be preserved as relic.

The Portrait of Nothing

What we see here is not a person, but an absence. A face replaced by a field of orange. A voice replaced by empty slogans. This is not portraiture but anti-portraiture, the artistic equivalent of a shrug. And yet, the void is instantly recognizable. Everyone knows who wears this orange, who recites these phrases, who hides behind this tie.

A Void in Office, Second Only to a Saint

Orange is the Power is both hilarious and terrifying. It exposes the emptiness of authority dressed as greatness, nonsense elevated to gospel, costume mistaken for substance. It is a portrait of nothingness, loud, boastful, ridiculous nothingness.

And here lies the tragedy: the joke is not confined to the canvas. The orange void it depicts is not hanging harmlessly in a gallery. It sits behind the desk of the most powerful office in the United States. The absurdity we laugh at is the same absurdity signing laws, shaping wars, and deciding fates.

In the end, the painting reminds us that history’s greatest danger is not brutality, but buffoonery in power. And today, that buffoonery comes in just one unforgettable shade: industrial bronzer-orange, Bronx Colors BHC06.

And here’s the final, bitter irony: this orange void is not tucked away behind glass in some ironic gallery. No. It sits in the seat of power, armed with nothing but bronzer and slogans. The most powerful person in America… or rather, the second most powerful, because let’s be clear: the Pope is still more important.

So the gallery must ask: What happens when nothingness wields the levers of power, and vanity gets to enact its nightmares?