In the series The Origin of Grief, Salomon engages with the theme of sorrow and suffering through recurring grotesque images of a woman in various poses of sobbing, lamentation, mourning, and loss of control. Salomon externalizes grief to a baroque degree, with bodily fluids gushing out in spectacular giant displays. Thus, emotion and pain are heightened to the point of pleasure, while at the same time made to look ridiculous and pathetic.

The work A Postcard from Forgotten Views is part of a series of landscapes drawn with charcoal on paper, depicting mountain views taken from postcards of hotels in the Alps. A typical alpine hotel is planted at the heart of each “postcard,” except that unlike the surrounding landscape, the hotel is drawn and then erased until only faded traces of its form and features remain. The work manifests a state of mind in between a dream and a nightmare. The gloomy landscape, akin to sentimental needlework in its oval shape, reflects Salomon’s internal struggle between remembering and forgetting, when memory surrenders to oblivion – and vice versa, when oblivion capitulates to memory.

Thus, the works on display function as “clocks” that present different approaches to time and the desire to control it, with remembering and forgetting as the hands that mark the passage of time.

Less Reading...