Opening on Saturday at Pocket Utopia, Ellen Letcher: "Photo Still:"
Combined Human,
2006 24 x 18 inches Collaged magazine pages &acrylic
paint on board w/spiral wire
Abstract,
2002 24 x 18 inches Collaged
magazine pages and acrylic paint on cardboard
Versace,
2012 24 x 12 inches Collaged magazine pages and acrylic
paint on wood panel
Detroit,
2011 21 x 17 inches Collaged magazine pages and acrylic
paint with acetate on paper
Big Sculpture,
2011 21 x 17 inches Collaged magazine pages and acrylic
paint on paper
Funeral Pyre,
2012 15 x 4 feet Collaged
magazine, newspaper, color laser prints, china marker and acrylic paint on PVC
coated canvas drop-cloth
Biker Diptych,
2009 10 ½ x 8 ½ inches Collaged color laser print and acrylic paint
Muslims,
2012 20 x 16 inches Collaged magazine pages and acrylic
paint with on wood panel with shelf
Hotdog,
2012 25 x 19 ½ inches Collaged magazine pages, color laser print and acrylic paint
on paper
Bjรถrk, 2009 15 ½ x 11 ½
inches Collaged magazine
page and acrylic paint on cardboard
Tiger,
2012 25 x 19 ½ inches Collaged magazine pages and acrylic paint on paper
Skater,
2012 25 x 19 ½ inches Collaged magazine pages, color laser print and acrylic paint
on paper
Tea and Toilet
Paper, 2012 25 x 19 ½ inches Collaged magazine pages, color laser print
& acrylic paint
on paper
Bill, 2012 25 x 19 ½ inches Collaged
magazine pages, newspaper, color laser print and acrylic
paint on paper
Heavenly
Creature, 2012 25 x 19 ½ inches Collaged magazine pages, China marker and
acrylic paint on
paper
Leo, Romeo & Juliet,
2002–2012, 25 x 19 ½ inches Collaged magazine pages and acrylic paint on
paper
Wrestler, 2012, 25 x 19 ½
inches Collaged magazine pages, tape and acrylic paint on paper
Milla, 2002–2012, 25 x 19 ½
inches Collaged magazine pages, China marker and acrylic paint on
paper
Combined Human, #3, 2012 20 x 16 inches
Collaged magazine pages, color laser print
and acrylic paint on paper
Boob, 2012, 28 ½ x 24
inches Collaged magazine pages and acrylic paint on paper
Leaf, 2009, 26 x 17 inches Collaged magazine and book pages, relief
printing and tape on Japanese paper
Wresting
images from glossy magazines and pasting them down with paint, Letcher creates
a highly idiosyncratic collection of pictorial data. She replays this device of painting and pasting, maintaining
a graphic energy while carefully editing, and anything might and does happen
along the way (for instance, an impression of a leaf falls outside one of
Letcher’s gridded, brushed blue-glue and pink strokes). Evidence of a cup of tea is plastered
by active orange paint strokes while on another one of Letcher’s pages, Muslims
pray within a lattice of painted pink, orange, and blue.
Letcher
doesn’t take pictures — she jags their contours with color, abutting one
against another, alongside yet another within a tableau of hidden
transcriptions excavated with a red, blue, pink, or orange brush. She has many influences, including her
years spent in production design and more recently co-directing the now
shuttered Famous Accountants gallery, thereby illustrating how visual culture
gets layered and loaned sometimes from the same sources without the fidelity of
precise transcription.