Lee Saloutos: SIGNS, SYMBOLS & SURFACES
Lee Saloutos’s landscape, interior, and close-up surface images are highly detailed and richly
atmospheric. These are works that transport the viewer to locations that, while usually unidentified,
evoke nonetheless the unending action of the elements and the inexorable passage of time. Even
more than this, they hint at a narrative of national decline, the gradual weathering of man-made
structures and forms seeming to resonate with the collapse of manufacturing industry. In choosing
his subjects, Saloutos also offers a commentary on the state of the nation, linking abstract tone and
texture to narratives of social and economic dissolution.
In his close-up shots of surfaces, Saloutos mirrors the approach of modernist abstract painters such
as Morris Louis, Frank Stella, and Clyfford Still via intense concentration on color and texture.
Saloutos minimizes ‘clues’ to these images’ sources and contexts; there are no horizons or edges
here, just granular detail. Only occasional fragments of signage and lettering stenciled onto rusty
metal or splintered wood offer any reminder of the wider, or, rather, manufactured world. Having
begun the series accidentally in the course of another shoot, Saloutos uncovers an unexpectedly
compelling crossover between our social and natural histories.
atmospheric. These are works that transport the viewer to locations that, while usually unidentified,
evoke nonetheless the unending action of the elements and the inexorable passage of time. Even
more than this, they hint at a narrative of national decline, the gradual weathering of man-made
structures and forms seeming to resonate with the collapse of manufacturing industry. In choosing
his subjects, Saloutos also offers a commentary on the state of the nation, linking abstract tone and
texture to narratives of social and economic dissolution.
In his close-up shots of surfaces, Saloutos mirrors the approach of modernist abstract painters such
as Morris Louis, Frank Stella, and Clyfford Still via intense concentration on color and texture.
Saloutos minimizes ‘clues’ to these images’ sources and contexts; there are no horizons or edges
here, just granular detail. Only occasional fragments of signage and lettering stenciled onto rusty
metal or splintered wood offer any reminder of the wider, or, rather, manufactured world. Having
begun the series accidentally in the course of another shoot, Saloutos uncovers an unexpectedly
compelling crossover between our social and natural histories.
