| |
Perhaps the best place to start with the new work by Austin artist Lance Letscher at D Berman Gallery is with "My Name." The large rectangular collage could just as easily, and just as appropriately, be titled "Self-Portrait" or "Artist's Statement," for it readily serves as a cynosure of Letscher's work.
In "My Name," Letscher has assembled bits of variously textured blue paper -- some worn, some new -- and affixed them to pieces of cardboard. He then layered those pieces in uneven mosaiclike horizontal strips. Heavy-duty staples hold the thick cardboard together. The work is coated with clear lacquer. The blue hues at the top of "My Name" start out pale then gradually grow darker to a solid black line in the center of the image, then they gradually lighten again until the bottom.
Up close, the tactile, three-dimensional quality of Letscher's collage is at its most compelling, the undulations formed by the paper wonderfully magnified. Ditto with the tremendous variation in the type of paper -- the detail is fantastic. However,
from far away, "My Name" projects a totally abstract field of color, a fluid shift of hues. It's that balance between detail -- at an almost fetishistic level -- and abstraction that makes Letscher's work so enjoyable.
Landscapes seem the standout in this new gathering. "Rain Cloud" features bands of faded white paper running across blue. The large "Winter Wheat" vibrates with the extremely narrow bits of paper used to portray the brownish fields.
Letscher is very much akin to the school of pattern painters of the 1970s whose reaction against minimalism was to raise pattern and decoration to a level of high art. His work is not heavy with intellectual constructs. And that means it's really not very deep either. Letscher makes beautiful objects.
Period.
("Lance Letscher: Collages and Drawings" continues through June 23 at D
Berman Gallery, 1701 Guadalupe St.; 477-8877 or
www.dbermangallery.com.)
Back to previous page.
|
|
