Letha Wilson: Folds and Faults
Higher Pictures Gallery, Brooklyn
Through February 18, 2023
Higher Pictures Generation presents new work by Letha Wilson in her third solo presentation with the gallery.
The Landscape Objects on view continue Letha Wilson’s exploration of the interlocking relationships between sculpture, photography, and our natural environment. The sculptures are made from a carefully limited set of materials: a metal plate hinged with industrial fabric provides the substrate for foliage, stone, earth, and sky photographed in color. Wilson’s photographs, printed onto cut sheets of copper, steel, or brass, are made to fold and bend in countless ways. The objects can stand up, stretch out, lie flat, and hang on the wall; there is no right answer here, no single definitive form.
Each piece is an invitation for the viewer to collaborate with the artist. Recalling Lygia Clark’s Bichos sculptures in their playful, generous, and iterative nature, they challenge our habits of viewing: in place of nature portrayed as beautiful, static, and modern, Letha Wilson offers us sets of questions and possibilities.
Letha Wilson’s distinctive understanding of landscape comes in part from having grown up in Colorado. Her representations of the mountains, sky, and vegetation draw on many different traditions. Historical photography is clearly present, as well as the popular vernacular of postcard art, hyperrealist painting of the 1960s, and the saturated color of Hollywood westerns. To all these sources Wilson brings her own irreverent humor and an exhilarating sense of freedom.
Letha Wilson (b. 1976, Honolulu) earned her BFA from Syracuse University and her MFA from Hunter College in New York City. Letha Wilson attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009, and her work has been exhibited widely, including at Mass MoCA, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and the Columbus Museum of Art. She has been awarded artist residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, among others. Letha was awarded the Windgate Artist Residency at SUNY Purchase in Fall 2022. She works in Craryville and Brooklyn, New York.
HIGHER PICTURES GENERATION
16 Main Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201
______________________
