|
|
| INGA BRŪVERE’S KALEIDOSCOPIC EXISTENCE Anita Vanaga The recent past has accustomed us to approach the written facts seeking subtexts and metaphorical language, reading in terms of what has been left unsaid, through euphemisms and taboos, notes and comments. Force is lost in this way, but subtlety and sensitivity flourish: to reveal red laughter, red itself is not used. On account of the Soviet heritage, artists are reluctant to have any dealings with the written word: so think what you will. And the thought has a life of its own from the moment it is unleashed. And afterwards the artist marvels at it: what's it to do with me? Clarity, simplicity of exposition and the ability to subordinate all the dimensions to a single aim constitute the classical approach that totalitarianism has defiled. A constructive synthesis of position and opposition, objective and subjective in Latvian social life and the praxis of art is something hard to develop. But this is precisely what best describes conceptualist works. The language of conceptualism is collective, individuality being imparted by the user. It has nothing that exists outside the system. It does not engage in visiology in the way that abstraction does, although it gladly applies the latter's findings. The supreme value of conceptualism emerges in the scheme of relationships developed between separate conceptual visual units in the system and crystallised in a new whole. Although conceptualism flirts with open forms, this ordered art movement is a closed one. It will not tolerate chaos and licence and does not long for the viewer's subjective comments or unexpected revelations, but hopes for conscious activity on the part of the viewer and the capacity for reading what the author wished to say. Nothing more. Because the work is complete. Conceptualism switches on the mechanism of control, which bears a resemblance to centrically organised, imperious thinking. It is precisely from control that the author once so strove to wriggle free, protecting the message by an ability to live elusively in surmises and inviting the viewer to do the same. The beginnings of conceptualism in Latvia may be sought in set design of the early 1970s. It appeared in painting in a refined, classical expression in Inga Brūvere's personal exhibition "Kaleidoscope", held in the Riga Gallery in April 2003, managing to surprise the admirers of the artist's talent. | |
|
Ten years and one moment of joy
For ten years after graduating from the Painting Department of the Latvian Academy of Art (1991), Inga Brūvere painted abstract works. Beginning with a variety of impressions, whether the six-metre water-lilies of Claude Monet in the Orangerie of the Louvre or Pina Bausch's interpretation of Igor Stravinsky's ballet "The Rite of Spring", or else a theme for a particular exhibition, the artist's experience was integrated in circles, transformed by the space of colour. Colour dictated the spatial aspects. With time, the viewer became accustomed to works with multi-layered glazes. These presented a transparent illusion of optical depth, sensuous corporeity and the lustre of oils. Developed during this period was a distanced analytical viewpoint, a sparing application of means of expression and the absence of the author, as attested by hiding the signature at the side of the painting. 2001 saw the beginnings of a search for a different medium. For the exhibition "Colour", modelling paste was used to create the sculpted work "Colour. Green", bringing sharply to our attention the interaction of colour and real light. This was followed by a contrast: "Colour. Red" (2002). The geometry of colours brought to the fore the basic categories of painting, namely the relationships: light and dark, colour and complementary colour, warm and cold. The diptych may be regarded as representing the close of the artist's interest in form: in her work henceforth, formal aspects would be allocated a subsidiary role. A particularly successful approach emerged at the Braziers International Workshop in Oxfordshire, England. By crossing the texture of landscape park architecture with the ritual of tea-drinking and literary allusions, the reality-inspired installation "Tee Time" was created (2002). A subversion and recasting of the dynamic and the static fit for Lewis Caroll himself. Undeniably, this was happiness. Is happiness a criterion? What is happiness? Quoting an art dealer, one may say that happiness is a combination of time, place and action. To do the right work at the right time and the right place. Happiness lies in confluence. The screaming words And finally - "Kaleidoscope". In the text accompanying the exhibition, Inga Brūvere writes, "Through the game I come to see the real space and the person in it as an expression of the coexistence of ILLUSION and REALITY. The kaleidoscope - from the Greek kalos (beautiful) + eidos (form) + skopein (views). Through a sequence of movement, repetition and mirror reflection the colourful pictures of the kaleidoscope come about, creating an illusion of changeability. The world within and outside us, just