Solve et Coagula
Ryan M. Pfeiffer + Rebecca Walz
This selection of collages, part of an ongoing project by Ryan M. Pfeiffer + Rebecca Walz under the title Solve et Coagula, derives from their ever-growing atlas of source material. As the title of this body of work suggests, the artists approach collage in terms of alchemy, a means of dissolving and coagulating images from Art History’s vast archive into new artworks—a synthesis of the elements from which they are built.
In this series, Pfeiffer + Walz re-imagine Mary Magdalene and Christ’s narrative of loss and mourning by focusing on the desire that subtly pervades their story. Mary becomes an icon not only of ceremonial grief but empowered eroticism, her fleshly immanence contrasting with Christ’s transcendental nature. Individually, the collages cut together biblical scenes with fragments culled from Paleolithic sources to contemporary art. The ensuing tableaus are disjunct yet cinematic, unfolding into a resonant drama of longing, seduction, and intimacy—themes that are often abstracted or omitted entirely regarding the sourced iconography. One finds recurrent images of hands clasping one another, reaching across empty space to make contact, and leaving behind ghostly traces on walls they’ve touched. Fire and cut flowers collide with bloody flesh and crumbling landscapes. Bodies strike operatic poses, writhing in ecstasy or lying lifelessly, always suspended between anguish and elation for what the connection of touch threatens and promises.
Notions of touching and cutting inherent to the technique of collage are therefore reflected within the motifs of the series: one cuts out an admired painting of Mary, herself being cut off from touching Christ one last time; Anna Mendieta entombs herself into the sanguine earth and Apollo’s forbidden touch turns Daphne into a tree; Helen Frankenthaler caresses her canvas with fluid paint, a woman pleasures herself, and Forrest Bess cuts a hole into himself; doubting Thomas probes Christ’s cut, and Andre Breton touches a prehistoric cave drawing because he doubts its authenticity. The distinct treatment of these subjects coalesce under the resounding phrase noli me tangere.
