Polished pictures of a floating world, Sarah Charlesworth’s series “Objects of Desire,” 1983–88, once aptly injected beauty where it didn’t belong—deconstruction, postmodernism, Conceptualism—and inspired her peers and later generations to do the same. The images have aged very well. Today, these key works by the late artist come together as potent omens for our decontexualized image glut and herald her own long-standing interests—gender, politics, myth, and magic. Cut out from various books and magazines, the fragments are isolated on viscous, searing Cibachrome backgrounds and range from David Bowie as Golden Boy on black to a Black Woman on white, and are paired in lacquered frames of the same color that often touch and overlap, as in Figures (all 1983–84), where Marlene Dietrich’s silky gown against black is compared and contrasted with a satin bondage body suit on red—conscious meets subconscious.

At once collage and color studies, the series feels painterly and sculptural at the same time that it deeply roots Charlesworth as a photographer, a role that she always treated as a problem rather than simply adapting the medium as her métier and subject. Most of all, the work serves as a somber reminder of just how ahead of her time she typically was. Charlesworth divorced these images from their contexts not only to abstract them from how they would be normally seen, but also to tap into their alluring symbolic meaning. They leave a lasting mark in one’s mind, as did she.

— Lauren O’Neill-Butler