Vija Celmins
15 Apr - 17 Jul 2011
Vija Celmins
Untitled (Web 3), 2002
Aquatint with burnishing and drypoint on paper
51 x 61 cm
© 2002 Vija Celmins and Gemini G.E.L. LLC Courtesy McKee Gallery
Untitled (Web 3), 2002
Aquatint with burnishing and drypoint on paper
51 x 61 cm
© 2002 Vija Celmins and Gemini G.E.L. LLC Courtesy McKee Gallery
VIJA CELMINS
Desert, Sea and Stars
15 April - 17 July, 2011
This exhibition traces a great voyage of discovery of a very special artist: heaving oceans, arid deserts, spread-ing night skies and intricate spiders’ webs are Vija Celmins’ major themes. Since the late 1960s, this American artist with Latvian roots has used photographs of the four motifs as subjects of her oil paintings, pencil or charcoal drawings, and many different print techniques. Museum Ludwig is exhibiting 60 representative works that show the constantly subtle variations she makes on one’s perception of the same subject.
Common to all her works is the depiction of nature which, except for the webs, are all-over unbounded struc-tures. Her sources are black-and--white photographs which the artist instills with new life as she re-imagines them into a new medium. No other artist could be said to work through her images as Celmin does. She con-centrates deeply not only on the subject she depicts but also on the picture itself. Black, white and grey de-velop differently in a lithograph than they do in a woodcut, and differently again in oil, charcoal or graphite. The very fact that she will use a harder pencil for one drawing than for another produces a minimal shift that can change everything.
Desert, Sea and Stars
15 April - 17 July, 2011
This exhibition traces a great voyage of discovery of a very special artist: heaving oceans, arid deserts, spread-ing night skies and intricate spiders’ webs are Vija Celmins’ major themes. Since the late 1960s, this American artist with Latvian roots has used photographs of the four motifs as subjects of her oil paintings, pencil or charcoal drawings, and many different print techniques. Museum Ludwig is exhibiting 60 representative works that show the constantly subtle variations she makes on one’s perception of the same subject.
Common to all her works is the depiction of nature which, except for the webs, are all-over unbounded struc-tures. Her sources are black-and--white photographs which the artist instills with new life as she re-imagines them into a new medium. No other artist could be said to work through her images as Celmin does. She con-centrates deeply not only on the subject she depicts but also on the picture itself. Black, white and grey de-velop differently in a lithograph than they do in a woodcut, and differently again in oil, charcoal or graphite. The very fact that she will use a harder pencil for one drawing than for another produces a minimal shift that can change everything.