LAURA LETINSKY
EXHIBITIONS
PHOTOGRAPHY
PORCELAIN
TEXTILES
SELECTED BOOKS
WRITING & CURATORIAL
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ABOUT
“
Don Quixote battling a windmill is sometimes how I think of my relation to the behemoth that is photography, the authority and fantasy of its single-lens perspective having wrought its supremacy over other kinds of knowledge and experience. Frustrated, even angered by its proximity to, and vehicle for our seemingly insatiable want for pictures, and for things--for acquisition and obsolescence—I am also beguiled by its charms. In the face of photography’s relentlessness, I console myself that it is just a medium and that, like words, it provides a vehicle for communication. And so, I make pictures of very ordinary things in a way that destabilizes and questions the camera’s authority while also indulging in its sexiness, soliciting a visual pleasure that is tethered to the other senses.My still-life photographs readdress arenas such as the home to acknowledge what is often disregarded as natural and innate. That “home” is a place and an idea takes work, both literal and ideological. Working in ceramics, textiles, as well as food and text, I propose a reconsidering of these systems as they rub against and alongside one another. The porcelain vessels I make are pushed to a fragility that bespeaks of aspiration and a reckoning with failure, their “repair” with synthetic brightly colored epoxy is a reference to Japanese kintsugi that I hope honors as well as acknowledges diasporic influences, gaps, and fissures. Similarly, projects in textiles are means for me to consider aesthetics and values as they translate across media and circumstances. Alongside all of this, I’ve been working on a writing project that is an academic, essayistic, and diaristic hybrid, thinking through and across these intersecting processes and concepts. photography, ceramics, and writing, all of which aim to assert delicacy, fragility, and interdependence as means to a sustainable life.
I make photographs to address the mash up of our globalized society in relation to the idiosyncrasies of place and time. There’s the specifics of the “stuff” one knows as home as well as how one arrives here. This literal and figurative space and feeling is some intangible combination of smells, tastes, touch, sound, and—unavoidably—sight through IG, glossy magazines, television, and other picture media. Resisting photography’s homogenizing and fantasy-driven mode, my pictures aim to be an indelicate, vulnerable yet sometimes glorious proposition.
”
Her photographs, known for their formal precision and conceptual depth, explore themes of desire, domesticity, consumption, and the instability of meaning within material culture. Drawing from art historical traditions, she subverts expectations of the still life genre to ask urgent questions about intimacy, gendered labor, and cultural translation. Her recent work expands into ceramics and textiles, deepening her critical engagement with the intersections of art, commerce, and the everyday.
Letinsky’s work has been exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions across the globe, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Photographers’ Gallery (London), Denver Art Museum, Musée des Beaux-Arts (Montreal and Le Locle), PhotoEspaña (Madrid), the Singapore and Tel Aviv International Photography Festivals, and the International Center of Photography (New York). She is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery (New York) and Document (Chicago).
Her work is included in numerous prestigious collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Art Institute of Chicago, The Getty Museum (Los Angeles), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), and Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, among many others.
Letinsky is the recipient of numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, residencies at Maison Dora Maar (France) and Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), and multiple grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. Her work has been published extensively, with monographs including To Want For Nothing (Roman Nvmerals, 2019), Time’s Assignation (Radius Books, 2017), Ill Form and Void Full (Radius Books, 2014), and Venus Inferred (University of Chicago Press, 2000).
Letinsky’s photographs have been reviewed and featured in leading international publications such as Artforum, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Vanity Fair, and The British Journal of Photography, affirming her place as one of the most important voices in contemporary photographic practice. In addition to her gallery and museum work, Letinsky has been commissioned by prominent cultural and commercial platforms including Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Martha Stewart Living, Harpers Magazine, Bon Appétit, and Dolce & Gabbana, bringing her distinct visual language to audiences beyond the art world.
Representation
Yancy Richardson Gallery — 525 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10011
Galerie m Bochum — Schloßstraße 1A, 44795 Bochum, Germany
Document — 1709 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago, IL 60622
Contact: lletinsk@uchicago.edu