On his way out, the great Peter Schjeldahl left us with this musing – “death is like painting, rather than sculpture, because you can only see it from one side.” TR Ericsson’s The clock and the mirror can be read from both, with a pastel bedroom facing outwards, and an elaborately printed B-side, which recounts the artist’s memories of this now imagined space. It is a rare departure from Ericsson’s recent paintings of family photos in which his mother is the central figure. Here, the artist is painting from an absent image, reaching into the depths of his memory to recreate a disappeared room. His mother and uncle grew up in this room, as the B-side will tell you; the two children appear in the right window, staring back through layers of time. His mother appears again, as a high school senior, in a framed graduation picture placed carefully on the vanity. The room is empty otherwise, save for a still, riderless toy horse.

The light has a strange, diffuse flatness, lacking a discernible time of day. The proportions are slightly odd, and combined with the delicacy of the butterfly wallpaper, the whole space takes on the uncanny feeling of a dollhouse. With his diary entry-style writing, Ericsson provides the most complete possible account of this bygone room; yet, a series of small slippages remains, like the skip of a record, aching with loss.