Ann Ledy: Untitled, 1995

Ann Ledy’s work explores visual memory. The books she made in the eighties offer a temporal unfolding of images in which the perception of each page is both based on the previous one and conditioned by anticipation of the next. In 1990 Ledy began infusing this sequential treatment of visual memory with simultaneous, fractured images by, quite literally, taking her books apart. Often, she would superimpose semi-transparent images, creating, as one writer describes it, “an art that is as layered in memory as it is, in actual fact, layered.”¹

This 1995 work stacks square planes of silk, linen, and lace in various sizes. The visual layering invokes different aspects of memory. To begin with, the accumulation of materials in a small area gives a sense of weight—the literal weight of matter as well as the figurative weight of time. The greater the depth, the denser the squares that our eyes penetrate. We look through a sheer layer on top to the intricate lace at the bottom with what could be nostalgic longing: the haze of beige, somewhere between transparency and opacity, suggests the semi-accessibility of a distant past. The layers are visible yet ultimately out of reach; our eyes get a general sense of their form and materials, but any desire for crisp edges and textures is frustrated. The top layer of silk blurs the outlines of the layers underneath and effaces some of the stitched holes that frame the linen. Finally, the layers confound the attempt to discover the order of their making, the way memory frequently disrupts chronology. Though the most recent addition is clearly the large square of silk, the exact sequence of the smaller pieces under it is hard to guess.

Beyond its layering, the work invokes memory by playing with shape. The shapes of all the planes are based on the square but slightly deformed. The top one curves in on one side, some corners of the linen piece are pulled out, and the lace pattern’s horizontal orientation makes it appear to be stretched more than it is. Each layer seems more the approximation of a square than the real thing; handicraft distorts geometry as much as subjective experience inflects memory.

Notes:

1. Roger Shepherd in Ledy, exh. cat., Gallery Art & Language Andrea Bergmann (Drensteinfurt, 1996), 12.

Citation:
Text by Christine Mehring, from "Drawing is another kind of language": Recent American Drawings from a New York Private Collection (Harvard University Art Museums, in association with Daco-Verlag Gunter Bläse, 1997; reprinted 1998). ©1997 President and Fellows of Harvard College.