We live in a time when the institutions and narratives that once structured our reality are fraying. Trust in governments, media, and shared symbols is eroding, contributing to a sense of uncertainty and disorientation. As these frameworks come under strain, digital culture becomes a battleground for influence, with information often wielded as a tool of persuasion. Memes distill complex issues into ideological slogans, while symbols of innocence—schools, hospitals, children—are caught in the relentless flux of an ever-accelerating news cycle.

In this unstable world, how should art respond? Should it resist, subvert, or escape? Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari describe a “line of flight”, a way to break free from dominant power structures through creative refusal. Ursula K. Le Guin puts it more simply: “The direction of escape is towards freedom.” Yet escape is often framed as betrayal, a desertion of collective struggle. But what if it is the only path to reclaiming agency?

Anne de Vries navigates this dilemma through a web of interconnected symbols and figures, examining power, media, and the struggle to reclaim meaning. Using sculpture, digital media, and staged news broadcasts, he questions the mechanisms that shape our perception of truth.

One recurring figure in de Vries’ work is De Wachter, a heraldic knight who has lost his way. Once a symbol of heroism and order, he now embodies a system in disarray, caught between nostalgia for a past that never truly existed and an inability to function in the present. What remains of this once-revered figure is no longer tied to history but to simulation, his world, long vanished, now survives primarily in video games and fantasy fiction, where chivalry is reenacted as spectacle rather than lived as a code. His CGI armored body moves with a slow, almost theatrical uncertainty, defined by his oversized feline paws that expose his struggle to maintain relevance.

This sense of displacement is mirrored in the Vapula, a symbol drawn from medieval demonology, reimagined here as a grotesque relic of imperial power. Traditionally depicted as a griffin-winged lion who once granted knowledge of philosophy and mechanics, the Vapula now indulges in chocolate, a symbol of colonial luxury and the seductive nature of consumption itself. Dripping in melted chocolate, it becomes both appetizing and absurd, epitomizing the way distraction dulls perception, how a superficial pleasure can render even the most unsettling realities acceptable. A drizzle of spectacle is often enough to obscure systemic violence. 

As meaning fragments, what remains is control. In the face of instability, the desire for order intensifies. De Vries presents power not just as an institution but as a mindset, one that finds pleasure in submission, that transforms obedience into a virtue. The exercise of power is no longer limited to legal systems or military force; it operates through imagery, through humor, through the manipulation of narrative. Political messages are buried within memes, crises are staged for maximum emotional impact, and news cycles become indistinguishable from entertainment. Meaning is not just lost but actively dismantled, replaced with an overwhelming spectacle designed to provoke reaction rather than reflection.
At the heart of this spectacle is the infantilization of power. De Vries exposes the contradictions of authority, how institutions of control, from police forces to political structures, often adopt a posture that is simultaneously hyper-masculine and deeply childish. Power is performed through displays of brute force and rigid hierarchy, yet its mechanisms are riddled with insecurity, overcompensation, and absurd theatricality.

Amid these shifting forces, de Vries introduces Mansur, a figure who resists easy classification. He is both a real person and a symbol of the ultimate outsider. Having grown up as a shepherd in Syria, a vast landscape far away from villages, without formal education, he eventually fled his war-torn country, traveling on foot to reach Europe. His journey is not reducible to an ideological statement; it is an act of survival that refuses to fit neatly into the narratives imposed upon it. The footprints he leaves behind mirror those of De Wachter’s oversized paws. Both figures are in motion, yet for different reasons: one flees destruction in search of a future; the other wanders, trapped in the ruins of an obsolete past.

In a world where power thrives on distraction and narratives collapse as quickly as they form, Breaking News does not attempt to restore order. De Vries exposes how heroes and enforcers of authority are not figures of true heroism but performers in an elaborate role-play. In his work, they become exaggerated caricatures, closer to cosplay than conviction, reenacting outdated ideals in a world that no longer believes in them. This theatricality extends beyond politics and into mainstream media, where news cycles borrow the aesthetics of entertainment , reducing crisis to spectacle and authority to mere performance.