Air Horn

“I looked down on the street from my window. The sun shone and the shopkeepers had come out to stand in the warmth and watch the people go by. But why were the shopkeepers covering their ears? And why were the people in the street running as if pursued by a terrible specter? Soon everything returned to normal: the incident had been no more than a moment of madness during which the people could not bear the frustration of their lives and had given way to a strange impulse.”

— Lydia Davis, A Strange Impulse, 2007

Open Forum presents Air Horn, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Canadian artist Beth Letain (b. 1976, CA). For her first solo exhibition in Berlin, Letain created five large-scale works whose reduced forms on stark white backgrounds challenge assumptions about perception and aesthetics. They are created out of Letain’s perhaps irrational imperative to three-dimensionally realize aesthetic forms which preoccupy her.