Ieva Iltnere. Exhibition “Eight Rooms”
Vilnis Vējš, Art Critic
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| | | It is almost impossible to speak about Ieva Iltnere's exhibition "Eight Rooms" (2007) without referring to its continuation "Beautiful Fragile Nature" (2008). Over the last few years the painter has seemingly taken the liberty to fulfil the dream of many Latvian female artists: to paint exactly those things or items that they would like to wear or see in their living room. Iltnere herself has admitted that she likes to paint everything that is fluffy... Personally I once met Ieva at a genuinely exclusive furniture store. Critics speak about the otherworldly beauty that is present in Iltnere's canvases (the "infusion of beauty" - Aiga Dzalbe). Nevertheless, I would prefer to interpret the subjects of her paintings (a dangerous housewife reclining on fur, in despair, against a background of wallpaper) as a sarcastic requiem to the concept of life as absolute design, which belongs to a passing era. However, this is just conjecture. Iltnere does not strive for a critical message, nor does she yearn for a particular programme - so it seems. She does strive to achieve a mood (nowadays it is fashionable to say - metaphysics). Melancholy, detachment, a little irony... but not so straightforward as to be able to perceive what disturbs the artist at one glance. I would like to propose a hypothesis about Iltnere as a deeply Latvian artist. To begin with, she has the same disposition as the Latvian writer Jānis Jaunsudrabiņs - to see "the sun in a dew drop", in other words, to find the general in the ordinary, a tendency which has been popular amongst followers of the feminine trend of Latvian painting, from the "small themes" in Soviet art (which at that time was associated with all things feminine) to, for example, the latest videos of Katrīna Neiburga. |
| |  Ieva Iltnere. The Bilbao. Oil and acrylic on Canvas. 2007 |
| | Iltnere's ‘Latvianness' also shows in the metaphorical encoding for the transmission of emotional impulses, which in its Latvian expression means to direct the flow of openness into a certain channel. And finally, Iltnere has been faithful to the conventions of figural painting, where the Latvian Academy of Arts has always emphasized the importance of the "painterly" qualities and the priority of virtuosity over the "subject matter" (it does not matter whether the artist paints Greek gods or a brigade of farm labourers). The subjects of Iltnere's paintings persuasively draw general hints from contemporary surroundings, therefore the essence of her paintings is to be found at the microlevel - in the pigment washes on canvas and coating layers that combine into an interplay of diffuse and strict form, in the nuanced empty spaces as well as an abundance of ornamentation on her canvases, in the complexities that are cool and warm variations of almost the same colour tone.
/Translator into English: Anita Načisčione/ |
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