* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Variegated decay and abandonment are the protagonists of Trojnarski’s work – dissolving dwellings and orphaned amusement parks, rusted ship hulls and the rickety edifices of a civilization desperately denying its own condition and fate. Focusing on the architectural remains and industrial excess of an economic fall-out, Trojnarski examines how humanity’s true strengths can be dwarfed by the greed and myopia of a dominant few, leaving those affected clinging to their residual past and wondering what went wrong.
In this investigation, Trojnarski creates a certain Baudelairean beauty; fractured planes propel outward, sustained by unfaltering scaffolds and solid foundations, all brilliantly illuminated under awash of radiant light. A heroic optimism motivates the apparent wreckage, demonstrating the vast potentiality for change and regrowth. She explains, ‘This exhibition is a dichotomy of attraction and rejection, temptation and redemption.’ These ‘seductive still lifes of destruction,’ caught in arrested motion like a neglected construction site, hauntingly bear witness to the traumas within our collective memory. Like skeletons of their former selves, the images seem to lament an irrevocable loss while implicitly calling for an effort to move forward and rebuild the twisted spine of social conscience.
