For his Eraserhead series, begun in the mid-1990s, Holstad alters newspaper photographs by rubbing out parts of images and redrawing over the compositions in pencil. "It seems to me that newspapers weren't able to write exactly what they wanted to write," the artist has said of his motives. "You had to read between the lines and make sense of it all yourself. In part, my drawings are a response to that." In these works, personalities familiar from current events are obscured into spectral monsters; here, the faces of two well-dressed men blur together into a doubled, melting mask.

Gallery label from

Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration, March 14–July 9, 2012.

Medium Pencil and gouache on erased newspaper
Dimensions 5 7/8 x 9" (14.9 x 22.9 cm)
Credit The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift
Object number 1882.2005
Department Drawings and Prints

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