Will Rogan
Silencer #16 & #17
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.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Will Rogan’s practice reflects the poignant, the ironic, the disastrous, and the beautiful in his surrounding urban and domestic landscapes. In the form of photography, video, and sculpture, his interventions often highlight the profound and analytical in everyday life. Taking a playful stance on mundane situations and structures, Rogan’s work merges the critical with the poetic. He is also the co-editor and founder of the quarterly journal of editions, The Thing.