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| THE DISTANCE OF A KISS: Olga Šilova Laima Slava The name of Olga Šilova over the last ten years has gained a firm foothold in Latvian sculpture with her consistent style, perfection of form and its sound stamped with elegance. The change of the plastic language of her works from pronouncedly flowing and a little surreal, to tensely constructive and seemingly rational, while the dimensions continue to become more densely strained, follows the consistent rhythm of her one-woman shows; from "Calligraphy" (1996), "Fingerprints" (1998) and "Sign of Aquarius" (2000) in the Daugava gallery to "Distance of a Kiss" in autumn 2002 in the Riga gallery. This has confused the viewer who had already formed his opinion on who really is Olga Šilova, her strengths and limits of her abilities. | |
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The 20th century, especially its later third, brought a whole series of new notions on the place and field of activity of the sculptor. These have been tested by the all-embracing wave of the installation, object and ready-made, expressions of environmental art, land art and so on. In it all we can find the "sculptor's nerve". Šilova graduated in 1991 from the Sculpture Department of the Latvian Academy of Art as a recognised plastician traditionally oriented towards mastering realistic figural composition. Self-educated in the tendencies in world art and seeing them in life and literature within the bounds of possibility, Íilova has retained her desire to keep to a classical, tried and tested sculptural material - mainly metal, choosing to work with bronze and aluminum. If her initial guides to the possibilities of the language of plastic were the master of the painfully spiritual form Wilhelm Lehmbruck and the plastician of the fine nuance Giacomo Manzù, then the circle of her current interests seems to be exceptionally wide. "I like individual works", she says, "and the range is huge. There is the structural, the surreal, the constructive and like things quite different to that which I do. And sometimes I don't like what I do. But because I'm doing them, I have to accept them. You have to love yourself." Perhaps I will mention two Britons - Richard Serra with his enduring love for metal and his breathtaking monumental compositions from plates and various calibre rods crowned by the colourfulness of rust. And then there is Richard Deacon whose sculptures were described by Ian Tromp in "Sculpture" (November 1999) as inhabiting "a space between meaninglessness and meaning". We see in them a fantastic ability to play out the possibilities of the textures and structures of various materials, while paying careful attention to the finish of the surfaces including the rivets and screws for the joints and the holes left for them. Šilova feels at home in this aspect of the world of plastic, adding the possibility of the transference of natural forms directly into material (for example, casting an unusual shape of a branch in bronze - although she has never done this). She is just as ready to work with the landscape, land, architectural forms, non-traditional arrangements of space; she can create multimedia projects with steam, light, temperature etc., and only the lack of opportunity has prevented her demonstrating her grasp of monumentalism. "In society there is the lack of a structure that would work with such a complicated phenomenon as sculpture in the city space," says Šilova. Why is there so little sculpture in the environment - in the city, in interiors - in its real place? I heard Šilova's thought provoking reply among the closest circle of her colleagues, from her husband sculptor Gļebs Panteļejevs: "Because the grand styles have ended and sculpture has become autonomous, self-sufficient and difficult to identify, as is contemporary art in general. There were always boundaries and strict criteria for what sculpture is - in the professional sense, in the technologies - and you could always tell what was a work of art. Now the boundaries have dissolved. In medicine, when someone can't identify himself this is called schizophrenia. Contemporary art also cannot identify itself. Because art is everything. The most clever of critics could write volumes on this, but to say clearly what it is - he can't. That puts a stamp on it. It is highly entropic and characteristic of contemporary art." However, Šilova adds that today, we have simply forgotten that sculpture by itself can be one of the forms of a nation's spirituality.
