The Elements: Air

Bartlett’s work offers visual schemas for classifying and cataloging objects. Her key compositional device is the grid, within which she situates found imagery, such as the gingham patterns, skeletons, vases, and botanical fragments in this suite.

The four components of this installation each include corresponding two-dimensional and three-dimensional representations of objects: a red lacquer box for earth, an iron waterlily for water, a cement tile for air, and a ceramic bowl for fire. The work is a meditation on the impermanence of life, the passage of time, and cyclical change. The installation appears to suggest semiotic relationships between signs and signifiers, but close study reveals those relationships to be arbitrary.