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The word “rigged” is a vivid monosyllable during an age of discontents. Used equally in the US by the alt-right and far left, the term is tossed promiscuously at any system that seems unfair and fraudulent (which is to say, a lot of them). “Rigged” captures a slurry of disempowerment and frustration, a fear that we’re not the protagonists of our own stories, but rather playthings for shadowy tech billionaires who tug our strings and make us dance.

Pieter Schoolwerth’s latest painting series, Rigged, gives form to this collective delirium in a two-part exhibition at Petzel Gallery, New York …