On this level we see that Šilova continues the line begun in Latvian sculpture at the beginning of the 20th century by Teodors Zaļkalns with his few works in bronze - the sensitively modelled ethereal prtrait "Adelîna" (1908) and the embodiment of life's fragility in "Lamb" (1933). In the 80s Ligita Ulmane continued this brilliantly by varying the plastic of the metal with compositions from welded bent rod joints to create her images of small animals and for those days, the embodiments of an independent stance - horses. The most diverse of living beings have entered the circle of Šilova's plastic, beginning with her "Rat" of 1990 and ending with "Angel" in 2002. In between she examined the situations of a person's feelings and existence from the young mother in the purely private "Confusion" (1992-1993) to the distanced view of a mature, worldly wise observer in the merging of a couple in a kiss in "The Kissing Couple". That living string that vibrates in every one of her choices also makes the viewer feel involved on every occasion even if he cannot fully decipher the aim of the artist's solution to the task. Since 2000, Šilova also shows compositions that are nearer to abstractions (for example "Secret" (2000), which reminds one of closed snail shell on a mushroom, or "The Compromise" (2002) in her most recent exhibition, where two spheres create a fine intermediate merging form), although their titles may also testify to the concreteness of the impulse - "Milky Way" (1999), "Dew" (1998), "Water Pillar" (2000), "Discs" (2000). In any case, that which addresses us in Šilova's works is by no means characteristic of the early 21st century and therefore especially to be protected love-filled view of the world around her, looking for a connection with the positive spectrum of human emotions, its rendering in plastic, immortalising within it both the touch of her hands and the nuanced concreteness of the impulse providing experience. Šilova is convincing in her interest in the materiality of sculpture, the self-worth and plasticity of form, her relationship with space as a special phenomenon of human perception, as a component of the feeling of life that is to be nurtured and developed. At the same time her works fascinate with their fine, sensitive surface that is like breathing skin because she devotes considerable amount of energy to the treatment of the surface. Perhaps that is why Šilova's works cry out to be in the environment - outside or in - in order for their presence to give the space both emotional warmth and its own kind of "stature", becoming its tuning fork. I remember last summer, how the appearance of the New Hall of the Opera blossomed when Šilova fixed her statuette of the ballerina Inese Dumpe in full flight to the wall (true, it was then appropriately lit). At the time I also noticed a distinct dimension of contemporary elegance in the plastic of her sculptures. Therefore, while envying her native town of Ventspils that is graced with her fountain "Horse" (1998), I am happy that the most recent work - the monumental aluminum sculpture "The Kissing Couple", like some bright and shiny object from the cosmos, has landed on Basteja Hill in Riga. Its interactive conversation with the viewer (the sculptress continues to add to it by engraving the most interesting viewers' graffiti on the base) will perhaps open a new chapter in the relationship between environment and sculpture in our city. A conversation with Olga Šilova - about impulses, form and sculpture today. Many of your works are connected with nature. What does nature - animals, natural phenomena - mean to you? Is it only a form, plastic objects, or something much more? In my life it is something more, but in art it is often only an example. We can distinguish in your works at least two directions in the language of the forms - a tendency towards a tense, constructive bodily structure and work with a mass that is expressed both in a sensitive plastic as well as in the sudden love for the concentration of mass, a sphere-like denseness. This also gave the Riga gallery exhibition an obvious time range. We saw your fine plastic from the early years but this time materialised only in the torso "Arrow". Prior to this there were the constructive, open-work dancers, girls in folk costume and princesses. These days your works have a more dense feeling of energy that has been converted into spheres and spherical forms. Even "Angels" is compact, dense and structured. A notional sign with a pronounced plastic density. I think this is dictated by my inner feelings. On that occasion I really did want to achieve (a banal word!) spirituality. I wanted to free myself of the corporal specifically in the figure. To transform the figure into a kind of core, not one that would contain mass, but would force one to sense the immaterial that is in man. If my interests didn't change I would carry on with it. But I began to be disturbed by the awareness that I'd be working on something I'd already researched; I thought I was beginning to repeat myself, just making variations. And that was unacceptable. It was probably because of contrast that I wanted to work on more massive dimensions. But why in just this way is difficult to explain. When I'm asked about the "Kissing Couple", how I got the idea, I say one thing to one person and something different to another. For example, two of my friends were looking at each other with such eyes, but they weren't kissing. The impulse for the form came from people's eyes. I saw two people in love, moreover both wore glasses, and in the beginning I even tried to use glasses but I abandoned that idea. However, in this way the creative process dictated the form of the eyes. You can see this in the sketches. It was a kiss with eyes. I materialised the spiritual. I embodied the immaterial in a confluence of forms. What do you think about when you are working? Thoughts are on several levels. You can think about the composition, texture, about purely sculptural values such as the plastic, the motivation behind any detail or material; but there are thoughts, I think it's called the subconscious, that I can't say I think but that are definitely there. These are the stimulus, the impulse. It seems that in recent years you have been