"Money Shot"
archival uv pigments on brushed aluminum
45"x36"
edition of 5
2024
Shawn Saumell

In Money Shot, offshore drilling platforms rise beneath a luminous sky, their striped structures glowing with theatrical intensity. At first glance, the rigs appear almost playful — candy-striped against dramatic clouds. With prolonged viewing, the stripes begin to read as hazard markings, and the atmosphere shifts. Beauty gives way to unease.

Beneath the surface, the land is rendered in cross-section — cracked, hollowed, and visibly depleted. A pale stream descends from the surface into a subterranean cavity, suggesting both extraction and wound. The earth is not merely terrain; it is opened, drained, and exposed. Architectural fragments and remnants of past habitation are embedded within the sediment, hinting at layered histories disrupted by pursuit of resource.

The composition oscillates between landscape and portrait. As viewers step back after examining its details, the terrain subtly resolves into the suggestion of a face — one that appears to weep. What initially presents as spectacle becomes confrontation.

The title operates across registers. In oil industry parlance, a “money shot” implies a lucrative strike; in broader cultural language, it signals climax and display. Here, the convergence of profit, performance, and bodily implication becomes unavoidable. Extraction is rendered seductive before revealing its cost.

Through slow discovery and shifting perception, Money Shot transforms the land from passive resource into sentient witness — implicated, exposed, and staring back.