like a kaleidoscope, gives an alluring "picture" at one particular moment... In the next, it can collapse like words put together from coloured toy building blocks, giving rise to a different "reality". TO LOOK IN A BEAUTIFUL WAY... Is that an illusion?" The artist considers that "a concept is not the illustration of an idea, but rather its basis, the structure from the idea to its materialisation. Form too is part of the concept, bearing ideational significance. Form has to maximally express the essence of the idea. No more and no less. It is important to know what you wish to say, your position. The "text" is like a key to the "space" offered by the artist for deciphering his or her work. It has no autonomous existence." "In creating a work, there is the idea, the form and a third element or even more, which acts as a binder. This is thinking in several dimensions. In moving towards the result, it is important to bring together several levels in one overall "picture". Any particular thing may be employed in different ways. Crucial is the concept within which a thing is utilised in creating the image." What did the Greeks study using this optical device called a kaleidoscope? The reincarnation of beauty or the endless magic of the mirror? Emphasising a view from outside, kaleidoscopic observation points to rotation, the aim of which is to bring about change for the sake of change, replacing one easily-collapsed polygon of stars by conjuring up a new one. Consciousness of its illusory nature permits one to distinguish the transitory from the permanent, the variable from the constant, the separate elements from the system. "Blocks are like building elements," the artist writes, "which may be grouped in various combinations to create ideas expressed in words: LOVE, HATE, BEING... The rules of the game permit various possible configurations and render them fragile. Just touch and it will all collapse." It remains only to add that writing words in capital letters is regarded in philosophical circles as signifying a scream. BEING The triangular and cubic structures in Inga Brūvere's paintings, as well as dots from the battery of techniques involving plane and space, owing to their rhythmic regularity, change into indications of time and units of measurement. In several paintings, coloured frames of blocks, contoured with rubbed graphite, arrange themselves into letters, lending imagery to the phonetic script. We see a principle of archaic thinking retained by hieroglyphs or Chinese ideograms. The viewers' reaction at the Riga Gallery differed from the one it brought at the Municipal Gallery of Munster, where the exhibition was shown a few months later. Why? What is that stone which in Riga suddenly jumped out of that universal puzzle: "Looking in a beautiful way, BEING is a fragile game"? In my view, the stone is BEING. TO BE, HATE and LOVE. "Language is form, not substance," wrote Ferdinand de Saussure1. Language is concrete. The choice of language pays for the user and indicates the true addressee. In Latvia, where language issues are characterised by many gradations and heightened sensitivity, the English word BEING hit the weakest point of identity: revealing that this fourth-generation Rigan revolts from her local existence. The minimalist expression emphasises every unit of form, and the mental image of the English BEING, presented in a Latvian text, gives rise to aggravation, rather than to a language echo, such as might have resulted from use of the Latvian equivalents esme, esamība, esība, ira or būšana. The use of this English word, along with its pathetic connotations, tells of a heavy dependence on the international standard, and the acoustic effect needs to be brought down to earth - I couldn't care less. A gentle delight. But we may also read the sentence differently: "Looking in a beautiful way, the British being is a fragile game". Thus we take away the defence, transforming what we see into a linguistic game (to be or not to hate) and make a contribute to waiting for the British. There's no doubt that when exported, this kind of "being" is neither here nor there. I LOVE YOU It's different with the sentence "Looking in a beautiful way, I LOVE YOU is a fragile game". Here the effect is incomparably more diverse, subtle and, most important, livelier. Thanks to mass culture, this formulaic phrase is a commodity in Latvia, a canned item of language that exists in isolation from its language space. It recalls the paintings and sculptures of the word LOVE by American Pop Art artist Robert Indiana. Adherents of Roland Barth, in their turn, are given the opportunity to return to "A Lover's Discourse" (Fragments d'un discors amoureux, 1977), assuming that "I love you" is neither an explanation, nor a confession, but rather a repeated exclamation. A vocative without a question. Liking begins with a vocative. "Behold!", as poet Imants Ziedonis would say. The vocative enjoys the moment and, with luck, disposes the hearer for a wave favourable to him or her. This is best known by marketing specialists: a vocative extends credit. It is significant that