Old Growth: New Work by Lance Letscher

Old Growth: New Work by Lance Letscher

Front cover: Jello, 2020, 40.5 x 58.25 in.

Back cover: The Wedding, 2020, 9.5 x 6.5 in.

August 21 - September 9, 2020

Old Growth: New Work by Lance Letscher

TAI Modern 1601 Paseo de Peralta Santa Fe, NM 87501 Tel: 505.984.1387 taimodern.com

Robin’s Egg, 2020, 7 x 9.5 in.

OLD GROWTH: NEW WORK

BY LANCE LETSCHER JAQUELIN LOYD

I first visited renowned collage artist Lance Letscher and his remarkable wife and closest friend, Mary Fraser, in 2008. The couple live in a warm and welcoming renovated bungalow in Austin, Texas, nestled in a 1940s neighborhood framed by pecan trees that shield the home from passersby and from the ever-present Hill Country sun. On the painted walls of the kitchen rest a collection of objects, many unrecognizable, and tools from decades of family use.

Then, there is the studio.

Finely cut slivers of books, ledgers, sleeves from record albums, discarded drawings, lists, children’s scribbles, and early Montgomery Ward catalogues cover Letscher’s worktable. Many thousands of vintage finds retrieved from bookstore dumpsters and garage sales are housed in meticulously organized but overflowing stacks, boxes, and shelves. Works in progress populate every surface.

Prayer Book, 2020, 9 x 11 in.

My trip to Austin in the company of gallery director Margo Thoma was prompted by our introduction to Letscher’s collage work at an art fair. Several pieces of his were installed in J. Crist Gallery’s booth alongside a group of James Castle’s tiny, abstruse drawings and constructions. Although Letscher draws deep inspiration from several outsider artists, including Castle, he is a sophisticated, trained artist with a broad knowledge of art history. When Lance shared images of the works to be included in our exhibition, Old Growth: New Work by Lance Letscher, I was thrilled to see a reference to both Castle’s images of suited figures and Joseph Beuys’s famous Felt Suit.

Old Growth: New Work is a fresh, new direction for Letscher. With this exhibition, the artist celebrates a forward motion away from several years of personal stress and anxiety. He worked through these painful years with several transitional shows in the US and Europe in which the artist pondered and patched the darker parts of his life and history into his work with knife, paper, and glue. A welcome antidote to the tenor of the times, Letscher’s new body of work reflects a brighter, more hopeful state of mind.

Joseph Beuys, Felt Suit, 1970, photo by lightsgoingon

Primary colors contrast startlingly in Letscher’s Felt Suit; the industrial drabness of Beuys’s grey Felt Suit is overpowered by the vibrant reds and yellows of a mosaic of flowers. In fact, Letscher’s suit is blooming with so much bright color that it appears to be awaiting Elvis’s selection for a special night.

This suit is “felt” like an electrical charge as it hangs precariously over a stormy ocean tossing cheerful blue rowboats and brown leather oxfords.

While each collage and its primary subject matter can be viewed as a whole, closer inspection rewards viewers with tantalizing details and fantastical microcosms. It is impossible not to try to make sense of Letscher’s compositions, with their cryptic combinations, and to relate one part to the next and then to the larger context of the whole. The artist works intuitively and begins each collage by selecting one element, reacting to it, and then selecting another, building up the piece until it feels finished. This process is the reverse of how I view his work, as I tend to begin with the whole, then spend hours narrowing my focus on each detail.

Only an artist who is compelled to closely inspect every visual and emotional aspect of life could create work which so convincingly suggests the workings of memory and the logic of dreams - layers upon layers of image, pattern, and texture from artists’ monographs to children’s books to mail order catalogues that are meticulously cut, arranged, and brought to life with wit, irony and observation on Masonite board.

Felt Suit, 2020, 13.75 x 10.5 in.

Jello features fruit jars and a Jell-O mold framed by a vintage silver service tray. Floating atop the jars are small pictures of appetizers made from ingredients that were only combined during a short time in the 1970s, and luckily, never combined since. Night Squirrel contains an eerie abstraction. The crudely cut shape of a squirrel is made from images of a murky, cloudy night sky. So, instead of a subject, a squirrel-shaped void happily munches an acorn from an old oak tree. In Magic Wand, fifteen trellises sail above a canal in a flaming red inferno. The trellises draw the viewer’s eye in and down to a partially obscured enchanter casting a magic spell while a four-legged friend looks on.

The final “structural assemblies,” as Letscher describes them, range in size from an intimate 4 x 5 inches to a tremendous 41 x 58 inches. In the large and magnetic collage, Three Volcanoes, an explosion of water, land, and air vividly depicts an accelerated evolution, with life bursting forth from water to land. Crustaceans outlined in pink mingle with waterfowl, and the patchwork sky is filled with baked goods (clearly this is a land of plenty). Is this food for thought or pie in the sky, or both at once?

