thoughts thunk

I went downtown to the Austin Museum of Art to check out the Lance Letscher exhibition. I have always appreciated collage work, I love the depth achieved by layering different elements. Letscher’s work is really striking: delicately beautiful and also brightly rhythmic.

As others have commented, Letscher’s use of old printed materials provide a kind of nostalgic color palette that you knew from going through your grandmother’s attic or the bins at Goodwill.

Austin’s d. berman gallery also has newer work by Letscher up.

The thickly textured surfaces of Letscher’s collages is another easy example of the limitations of reproductive mediums. Like the loss of dimension and color in Ensor’s painting, Letscher’s surfaces cannot be displayed through reproductive printing or digital images. Some of the thicker pieces can be shot from a side angle to give an impression of the sculptural quality of the work.

It is interesting how different reproductive media might give more or less primacy to the original work. The viewing audience of digital artists need not worry as much about the differences original versus copy.