Archive
Life, Death and Beauty You Make Me
24 digital prints show fragments of a collage of visual material, from a whole composition juxtaposed on a pin board.
In this work by Tracy Mackenna & Edwin Janssen a visual narrative was created by juxtaposing a wide variety of visual material on a pin board. Subsequently, elements of this large collage were framed photographically to create new layers of meaning through a process of fragmentation. The 24 prints show details of postcards and other reproductions of historical and contemporary artworks.
Key museum practices such as collecting, curating and framing were applied on a domestic scale in a studio context to explore different aspects of human existence: desire, war, love, loss and beauty. Life, Death and Beauty: You Make Me, 2010, refers to André Malraux’s Museum without Walls and reflects our interest in visual studies, image theory and psychoanalysis.
This work also has a strong connection with Truth, Error, Opinion, Tracy Mackenna & Edwin Janssen’s visual exploration of the Martha Rosler Library.
Images from Life, Death and Beauty: You Make Me, 2010, became further fragmented in the series of postcards made for the exhibition Verzamelen / Collecting – Mail Art Project, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