Letscher’s collages provide an array of formal and intellectual delights and appeal on many levels—for the viewer well-versed in art history, the collages nod ingeniously to historical works and movements.

For others, they provide playful, tactile memories of times past. And, for those who know the artist, they provide insight and a thoughtful commentary on his positive new stage of life.

Night Squirrel, 2020, 12.5 x 10.5 in.

Magic Wand, 2020, 12 x 9 in.

Three Volcanoes, 2020, 40.5 x 58.25 in.

Ten Windows, 2020, 13.75 x 10.5 in.

Painted Rose, 2020, 13 x 9 in.

Fruit Bowl, 2020, 9.5 x 13.25 in.

Jellyfish Study, 2020, 9 x 13.5 in.

Pink Park, 2020, 24.5 x 33 in.

Asparagus Tree, 2020, 10.5 x 8.25 in.

Heinz Products, 2020, 10.25 x 13.75 in.

Jello, 2020 12 x 9 in.

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Magic Wand, 2020 12 x 9 in.

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Asparagus Tree, 2020 10.5 x 8.25 in.

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Fruit Bowl, 2020 9.5 x 13.25 in.

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Heinz Products, 2020 10.25 x 13.75 in.

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Pink Park, 2020 24.5 x 33 in.

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Robin’s Egg, 2020 7 x 9.5 in.

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Three Volcanoes, 2020 40.5 x 58.25 in.

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Prayer Book, 2020 9 x 11 in.

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Painted Rose, 2020 13 x 9 in.

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Felt Suit, 2020 13.75 x 10.5 in.

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Jellyfish Study, 2020 9 x 13.5 in.

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Ten Windows, 2020 13.75 x 10.5 in.

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The Wedding, 2020 9.5 x 6.5 in.

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Night Squirrel, 2020 12.5 x 10.5 in.

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LANCE LETSCHER | CV

SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2020

A Bird Flew in Through My Window, Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX Old Growth: New Work by Lance Letscher, TAI Modern, Santa Fe, NM

2019

The Miraculous Staircase, Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY

2017

Cut & Staple: New Work by Lance Letscher, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York, NY Lance Letscher, Stephen L. Clark Gallery, Austin, TX

2016

Secret File, TAI Modern, Santa Fe, NM

2015

be my life’s companion, Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX

2014

Real Life Drama, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York, NY

2013

Pregunta Numero Uno, Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX

2012

Twenty-five Books and an Ear, Eight Modern, Santa Fe, NM

2011

The Ghost in the Machine, Galerie Vidal Saint Phalle, Paris Further Work From The Middle Ages, D. Berman Gallery, Austin, TX Lance Letscher, collage, Galerie Peter Vann, St. Moritz, Switzerland

2010

The Perfect Machine, David Berman Gallery, Austin, TX The Perfect Machine, Eight Modern, Santa Fe, NM Lance Letscher, collage, Pascal Polar Galerie Brussels, Belgium Nervous System, Howard Scott Gallery, New York, NY Lance Letscher, Cottage Industry, Grover Thurston Gallery, Seattle, WA

2009

Galeria Migue, Alzueta, Barcelona

2007

Lance Letscher – Collage, Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, TX

2006

Lists and Poems, Gallery 68, Austin, TX

2005

Lance Letscher: Current Work, The Beeville Art Museum, Beeville, TX Lance Letscher, Drawing with Scissors, Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque, NM Lance Letscher, Plan B, Steven Wolf Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2004

Lance Letscher, Art Gaspar, Barcelona

2003

Lance Letscher, Collage – Arbeiten/Collage – Works, Galerie Renate Bender, Munich, Germany

SELECT COLLECTIONS Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX The McNay Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX The Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX The University of Texas at Austin, TX Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, TX Museum of Art, Texas Tech U, Lubbock, TX Texas State U Permanent Collection, San Marcos, TX Libres Del Trapez, S.A., Barcelona, Spain California State U Print Collection, Long Beach, CA Dell Childrens Medical Center, Austin TX The May and Samuel Rudin Foundation, New York, NY

SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2018

Après Coup: Transforming Trauma into Art, Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY

2015

Vices Peculiar to these Eclectics: Contemporary Collage, St John’s University, Queens, NY Recycled, Repurposed, Reborn, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX

2008

Modern Art. Modern Lives. Then + Now, Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX

2005

Double Vision: Exhibiting Contemporary Artists for 25 Years, The Old Jail Art Center, Albany, TX

2004

Objectification, The Gallery at the University of Texas at Arlington, TX Material Possibilities, Griffith Gallery, Steven F. Austin State U, Nacogdoches, TX BirdSpace: A Post Audubon Artists Aviary, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA traveling to Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY; McDough Museum of Art, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH

2003

Atlantic, Group Show of British and American Artists, Fosterart, London

2002

Mary Frasher and Lance Letscher, Mari Michener Gallery, U of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO

1601 Paseo de Peralta Santa Fe, NM 87501 Tel: 505.984.1387 taimodern.com