Leon Aarts – Slaying the Cash Cow (2009, acrylics on canvas) sold

A predatory ballet in abstract drag. Slaying the Cash Cow pulses with gleeful savagery—a skeletal harpoon (or is it a ladder to nowhere?) impales a bloated, pinkish form against a cerulean haze, while serpentine lines coil like opportunistic vines. Created in the hangover of the 2008 financial meltdown, it skewers capitalist excess with expressionist glee: the "cash cow" as flayed udder, milk turning to blood. Aarts' line dances on the edge of whimsy and wound, turning economic critique into a carnivalesque vivisection.

Slaying the Cash Cow is Aarts' sharpest barb in his mid-2000s critique suite—a gleeful gutting of golden calves, where abstraction serves as scalpel. It bridges the introspective exhaustion of Spent (2008) and the seismic fury of Road Rage (2012), proving his expressionism thrives on topical toxin. Frame it in raw oak; the wood will whisper of milking sheds.

Score (out of 10): 8.5 A capitalist kebab on a stick—wry, wired, and wickedly on-point.