RACHEL SAGER

In my new work, I continue to contemplate deconstruction by extracting and repurposing existing imagery to create new meaning. Severed fragments of soft-focus floral backgrounds, sourced from 70's adult magazines, set against field shots from World War 2, altered and positioned to create a new narrative more accurate of naturally occurring internal dissonance.

A human figure is not only what is seen on the exterior, but the organs and veins and hair and blood, all at once. Just as a traumatic experience can be explained most accurately as shots and flashes from a dream, or stills from a movie reel, out of sequence and disassembled.

In selecting preexisting imagery based on tonal qualities and hues, which might depict turbulent waters or explosions in the sky, or a telling detail of an image that holds much of the image’s sentiment (hands folded or cutting and sewing), I can reconfigure the images to tell a different story. The pieces possess their own gravity, a sense of history and weight. In rendering them with oil paint, the imagery retains that history, but are unified through the medium.

The subject matter that I explore, and often meditate on, is the

passage from life to death, the marred, brutalized female body and the dissonance experienced as artist/mother/wife.