Letha Wilson: Landmarks and Monuments @Art in General

JTF (just the facts): A total of 10 photo-based sculptures, framed in white and unmatted or mounted without framing, and hung against white walls in the spacious single room gallery space. All of the works are digital c-prints prints from 2013, with additions of concrete, white portland cement, wooden 2x4s, aluminum, adhesive vinyl, UV laminate, and/or cor-ten steel. No physical dimensions were available on the checklist, and all the works are unique, many of them site specific. The show also includes a 48-page saddle stitched artist's book and a supporting column stripped of its paint. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Following on the heels of her terrific first solo show at Higher Pictures earlier this year (review here), Letha Wilson has brought location specificity to her tactile photo-based sculptures. While this selection of objects reprises some of the aesthetic themes from her previous show (rock wall photographs dipped in Portland cement, trees and canyons merged with undulating, fan-like concrete tondos), Wilson branches out to consider the architectural and artistic challenges posed by this particular roomy, wood floored gallery. In many ways, these new works function like installation pieces, or more indirectly, like the interventions of Land Art, only brought indoors.

In general, Wilson's work turns on the intersection of the natural and the man made, where classic landscape photographs are married with brash interventions of construction materials, creating objects that bring physicality to the landscape form. What is different here is that Wilson has incorporated the limits of the display space into her compositions, opening up a dialogue with her surroundings. The center of the gallery is dominated by a huge wave form moonscape, cut through by the bold whiteness of one of the room's supporting columns. The graceful undulation of the image matches its quiet blue moodiness, only to be skewered by the jolting white dowel. In another work, a commonplace skyward view of tree branches and leaves merges with the plane of the wall behind it, the corners of the photograph tucking directly into the sheetrock. A long two-by-four slashes across the image, embedded in the drywall, like a man made branch added to the composition. Perhaps the most unexpected intervention in the show comes from a desert canyon image with bright spots covering its surface. From afar, they look like Robert Smithson's Yucatan mirror displacements, but up close they reveal themselves to be holes to the outside world; the work has been mounted over a small unseen window, letting the view to the city peek through the circular openings. It's a clever combination of desert and city, West and East (American that is), natural and highly constructed.

Two other works in the show force the viewer to consider the floor. At first glance, one looks like a toppled over slab of Richard Serra steel or a Carl Andre floor piece. But one corner slyly curls up, revealing just a hint of a sunset hiding underneath, making us wonder what else might be on the other side. A second concrete based work hulks near the back of the gallery, tipped up against the wall. It's a swirling, slashing mass of images of desert canyons and evergreen needles, mashed together and mixed up with grey concrete. It's massive weight makes it easy to see that it had to be made right in the gallery, flat on the floor like a Pollock drip painting. It's by far the most energetic work in the show, exuding a kind of manic, twisting physical immediacy.

Given the momentum of the original ideas embedded in this show, I'm becoming more and more convinced of Letha Wilson's talents. Rarely has photography had such a natural physical presence; her works have a thickness and tactile quality that challenges the typical boundaries of the medium and plays with the dualities of the paper image and its real life subject matter. While plenty of other artists have explored the sculptural qualities of photographs and cobbled them together in piles, gatherings and collages, Wilson's works somehow seem more effortlessly integrated. Her images don't fight the breaking of the two dimensional plane, they move past that constraint without even noticing, smartly transforming photographs into objects of rough elegance, each one an innovative hybrid of opposing forces.

 

Collector's POV: Since this is a non-profit exhibition space, the works in this show aren't overtly for sale. Wilson is represented in New York by Higher Pictures (here). Her work has not yet reached the secondary markets, so gallery retail is the only option for those collectors interested in following up.
 

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

 

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Features/Reviews: Artlyst (here), Arrested Motion (here)

 

Letha Wilson: Landmarks and Monuments

Through June 29th

 

Art in General

79 Walker Street

New York, NY 10013

Letha Wilson @Higher Pictures

JTF (just the facts): A total of 10 photo-based sculptures, framed in white and unmatted or mounted without framing and hung against white walls in the single room gallery space. The works are either c-prints or gelatin silver prints, with additional concrete, white portland cement, wood dowel, or paint. They generally range in size from 24x17 to 28x28, with one larger column piece at 106x17. All are unique and were made in 2012. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Vistas of the Grand Tetons, the flat expanse of salt flats, the rumble of storm clouds, the wave patterns of eroded canyons, these awe inspiring natural treasures have now become the territory of landscape photography cliche. We have already "seen" them, the past masters of the medium having expertly captured these places with any number of emotions and mindsets: grandeur, reverence, joy, picture postcard banality, disappointment, anger, and even irony. But Letha Wilson's unconventional photo-based sculptures have done something I wouldn't have thought likely - they've brought tactile physicality back to landscape photography, and in doing so, have made the old tropes we've generally written off surprisingly fresh and immediate.

Wilson's photographic raw material is entirely forgettable: photograms of evergreen branches, views of the Badlands, lonely plants in sand dunes and sagebrush underfoot. But her sculptural interventions are unexpected and invigorating. The black and white evergreen silhouettes are geometrically cut through and pulled back, revealing backside images in color. The rocky hills of the Badlands are interrupted by flows of rough concrete, slashing through like thick strips of sediment. The endless dryness of salt flats is covered in a thin white scrim of cement, hovering like a delicate crusted veil. And the swirls and whorls of pink canyons are twisted like a fan, the image folded again and again, but on a turning axis that mirrors the flow of the walls. Each material intrusion matches its subject, and by reminding us of its tangible presence, each manipulation enhances our experience of the land. It's photography unafraid of its objectness, mixing visual elegance with physical, textural grit.

