Laura Letinsky has developed her practice since the late 1990s through meticulously composed still life photographs influenced by 17th Century Renaissance painting. Using a large format camera in a controlled studio environment, her work resembles the aftermath of a meal, where stained tablecloths, spilled wine and squashed, misshapen fruit allude to mortality, frustrated desire and melancholy.
This exhibition focuses on Letinsky’s new series, Ill Form and Void Full (2010-11), and marks a significant development in her work since 2009. Letinsky became increasingly interested in the artificiality of the photograph and its potential as a self-reflexive space. Here Letinsky has begun incorporating paper cut-outs from lifestyle magazines and art reproductions of food and tableware into her studio arrangements.
The series title Ill Form and Void Full continues Letinsky’s interest in playing with representations of space and time, but departs from the narrative potential of the still life. It focuses on the relation between positive and negative space, and a more muted depiction of a subject where two and three dimensional forms from different sources co-exist uneasily.
Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998) is a key figure in Brazilian art and design. His engagement with photography took place during two intensive periods of experimentation at the beginning and end of his diverse career.
De Barros discovered photography as a young painter, and was soon using multiple exposures, camera rotations, over-painting and scratching of negatives to radically abstract his subjects. The resulting series Fotoformas was exhibited at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo in 1950.
De Barros only revisited photography late in life following a series of strokes, when his daughter unearthed a box of negatives from his personal archive. In the last two years of his life he made Sobras (Remains), a final burst of photographic energy which resulted in over 250 intricate collages.
What Remains traces subtle connections across the two series, showing them alongside vintage contact prints and archival material. Together they reveal distinct processes of production, which in turn suggest relationships to his parallel practices as draughtsman, designer, painter and engraver.
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