The Four Elements

An essay in four parts.

Here I returned to an approach I’d used before (“Drunkwort & Phosphorous”) where images and text are presented in choreographed conversation with each other. From its papier collé origins collage has usually been a process of overlapping and conjoining unlike materials. But with this series the negative space between components is as important as the images, if not more; these are idea clouds more than fragments juxtaposed for ironic or surreal effect. They’re intentionally diagrammatic, even if the diagrams can’t be “read” in any conventional sense. They’re more in the tradition of Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas than, say, Ernst.

The overarching title is arbitrary. The first section became “Air” only after I noticed I’d placed in each composition an image from airline safety brochures I’ve collected. (Those curious rebuses on how to pretend not to die when your plane is smashing into the ocean.) “Air” then suggested the overarching four elements. Each image in “Fire” contains a tiny matchbook cover. With “Earth” the rules, for whatever reason, became more specific: each cluster had to have a vintage sepia photo, a trilobite, a cave or doorway, a sphere or circle, and a bit of illustration depicting the age of dinosaurs. “Water,” the last of the four, is admittedly didactic: scenes of a lost civilization (here, Pompei), blue acetate invoking rising waters, counterbalanced by netting, flotsam, and bits of safety rope.