2015 Catalogue Archive

The series Crackle & Drag by TR Ericsson simultaneously chronicles the life of the artist’s mother and Ericsson’s search for understanding in the deteriorating mementos she left behind. Like artists Marc Quinn or Janine Antoni who use bodily materials to instill meaning in their work, Ericsson incorporates his mother’s funerary ash into the medium of Flowers, memorializing her with images taken during her life. The enlarged, gray-toned photograph depicts flowers sagging in their round vase, and the silkscreen reproduction causes a haziness in the resulting work, as the quality of the image is broken down through the process. These mundane images become imbued with a reflective sadness within the context of the series, one that is amplified by the faded appearance of the piece. Crackle & Drag, a multi-media archival project, investigates the intersecting lives of his mother, father, and his relationship to his family, as Ericsson attempts to learn more about his mother and why she committed suicide at 57. It is, for the artist, “an attempt to reclaim her life, and even my life after her death by way of art.”