Laura Letinsky: Ill Form And Void Full

Laura Letinsky: Ill Form And Void Full

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.

Laura Letinsky lives and works in Chicago, USA. Her works have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Netherlands Foto Institute; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Her photographs are in several permanent public collections.