Miranda Lichtenstein deconstructs objects into abstraction

Lichtenstein’s immersive photobook is a masterpiece of deconstruction

Disposable plastic bags, in their masses, contribute to the climate crisis. In Miranda Lichenstein’s work, they accrue new significance: sculptural, intricate, and curious. The varied, abstract compositions that makeup her mysterious photobook Recorder all derive from one series: Welcome Water, for which Lichtenstein collaborated with the artist J. Stoner Blackwell, creating flatbed scans of his sculptures constructed from disposable carrier bags. The scans were cut out and stitched into a sculptural floor piece. But, Lichenstein, meditating upon issues of waste and consumption, transformed the detritus into new photographic forms. 

Diagonals splice the canvas, swathes of colour stretch across pages, and black-and-white forms undulate. Three series divide the compositions: black-and-white compositions titled Holes; layered cut-out shapes composing Grounds, and the surreal landscapes of Untitled. Visually, the book is arresting, but the concepts and processes, which produced the work are compelling unto themselves. In Recorder, Lichtenstein abstracts the plastic bag into anonymity and creates something unworldly and beautiful in the process. 

Recorder by Miranda Lichtenstein, published by Loose Joints.