The exhibition, Light From the Middle East, that I mentioned in an earlier post was part of a study day that also included a trip to the Photographer's Gallery. I found, Ill Form and Void Full by Laura Letinksy, more appealing after the sensory overload of the many visual styles, multiple themes and assorted photographers of the V&A exhibition. I sometimes feel that group exhibitions can be too much to take in and a solo exhibition allows for more time to appreciate where an individual artist is coming from.
Letinsky creates montages with paper cut-outs of food and utensils from magazines etc - juxtaposing them against blank sheets of paper to create 3D effects that manipulate the visual plane. These creations are then photographed with a medium format camera.
In Letinksy's still-life work it can be difficult to determine what is a vertical or horizontal surface in any given part of the image. The viewers perception appears to change as the eye moves around and could be disorienting. Letinksy negates this with a muted colour palate and use of negative space to counteract the visual complexity. I think this balance is crucial to the work and creates an overall soothing effect on the viewer.
All the images appear to depict the remains of a meal and is a continuation of her earlier themes that refer back to still-life genre painting. I thought that the work was refreshing in its uniqueness and felt quite different to most of the photography that I have seen recently. The large framed images hung together very well in the space and felt like a cohesive series that explored objects, light and space in an interesting and conceptual way.
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