| |
Raïssa Venables | | |
Raïssa Venables
Maybe too lofty?
05.12.2008–17.01.2009
Reception with the artist
Friday 05.12., 19–22 h
Since the Renaissance we have become used to seeing spaces in painting in perspective. What slowly appears in Pre-Renaissance Italy with Giotto's new spatial perception finds its zenith with Brunelleschi with the invention of central perspective around 1420. The painted space is constructed mathematically towards a vanishing point. The pictorial alignment of all objects in it conforms to an illusionist rendition of reality. This is no different in the later appearing photography; the mathematical construction is replaced by the laws of the optic lens.
The works of Raïssa Venables break the photographic laws of optics as the artist procures a new freedom in the arrangement of the picture through digital processing and intervention.
The works of Venables recall medieval thematic perspective. Spaces and objects are represented according to their spiritual significance, not their natural appearance. This is assisted by the artist's expressive choice of colour.
What appears formally like a regression in the dealing with spaces, is the order for Venables: while her early work were set primarily in private, intimate spaces, in her new exhibition the artist shows large and public places. Mundane and sacred spaces are the theme of Maybe too lofty? Venables explores the unconscious experience we have in such spaces with acute sensibility and gives them an outlet. The artist traces the places and ends up in a new "thematic perspective", which corresponds much more to a anthropological way of seeing.
Her newest works have a formal and colourful elegance. They guide us through big train station cathedrals, into century-old churches and hidden temples. All places are "lofty". One must only be able to see. With her new solo exhibition Raïssa Venables gives us back a piece of the ability to see.
Raïssa Venables - Maybe too lofty? Press Release as pdf-Datei 249 KB
Raïssa Venables new works as pdf-Datei 752 KB |
Send E-mail