Paul Kasmin is pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition of works on paper by T.R. Ericsson. Entitled Nicotine Dream, the show will include a selection of T.R. Ericsson’s recent nicotine drawings.

The pungent smell of nicotine emitted from each drawing is a bit overwhelming and jarringly contrasts with the effervescent, nostalgic and barely present nature of Ericsson’s drawings. His mother was a smoker, and lit cigarettes formed, in his words, “a vigil she kept during her final years until the nicotine stains discolored the white ceilings and floral wallpaper patterns of the house into a tarnished gold,”—the same tarnished gold that dominates the palette of his nicotine drawings. These works find inspiration in his mother’s terminal years coupled with anecdotes of his life, recreating the connection between her and Ericsson, her only son—all the while referencing universal themes such as love and mortality.

In creating these works on paper, Ericsson uses a silkscreen process, essentially an intensified version of the process through which his mother’s white ceiling became stained yellow. Digital photographs are burned into silkscreens. Subsequently the images are recreated in nicotine as ashtrays filled with smoldering cigarettes are placed beneath the screens, slowly creating pictorial stains while destroying the screen. The process requires anywhere from fifteen to six hundred cigarettes to create a single image.

T.R. Ericsson’s work belongs to a number of collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Pfizer Corporation, the J.P. Morgan Chase Collection, and the Progressive Art Collection. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.