MAYA FRODEMAN GALLERY ANNOUNCES AS SEEN IN A DREAM
AN EXHIBITION OF WORK BY LANCE LETSCHER
Exhibition Dates: 8 FEBRUARY – 24 MARCH 2024
JACKSON, WYOMING – MAYA FRODEMAN GALLERY (formerly Tayloe Piggott Gallery) is pleased to present As Seen in a Dream an exhibition of collage work by artist Lance Letscher on view February 8th through March 24th, 2024. Austin-based artist Lance Letscher creates ornate, ethereal worlds of found paper collage. While this is the first press release announcement from Maya Frodeman Gallery, this will be Letscher’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, February 8th, from 5 to 7 pm. All are welcome.
As Seen in a Dream brings together 23 works, 22 of them created over the last year. The collage work ranges from quite domestic in scale (Meteor, at 7 ¾ x 5 ¾ inches) to large-scale work, notably As Seen in a Dream, the title piece, at 32 x 65 inches. Letscher also includes never-before-seen drawings in this exhibition, rendered in graphite on paper, which reference both his cutting process as well as a lifelong interest in typography.
Lance Letscher actively experiences lucid dreams regularly, and is the first to admit, with humor, that “it’s a big problem.” Only 1% of the population have lucid dreams several times per week, and Letscher is categorically a member of this rare group. “I have really complex dreams and I have really vivid dreams,” he says.
“I dream about making things and looking at things a lot. I dream about just staring at something really close to my face, a pattern or some kind of object, a textile, usually. I’ll be studying it and that’s the whole dream. I really love those. I like the ones that are related to the work.” As an artist, with this exhibition, he tasks himself with encapsulating a visual reality based on “my dream life,” as he put it. He notes, “There are several pieces in the show, pieces like Night Bird, that are either from my dreams or from fragments of dreams or are of possessing a dreamlike character… the logic of the narrative is kind of implied but not consistent with reality.”
Letscher’s work visually follows this logic—nothing is consistent with reality, but there is a cohesive, albeit nonlinear, structure to each individual work. Letscher invites you into the dreamstate. In some works, we have a near cacophony of images that draws one’s eye in a frenzy, in others, one’s eye moves calmly throughout, as though parting the seas of imagery. The physical cutting of the source imagery is exhaustive, incorporating disparate imagery from 1930s and 40s hand-drawn botany catalogues with blacklight posters from the 60s and 70s. With each additive element of collage, the work develops a sense of perspective, a well-placed fence cut from a comic book adds a sense of space in the composition. The artist guides the viewer into this nonsensical world, allowing one to create one’s own visual narrative within the structural aesthetic.
Since the late 1980’s, Letscher has used the raw materials of wood, marble, old books and paper in such a manner as to remove them from their original context. Trained as a printmaker, Letscher’s early career focused on intensely conceptual sculptures of marble or wood: a doll-sized marble wheelchair, a dwarfed piano of wood, a rumpled child’s pillow in marble. In the mid-1990s Letscher shifted from his conceptual sculptures towards paper and collage but took away from his experience as a sculptor incredible patience and ability to focus on labor-intensive compositions. He began to collect antique paper, ledgers, old notebooks, diaries, letters, record covers, magazines and books from thrift stores, junk-shops, used-booksellers, and even dumpsters.
He meticulously organizes and stores these weathered materials, which he later surgically deconstructs and deploys, creating new narratives from shards of a memory. Letscher’s geometric and contemplative juxtapositions of color and pattern call to mind the classic craft of quilt making, which he has cited as an influence. Other frequent comparisons are to a wide and varied roster of other artists: Josef Albers, Piet Mondrian, James Castle, and Martín Ramírez, among others. Letscher’s most recent works explore notions of locomotion, technology, and the creative impulse at the heart of human nature. Letscher re-visits his sculptural roots as his collages leap into three dimensions, using vibrant colors and letters to cover the surfaces of such varied subjects as guns, motorcycles, rockets, tools and toy planes. A diligent and nearly constant worker, Letscher follows, with enthusiasm and gratitude, wherever his source materials lead him.
Lance Letscher attended the University of Texas where he received both his Bachelor of Fine Arts and his Master of Fine Arts. He later apprenticed for Amado Peña, an artist known for his Southwestern-style prints. His work is held in public and private collections around the country and has been reviewed in Art in America, The New York Observer, and Harper’s Magazine, among other publications. A full-length monograph of his work, Lance Letscher: Collage, was published in 2009. He currently lives and works in Austin, Texas.
