Maya Frodeman Gallery is pleased to present A Road in the Air, a solo exhibition with artist Lance Letscher. Known for his intricate compositions made from hand-cut fragments of paper, Letscher creates layered images that balance narrative suggestion with expansive, formal exploration.
The exhibition’s title comes from a large-scale work made from a salvaged, unstretched canvas that Letscher encountered and immediately envisioned as a vast expanse of sky. A myriad of planes of varying size are suspended in the center of the canvas, bordered by a vibrant array of flora and fruit. For Letscher, airplanes offer a familiar visual vocabulary rooted in childhood memories of watching planes cross the sky, serving as a means to explore light, perspective, and spatial tension.
Throughout the exhibition, images of flight appear alongside other recurring motifs, including candles, landscapes, and scenes touched by fire. Several works, such as House on Fire and Earthquake with Fire, reference natural disasters and moments of catastrophe, themes the artist began exploring during the years following the COVID-19 pandemic. While fire acts as an agent of destruction in these pieces, it is also a symbolic force in others: a power that suggests transformation, creative energy, or a supernatural, almost spiritual presence, as seen in Flaming Hand or Candle Book. Although lacking in an overtly religious message, works like Rock Garden and Gold Nugget carry a subtle sense of awe and reverence that emerges through the materials themselves, such as gold leaf.
Beginning with the materials, Letscher’s process is one that is almost meditative. Vintage books, antique printmaking papers, and found printed matter are carefully cut with a blade beneath a magnifying lens. From these fragments, the artist constructs his compositions intuitively, guided by formal concerns such as light, line, balance, and perspective. Dense with detail yet visually expansive, the collages in A Road in the Air reward slow looking, inviting viewers to linger and discover the subtle relationships between image, material, and space.
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. He currently lives and works in Austin, Texas. 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, and The Perfect Machine, a children’s book published by UT Press, was published in 2010. The feature documentary The Secret Life of Lance Letscher by Sandra Adair was released in 2017.
