MUM, the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication. In the series, Rogan alters the magazine’s pages by erasing the image of the magicians doing their tricks, leaving only the background of their performances on view. These contexts range from the more overtly staged scenario in Silencer #16—the erased magician is about to perform a trick on his assistant trapped on an odd, almost dada looking box—to the more “colloquial” Silencer #17 in which the absent magician’s silhouette appears in what seems to be a children’s hospital.

 Rogan’s interventions attest to their own creation by way of the subtle marks and erasure used to remove the original visual information. Such evidence of the artist’s hand echoes the magician’s sleight-of-hand in the image and suggests the illusory character of all representation. By extension, the remaining white voids are uncanny, ghostly stand-ins for the performer and artist who both haunt the scene.