2013 Catalogue Archive

In his recent body of work, John Lehr looks closely at urban spaces, and then documents and subtly manipulates them to create seamless hybrids of abstraction and representation. The final composition is printed at a one-to-one scale, allowing for the work to maintain a direct relationship to its subject. Artforum critic, Michael Wilson writes that in Phone Booth, “a spray-painted fragment of prosaic street furniture becomes a gauzy field of white, yellow, blue, and pale orange – a dream of color almost without form.” The work reads as a beautiful abstraction, and yet presents itself as something familiar and defaced. Phone Booth was featured in John Lehr’s solo show Low Relief earlier this year. Lehr lives and works in Brooklyn. His work has been shown in exhibitions including World’s Away: New Suburban Landscapes, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Printed Picture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Closer to Home: The 48th Corcoran Biennial, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.