particularly taken by the sphere. Perhaps. Because I also feel encapsulated. I am also like this as an artist's form of existence. To a certain extent this is determined by the situation in Latvia. The artist is in a capsule, and perhaps in society he lives in a different context. I make things that remain sculpture whether they are in the kitchen, exhibition hall, warehouse or under the table. That too is a form of capsule. In my family I also feel as if I'm in a capsule at times. It is also a form of defense. In the "Kissing Couple" the capsule has been opened. From the moment I involve the viewers in the creation of a work, even if it is only the form of the method, the capsule opens. That is not so characteristic of me; there are only a few works where I have declined to make "things within themselves". The theme of the "Kissing Couple" is just that. The work was envisaged in order for it to make contact with the environment, with people. The name of the exhibition is "The Distance of a Kiss" after all. Distance. I like paradoxes. There is no distance in a real kiss. Zero distance. A kiss is like inspiration, contact. Distance - you can walk past a sculpture, anything - and this can be an insurmountable distance. And there can be contact regardless of the physical distance. The viewer flows in and makes contact with the work. Why, for example, did I engrave the phrase: "Vova was here"? I understood that Vova was inside the work. He had been in contact with it. Without distance. It might have been a joke but I liked it. Vova affirms himself through it. It also confirms that the work exists. And in general - this philosophy can be recognised! One of the writings I engraved was "I'm going, don't call me". I can't really understand whether this was written by the gallery caretaker or whether it was a poetic cry of the soul. You work a lot with the material by yourself. Gļebs even claims that you can and do all the work on the metal yourself. Why did you choose metal? Perhaps we should turn the question around - why don't I work with plastic? I don't want to! It's the capsule thing again. Take those "Calligraphy" works, for example. Through metal they are encapsulated, preserved. Metal is also a capsule. It allows one to concentrate and preserve the amount of work and feelings of the work. It is eternal. This is also a value, a quality. It's simply that I like that metal, granite - hard material - has this immense concentration. I like the way a hard material submits to me in the process. It's hard, can't do anything with it, but I can! Everyone says my surfaces are pretty and I make no attempt to avoid this, the aesthetic aspect of the work. You like it when the metal obeys you, but how have you tested this? In practicals at the Academy I worked with wood, granite, marble... The results were not convincing. You can't leave impressions of your fingers in either granite or wood. But then, after the Academy I liked to work plastically. Sculptors apparently fall into two categories - some chisel off the superfluous from the mass, others add to it, they model. I am a modeller. My students also fall into similar categories. (Since 2000 Íilova is a lecturer in the Sculpting Department of the Latvian Academy of Art. - L.S.) And you can fix this in metal, in bronze or aluminum. For the main part I work with casts but in the last years at the Academy there was also copper beating. Concrete didn't take me; I shaped and formed but didn't feel it, I didn't get out of it what I could. Nowadays I'm less taken by bronze than aluminum. Aluminum is more contemporary and I also like it because it is softer, more submissive and to work with it is easier which is important for me as a woman. I feel aluminum, I like to show it completely openly. Right there on Basteja Hill there are works in aluminum - Lukaža's "Swimmer", Pārsla Zaļkalne's "The Dance" - but they are shy of their material, they have been given a patina like bronze. I like aluminum's cosmic shine, its silveriness and reflective properties. Especially in easel works, when I worked with aluminum I looked for that grade of sandpaper that would bring out its majesty. Sculpture should certainly not only be viewed but also felt. Well OK, perhaps not the Freedom Monument... Sculpture immortalises, preserves ideas, feelings, truths and so on. What is important for you, what do you strive for, what do you want to immortalise? I don't like the word strive; I don't like the word want. I can't reply to this question because I don't strive and I don't want. I have no desire to attack the critics, but I have read that my works belong to Classical Modernism. As I understand it, Modernism is a phenomenon that in its time began and ended. To say today that you work in the spirit of Classical Modernism... Of course, the works are based on modernist traditions. But if that same "Kissing Couple" had been made from water resistant plywood (that can be done!), then they probably wouldn't write that it was Classical Modernism. Can the material determine the style? I think the Latvian critics in particular "pick on" the material. Granite, metal and three dimensions - that is Modernism and with the association of a few names from the encyclopaedia - Giacometti, Brancusi, Moore - there the criticism ends. Writing on painting, no one mentions any more Malevich's "Black Square" before every abstract or conceptual work. They do, however, endeavour to take an in-depth look at how the artist perceives the world at this moment in time. What, then, in your opinion distinguishes contemporary sculpture from the principles of Classical Modernism? First of all, if it is art and not really a reproduction, then it is like in the ballet; it is the same people with hands and feet who, no differently, also create modern ballet. There are new movements. It can be danced without new decorations, video projections and new costumes. The movement can also be the same because the anatomy doesn't change. The themes too will be the same. The context changes. The content changes. A paradigm. Sculpture is an art form that lives its own life. It can be denied, repressed, called by another name; you can even say that it is irrelevant, but it is developing. | |
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