LAURA LETINSKY at Stephen Bulger Gallery (1026 Queen West) to April 30. 416-504-0575. See listing. Rating: NNNN
In Laura Letinsky’s after all, the evocative power of the photographic still life has a metaphysical dimension. Her compositions of discarded or used bouquets, fruit and cutlery lend a stark contemporary dimension to the traditional still life.
These exquisitely controlled compositions show more signs of disarray than of order. Plates, napkins, cutlery, flowers and incongruous objects lie on tables in positions that suggest both the richness and precariousness of domestic space. Like some of the best still life painters of the past, Letinsky imbues everyday things with larger, richer symbolic meanings.
In Untitled 23, a table seems to be a narrow white band cutting across a void, a small round vase balancing precariously on the edge next to an uprooted flower and a curled grapefruit rind. Colour, light and placement are used to show how warmth and fragility are counterbalanced.
There seems no possibility of taking pleasure in an object without being reminded that it could so easily vanish.
The same is true in Untitled 2. Live and dried bouquets of flowers, stand-ins for life and death, are placed matter-of-factly next to each on the rich white surface of a tablecloth. A dead bird and the stain of an absent wineglass accentuate this interplay of presence and loss, delicately lit by what appears to be morning light.
Letinsky’s use of objects to underscore the tension between things, desire and loss puts her in the realm of the metaphysical painters of the Flemish and Dutch tradition, though her starkness also brings to mind Spanish master Francisco Zurbarán.
Her formal rigour is cut with a tendency towards complexity and dissolution. In every print, the rich symbolism of a constructed domestic order is forever frayed at the edges by a wild romanticism.
It’s the rich tension between these elements that makes these photographs so intensely watchable.
art@nowtoronto.com