I LOVE YOU is a pair of paintings that can be viewed singly or together. As a compliment or flattery - a powerful weapon in capable hands. As an address and an answer or as a simultaneous flash, about which Barth was particularly happy. Taken together, the diptych adds distance, visual resolution is reduced and the scream disappears. The work attains the height and stability that can exist of itself after the scaffolding of the original idea has been dismantled. I LOVE YOU can be read both as Umberto Eco's double code of lovers quoted with impolite frequency (which is one and the same in this case) and in any other way. And here I would like to recall Sol LeWitt. As art historian Stella Pelše has written, "the "Kaleidoscope" exhibition has analogies with the spatial cubes of the American minimalist, founder of conceptualism."2 The resemblance is not only superficial. Worthy of attention is the approach to formulating the idea in art terms. "The idea becomes a machine that makes the art," writes Sol LeWitt. "Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. (..) The artist would select the basic form and rules that would govern the solution of the problem. (..) When an artist uses a multiple modular method he usually chooses a simple and readily available form. The form itself is of very limited importance; it becomes the grammar for the total work."3 The pilot However, the perfect "Kaleidoscope" game cannot be played out. The flavour of the metropolis is too strong. We might quote from Anton Chekhov's "Three Sisters": "To sell the house, to finish everything here and then to Moscow... Yes. To Moscow, as fast as possible..." One is free to change Moscow for London or New York. The yearning for world culture liberates one's imagination. The ordinary level of consciousness retreats, revealing the hierarchy of the profane and the sacred, the macro and micro scale. This is the end of the author's idea. The end of correct questions and correct answers. The end of that holy of holies of conceptualism - centralised structure. Pop, there it goes. But the process continues. The "Kaleidoscope" shifts the author. The game plays the player. Being sends us, as Martin Heidegger would say. This can be precisely distinguished as that moment during a flight from Point A to Point B, when the aircraft suddenly picks up speed again before landing and a trained voice announces over the microphone: "Owingtobadweatherit'snotpossibletoreachPointB.We'regoingtoflyon.Thankyou." The pilot presses the button of the inner intention of the work of art, and a new account is opened, a new being. The previous regulations, which balanced everything, ensuring order in the system, are revoked. If games and illusion are not characteristic of Inga Brūvere as a personality, then they are compensated by transference into a new capacity, where the artist's character is revealed. Mythically painful homesickness revolves the faces of the mirror of the profound, bringing the beauty of the gift from heaven: the promise that the fog known as illusion will disperse. Onwards "The illusion of the truth as a sight defect, a distorted image. We pass through this door as through a metal x-ray test at an airport. Whoever has no excess luggage will pass the test with no difficulty and will board a plane with the beautiful caption Veritas - "The Truth". Looking at these letters, the passenger reads them and does not try to fit them together in his mind, since he has known for a long time the price of all these labels and can do without them. The plane gathers speed, takes off and, gaining height, disappears into the heavens, in all the possible meanings of this word. This plane will not land anywhere. It only takes off from this airport, and nobody ever touches down anywhere. It's guaranteed that every flight will be hijacked by poetic terrorists. He who has overcome the gravity of the lies surrounding us will become a heaven in the eyes of others, where they see their true, rescued form. This world admits chaos, while oppressing true complexity, simplifying it to one and the same, packaging it in identical portions. Direct experience is prohibited, since it threatens to create a new world, a world outside the permitted bounds. And all that remains of this wonderful world of images is the afterlife of the screen, and glassy, transparent incorporeity. The eternal one and the same, branching endlessly, connected by countless cables, pipes and endless loneliness. One and the same longing, repeated countless times, and an insuperable distance to its realisation."4 1 Sosīrs F. de. "Vispārīgās valodniecības kurss". Kentaurs XXI, 1999, No. 18, p. 81. 2 Pelše S. "Klucīšu pasaule". Diena, 2003, 8 April. 3 LeWitt S. Paragraphs on Conceptual Art. In: Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology /Ed. by Aleksander Alberro and Blake Stimson/. Cambridge, Mass.; London, 1999, pp. 12-16. 4 Text by Hakim Bey, from the reading "Onwards", by set designer Monika Pormale. After Maxim Gorky, written by a group of authors and directed by Alvis Hermanis, New Riga Theatre, 2003, Scene 7. | |
| go back | |
