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Ethan Caflisch’s A Man I Never Knew is an assemblage series that constructs fragmented portraits of an unknown figure—someone whose belongings the artist inherited but whose identity remains elusive. Through layered mixed media compositions, Caflisch pieces together a narrative from objects left behind, exploring how possessions reflect, distort, and obscure a person’s essence.

These works function as both investigations and acts of preservation, uncovering slivers of a life through what was collected, valued, and passed along. Yet, in this process of reconstruction, misinterpretations emerge—raising questions about the limits of understanding someone through material traces alone. A Man I Never Knew meditates on memory, absence, and the ways in which objects outlive and outshape their owners, becoming relics of both connection and distance.

In Caflisch’s Words:
these pieces are portraits of a man who’s things i inherited, without any knowledge of who he was as a person, or even what he was called. they are snippets of what he cared about, participated in, collected, and identified with. they’re sort of investigations, preservations, and certainly misunderstandings of who someone is through what they hold and pass along