The Last Things

2020–Present

In The Last Things, Lehr is studying and giving voice to language and representations that punctuate the American commercial landscape. Each work depicts vernacular forms of architecture, signage, images, and objects that were hastily made in a rush for attention or abandoned in place after their usefulness had expired. He posits them as symptomatic symbols of the repetitive cycles of decline, rehabilitation, violence, and mourning that are woven into the fabric of contemporary American life. The works function as both an archeology of the present, and a subjective retelling of a common language in a vividly uncommon way.