Ellen Letcher: Photo Still

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

Björk, 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.

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