Review: Laura Letinsky, “To Say It Isn’t So”

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Can post-consumer trash be beautiful? Letinsky’s large-scale still-life photographs of everyday refuse seem to think so. A dirty lace handkerchief lies atop a simple white table. The spread contains two plastic cups, a paper cup with a damp tea bag and a shadowy, closed cardboard box amidst cupcake wrappers, half-eaten cake, and foil from a wine bottle. The scenes are classical still life, with garbage. Folds of plastic wrap play with light; reflected light illuminates another scene. Strewn on the table is Styrofoam packaging, a spent tape roll and the remains of an intricately surreal broccoflower. Letinsky’s displays often serve as metaphors of mortality, wherein remains denote bodies. Two different views of the same setting—with Target Bag, McDonald’s cup, a bent fork and an empty package of Wrigley’s Extra gum—only slightly varied in each picture, fixes the refuse into a portrait of waste, as if empty objects could somehow hold memories of the past. (Ben Broeren) Through January 4 at Monique Meloche

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