Mixed-Media Assemblage

Overview

Leaving explores departure as something that is rarely singular. Rather than depicting one ending, the work brings together several moments of conclusion that occurred years apart before ultimately converging into a single narrative.

At its center is a painting by the artist’s uncle, Brian O’Donnell, depicting a road leaving Colorado. Standing before the landscape are the artist’s original wedding cake toppers, transforming the painted scene into the final chapter of a marriage. Across the composition, Rimowa letterforms spell “The End!” in the visual language of a classic cartoon closing title, reinforcing the departure suggested by both the landscape and the figures.

Suspended above the painting are shards of glass salvaged from the original frame of Mother’s Last Show. During Antoine’s two-week visit to The Rigley Field, while the two watched Plein Soleil, the cable supporting that work unexpectedly failed. The artist caught the falling frame, but its glass shattered upon impact. Rather than discard the fragments, they were preserved and incorporated here, allowing one work to physically continue within another. What once protected memory now becomes material through which new meaning is constructed.

The painting itself carries another layer of provenance. Brian O’Donnell is the artist’s uncle and the same person who accompanied him, at the age of thirteen, to purchase his first work of art. That shared history quietly anchors the piece, linking the beginning of the artist’s relationship with collecting to the end of another significant chapter decades later.

Like many works throughout the exhibition, Leaving demonstrates that objects are never fixed to a single story. Through recontextualization, they accumulate new histories without abandoning the old ones. The painting, the shattered glass, the wedding cake topper, and the language of the data frame each preserve their original identities while simultaneously becoming part of a larger narrative. In doing so, the work illustrates one of the central operations of EZRA: meaning is not replaced—it is continuously reauthored.

Metadata

Artist
Seth / Ezra Dager

Year
2026

Medium
Mixed-Media Assemblage

Status
Complete

Archive
Human Archive

Location
The Rigley Field

Components
Painting by Brian O’Donnell; original wedding cake topper; salvaged glass from Mother’s Last Show; Rimowa stickers; custom data frame.