Wilson is yet another example of a contemporary photographer who is smartly disassembling genre boundaries. Her works find an easy structural balance between photography and sculpture, allowing her photographs to be both representative imagery and paper based things that can be cut, torn, slashed, and filled. The best of these works have an effortless combination of natural beauty and man made construction that settles into an unsteady but harmonious equilibrium. All in, a plenty promising debut.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are generally priced between $4000 and $6500, with the large concrete column priced at $18000. At this early point in her career, Wilson's work has no secondary market history, so gallery retail is the only option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Interview: Hyperallergic (here)

Letha Wilson
Through January 26th

Higher Pictures
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075

Always the Young Strangers @Higher Pictures

JTF (just the facts): A group show consisting of a total of 29 works by 17 different photographers, variously framed and matted, and hung against white walls in the small main gallery space and the viewing alcove. (Installation shots at right.)

The following photographers have been included in the show, with image numbers and details in parentheses:

• Erica Allen (2 digital c-prints, each 14x11, editions of 3, 2008)
• Cortney Andrews (2 videos with sound, editions of 3, 2010)
• Talia Chetrit (2 gelatin silver prints, 24x20 and 20x16, editions of 4, 2010)
• Jessica Eaton (1 archival pigment print, 40x30, edition of 3, 2010)
• LaToya Ruby Frazier (1 photolithograph/silkscreen, 17x14, 2011)
• Anna Krachey (1 archival pigment print, 18x25, edition of 4, 2010)
• Jessica Labatte (1 archival inkjet print, 71x59, edition of 5, 2010)
• Andrea Longacre-White (1 archival inkjet print, 36x24, unique, 2011)
• Aspen Mays (2 gelatin silver prints, 12x16 and 7x5, unique, 2011, with bag of buttons)
• MPA + Katherine Hubbard (6 polaroids, each 4x6, unique, 2010)
• Yamini Nayar (1 c-print, 36x48, edition of 5, 2010)
• Emily Roysdon (1 digital chromogenic print, paper litho, wood block, collage, 35x48, unique, 2010)
• Carrie Schneider (1 c-print, 40x50, edition of 5, 2011)
• Kate Steciw (1 c-print, 30x24, edition of 5, 2010)
• Letha Wilson 1 c-print, cheesecloth, cement, 24x20x7, unique, 2011, and 1 wood frame, glass, cement, c-print, plywood, 17x13x2, unique, 2011)
• Ann Woo (3 c-prints, each 14x11, editions of 5, 2009) 

Comments/Context: If this well-edited show is any indication, a contemporary photography revolution is underway, where the old truths and rules from the recent past have been rejected or simply left behind as irrelevant, and fresh ideas are springing forth to redefine what the medium can and should mean. If there is any one common theme to the diverse set of works on display here, it is a conscious deliberateness; there are no decisive moments or lucky shots here. In fact, these cerebral photographs make the consistent argument that it isn't enough just to do one simple or straightforward thing anymore; the cutting edge now requires combining and referencing all kinds of other artistic and visual sources, juxtaposing and remixing them into something more layered and thoughtful.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a short essay on "digital craftsmanship" and the challenges faced by the increasing perfection offered by digital tools (here). As I reviewed the images in this show, I began to think that they can provide an unexpected answer to some of the questions raised by that discussion. If we take as a given that most photographers will no longer be able to differentiate themselves on printing craft alone, the "handmadeness" of the art, and the visceral touch of the artist, will need to come out in other ways. Nearly every image in this show turns on the process being used by the artist; I'm not talking about chemicals and print types (that's old school thinking), but the activity that takes place as part of (before, during, and after) the image making. A sense of brainy involvement pervades all of these works.

Many of the photographs on view are images of constructed environments, places for performances, or installations made solely to be photographed. Others employ analog, digital, and even physical processes to modify the nature of the imagery, moving it beyond the representational to the interpretive. Ideas are pushed and pulled and twisted back on themselves, blurring the definitional lines to which we have become accustomed. Terms like landscape, still life, portrait and even abstraction seem woefully inadequate as useful categorizations, since many of the works which might normally fall into one of those buckets actually function on multiple discrete levels.

While I can't say that every image hit the mark for me, this show is full of potential answers to the question of "where is photography headed?" These works are evidence of a growing rejection of the glossy, large scale, art object deadpan that has dominated contemporary photography for the past decade or two, and a potential return to the introspective, intellectual and personal. While no consensus has yet formed out of this swirling, chaotic multiplicity of competing ideas and hand crafted approaches, there are certainly enough data points to start to see a pattern emerging.

Collector's POV: The images in the show are priced as follows:

• Erica Allen ($700 each)
• Cortney Andrews ($2000 each)
• Talia Chetrit ($3000 and $2500)
• Jessica Eaton ($3500)
• LaToya Ruby Frazier (NFS)
• Anna Krachey ($1600)
• Jessica Labatte ($8500)
• Andrea Longacre-White ($1500)
• Aspen Mays ($3500 and $3200)
• MPA + Katherine Hubbard ($1000 each)
• Yamini Nayar ($5000)
• Emily Roysdon ($6500)
• Carrie Schneider ($5000)
• Kate Steciw ($1500)
• Letha Wilson ($2500 and $1250)
• Ann Woo ($650 each)

While a few of the photographers in this show may be familiar to collectors, none of the artists has any significant secondary market history; the work is just too new. As such, gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.

My favorite image in the exhibit was Letha Wilson's Bryce Canyon Cement Pour, 2011; it's on the far left in the top installation shot. I liked it's conceptual mixing of artistic genres, where photography meets sculptural plywood and poured cement, referencing both Land Art and Minimalism.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Reviews/Features: New York Times (here), New Yorker (here)
• Letha Wilson artist site (here)

Always the Young Strangers
Through July 9th

Higher Pictures
764 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10065