Laeh Glenn: The Doldrums with a special project by Apogee Graphics

Asha Schechter: So then it raises this question of what remains of an image once it's translated like that. What happens in that translation process from jpeg to painting? If you're extracting elements and flattening and making them 2D, is the painting haunted by the original image? Does it retain any of the affect? Or is it generating some new sort of feeling?

 

Laura Owens: I feel like the source image is a non-important starting point, like a red herring, and what's more important is the non-legibility of the image. [It is very interesting the idea you bring up-that there is no locatable "source" as image culture churns references together like hamburger meat.]

 

A: That's the thing I come back to a lot. We're both bringing our own interests to this-you're thinking about textiles, and I'm thinking about image categories and how she takes the reference from an image that's often functional, or diagrammatic, or instructional, or cartoony, or photographic, and translates it into this image that no longer has any functionality. It doesn't do any of the jobs it might've originally done.

 

L: So much of it is about moving away from nameability, but just enough to leave it behind. Just enough that it's not in eyesight, you can't see the reference in the painting. You have to project it.

L: Well, I guess if your question is do I think that her process does something to the material, this feeling of being painting, or your perception of it, definitely I think we're sensitive as human beings to pick up on how her handling and decisions become very nuanced and subtle. There are slight shifts in matte-ness, or certain colors that are mysteriously there only from one angle. It's very mysterious, the build-up, the sheen, and the intensity of the saturation. That can only happen with layering and density.

A: It's an interesting question. I've had a conversation with a few people about this idea recently, how when you think about paintings of the past they told stories about the moment in which they were made, but it would seem insane to make a giant James Ensor-syle painting about the line of cars waiting to get a Covid test at Dodger Stadium. It just wouldn't make sense. I'd been thinking about this and was talking with Laeh about this a little bit. How do you make paintings about the moment that you're living in if they're not illustrative or narrative? And it makes me think about this question you're talking about, about going deeper into things. Because I think that there is a tone to a lot of Laeh's work, and this general feeling that is melancholic or elegiac or has a sense of loss to it. I wonder about that. How much has to be there to produce that kind of tone, or to produce that feeling? The thing you're describing of looking into the details, or getting this sense of difference from moving around the painting. I think in the end you're right that that is the difference when you look at Laeh's paintings versus if they were prints or something, they wouldn't have that ability to change or transform as you move around them. What I'm trying to figure out is, is it that slight ability to change or transform that gives it that emotional register that is just different than any other material form?

LAEH GLENN

Artist’s Book, MUM

Co-published by Apogee Graphics and RITE Editions
In collaboration with Altman Siegel
Fall 2020
Designed by Apogee Graphics
Digital printing
47 pages
Softbound. Perfect Bind.
6 x 9.5”
Edition of 200
Price: $ 30.00