Since the untimely death of his mother in 2003,
TR Ericsson has obsessively constructed an expansive and conceptual mixed-media project investigating the lives of the artist, his family and the changing cultural landscape that impacted each generation. At the core of his practice is a desire to understand what one can know about another’s suffering and the value of that understanding. Ericsson begins with an archive of inherited photographs and documents, repurposing these artifacts with traditional as well as experimental art materials to develop a series of intertwining narratives centered around the artist’s mother. These intimate vignettes expand into universal declarations on time, love, loss, memory, and addiction. This ongoing project has been exhibited and acquired by museums across the USA including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art (NY) and many other private and public collections. These works are blown-up snapshots created with materials that reveal the complexity of family bonds: Cocktail paintings infused with nicotine and alcohol, haunted images glittering with gold. The tobacco brown B side of each painting divulges elements of his archive in a compositional approach operating between literature, philosophy, and intimate confession.
TR Ericsson talks about his nicotine works, stability, and new body of cocktail paintings.
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High-Resolution PDF
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