Brand New Gallery is pleased to present Terra Firma, an exhibition of new works by Letha Wilson. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, and in Italy. For Terra Firma, Wilson will be exhibiting new concrete wall sculptures, one site specific work and works on paper.

Born in Honolulu, raised in Colorado and currently living in Brooklyn, Wilson uses the natural world as the starting point of her art. During long hikes through Western American landscapes (California, Utah, Colorado), Wilson photographs what are seemingly ordinary images, almost amateurish in nature, of mountains, trees, rocks, and canyons. Her color landscape images taken from these outdoor excursions in the wilderness are then transformed into sculpture-mounted photographs or photo installations blurring the line between theses mediums. Her work has as much to do with sculpture and installation than with the photography that serves as the first spark of inspiration.

The nondescript nature shots of plants, snow and horizons are subject to various experiments and physical processes which include being pleated, cut, crumpled, bisected, and encased with cement. The sculptural intervention compensates for the static visual imagery of landscape photography, reinventing the classification in its entirety. Wilson states “landscape photography as a genre is approached with equal parts reverence and skepticism”. Her pieces are rich and complex, colliding mediums such as coarse construction materials which find balance and poetry with the simplicity of contrasting images of the natural world. Creating relationships between architecture and nature, the gallery space and the great outdoors, Letha Wilson compels the viewer to explore her innovative works with fresh eyes.

Letha Wilson (b. 1976, Honolulu, HI) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from Syracuse University, and her MFA from Hunter College. Her work has been shown at many venues including the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE; Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY; the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY; ARKO Art Center, Seoul, South Korea; Essl Museum, Vienna, Austria; Fleisher/Ollman, Philadelphia, PA; and P.P.O.W, New York, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam, NL (2015); Letha Wilson, Higher Pictures, New York, NY (2014); Letha Wilson, Galerie Christophe Gallard in Paris, FR; and Monuments and Landmarks, Art in General in New York, NY (2013). Wilson was an artist in residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts Residency in California in 2013; at The Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY (2012); The Farpath Foundation, Dijon, FR (2012); and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE (2011). In 2013 she won the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography. Letha’s work has been reviewed in publications including Artforum, Art in America, The New York Times, The New Yorker and Time Out New York.