SHAHEEN is delighted to present Etant Donnes, an exhibition of new work by T. R. Ericsson. The exhibition is Ericsson's second at the gallery, and features a cycle of eight mid-large scale powdered graphite drawings. Bearing the same title as Marcel Duchamp's late masterpiece, Ericsson's Etant Donnes series finds the artist delving ever deeper into the biographical and autobiographical themes that have dominated his work of the past five years. Comprised of a group of images of an unclothed female figure in a sequence of forested settings, Etant Donnes could be construed as the female or "Echo" counterpart to Ericsson's Narcissus series, a group of thirteen powdered graphite drawings that were exhibited at SHAHEEN in 2008, which featured the artist traversing a similar series of wooded landscapes. Although Ericsson has laced Etant Donnes with a number of potential references, this body of work resists easy interpretation, instead leaving itself open to an expansive and eclectic array of readings, and evoking a broad spectrum of cerebral and emotional responses. The eight drawings that make up the exhibition derive from a much larger group of photographic images that Ericsson has published as an artist book entitled Etant Donnes, which will spawn subsequent drawings.
Just as Etant Donnes finds Ericsson venturing into more brooding emotional and psychological territory, it also finds him pushing his powdered graphite drawings and the distinct, labor intensive process through which he realizes them to new and ambitious levels of scale (the largest drawing measures 96 x 72 inches), and technical complexity and refinement. To produce a drawing, the artist rubs porous bags fashioned from nylon stockings containing powdered graphite through the mesh of a silkscreen, transferring a base image in multiple stages onto the paper. Intermittently, Ericsson removes the screen and reconfigures the loose medium through erasure, stencils, brushwork, stumping and vacuuming to create detail and articulate tonal range. The attempt to control the passage of medium through the screen, coupled with the repeated movement of the screen precipitates chance visual occurrences and enhances the drawing's softly focused appearance. Once complete, the screen is destroyed, leaving behind a single, unique drawing. Ultimately, Ericsson's working process yields rich, velvety surface textures, and exceptionally detailed images that possess material grit and permanence, while simultaneously seeming mirage-like and precariously close to slipping away.
Over the past few years, T.R. Ericsson's work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including: Paul Kasmin Gallery, NY; Heidi Cho Gallery, NY; and the Bronx River Art Center, NY. His work resides in the collections of The Cleveland Museum of Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Modern Art, Dada Archives, NY; The Pfizer Corporate Collection; The Progressive Art Collection; JP Morgan Chase Collection; and The Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY. Ericsson maintains studios in his native Concord Township, OH and Brooklyn, NY.