Baltic Bridges. 2008. Annotations

 

INTERNATIONAL WATERCOLOUR EXHIBITION "BALTIC BRIDGES. DISPLACEMENTS"

 

International exhibition "Baltic Bridges. Displacements" is the nucleus of watercolour biennial ‘Baltic Bridges’ that unites artists of various creative spheres from eleven European countries. The objective of the project is to reveal the variety of artistic thought in watercolour, a lively and dynamic approach to the millenary experience of watercolour, seeking for its original angle of form and meaning. We stimulate artists’ experiments on shape and their authentic, modern look at the topic and content of artworks.

"Baltic Bridges" is a young project, organized in Kaunas only for the second time, but it should be considered as a successor of Baltic States’ watercolour triennials which were held in Riga (Latvia) since 1968. Participants of these exhibitions represented their countries every third year, having the ability to share discoveries of watercolour and to value achievements of their colleagues. The exhibitions undoubtedly induced the progress of Baltic States’ watercolour and a positive competition among watercolourists.

In 2006 Kaunas city became the centre of watercolour’s traction. Kaunas Department of Lithuanian Artists’ Association started to organize the event, giving a metaphoric title ‘Baltic Bridges’ to the project (curator – Virginija Vitkienė). It was decided to organize the exhibition every second year (status of biennial), aiming to reveal the discoveries of watercolour more dynamically.

The geographical limits have expanded strongly – we invite artists from all over the Baltic and Nordic Regions (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Germany, Russia and Iceland) to participate in the exhibition. This way we hope to shape an open and strong international community of artists, to maintain cultural contacts and to acknowledge the character of art of these countries better.

This year the conception of ‘Baltic Bridges’ is outlined by a notion ‘displacements’ which is open to various creative interpretations. First, it is one of the most proper words to describe the lightness, volatility of watercolour’s artistic language, the optical illusion of motion, the merging of spots of colours. Second and most important, we search for displacements and breaks in the tectonics of watercolour’s quality and content, we suggest avoiding banality or creation that satisfies itself only with decorative virtues. We put much value upon greatly mastered traditional means of expression but also encourage not limiting oneself with usual creative methods and drawing daringly the newest trajectory of watercolour’s displacements. 

The exhibition should not be observed by a traditional look – there are artworks that have little common with ordinary comprehension of watercolour:  some of them have entered into the sphere of painting, drawing, graphics, photography, new media art. The exhibition witnesses the fact, that the present watercolour has made obvious displacements from its lyrical prototype to a universal thinking that reveals not only on the plain of pictures but also in three-dimensional objects, video artworks and performances.

Kotryna Džilavjanaitė, curator of the exhibition

 

 

 

GROUP‘S AQUA 12 EXHIBITION "AQUARELISSIMO"

 Group Aqua 12 was founded in 1992 and unites masters of watercolour from all Lithuania: Vilnius, Kaunas, Šiauliai, Alytus. Group‘s founder Eduardas Urbanavičius‘ idea to preserve watercolour as a vanishing sort of painting ‚infected‘ watercolourists and is still alive today, as a foundation-stone of the group. Every year Aqua 12 gathers the artworks of its members, spread over Lithuania, into a joint exhibition, which is impressive by the variety of genre, plastic and discoveries.

 

Transparency is likely the only principle that could be considered to be the background of Aqua 12. Aqua 12 remains in a traditional two-dimensional space of white paper, where transparency folds the third and sometimes the fourth dimension – the dimension of soul –  that crosses the plane and leaves lucid, indistinct shapes, returns the look to concentration on the language of visual forms and convinces that there are things to be meditated and felt.

 Agnė Narušytė

 

A white sheet of paper. It becomes remarkable – when water diffuses on its surface and watercolour paint streams through it. Paint-ripe brush in artist‘s hands leaves signs in white space: they speak, they argue, they sound, because...

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Watercolour seems to connect the elements of nature. Water and earth are diluted by water paint pigments. The layer of air is transparency. Wood is a sheet of paper. Fire is the mysterious process of creation, the realisation of plans.

 Translucent colour in watercolours is as a stained-glass that clarifies one‘s thoughts, purifies undefined sensations. Coatings of paint cover one another, making identifiable shapes, creating new structures of forms, rhythms that reveal the meaning of time drift, the tune of temporality and eternity.

 Saulė Urbanavičiūtė

 

The grazing of colourful water flowing of a brush on the surface of paper... – the game that comes from childhood; but it ends, water vapours away, only paint remains, and then you see that you will not change anything without destroying the first impression...

 Vytenis Bazaras

 

 

 

BELORUSIAN WATERCOLOUR:  FIELD OF INTERPRETATIONS

 For the majority of Byelorussian aquarellists watercolour painting is a field of art where one can experience the real freedom of creation. Of course, this art field is not deprived of the integrity, dynamic development, certain priorities and architectonics of interrelation between the two concepts - tradition and innovation. Its heterogeneity is the essence of its dramaturgic qualities. The field of watercolour is multidimensional; it has virtually no limits and accepts various arts and the world around us.

 

The field itself can possess unexpectedly different qualities: at one moment it can be specifically realistic or historic and legendary, at another moment it is relatively symbolic or metaphysical… It is the plastic of objects as well as the impulses of expressive colour strokes which build up the filling of the watercolour art field. It doesn’t matter whether it’s highly object or not, it’s still full of emotion, pierced all through by the slumbers of light, clarity and transparency, and it has all the sincerity of the feelings depicted. This is the sphere where the tradition and the experiment coexist and do not hinder each other.

 

Well-known Byelorussian aquarellists from Vitebsk, Mogilev, Minsk, Novopolotsk, Pinsk, who all have a great creative range, took part in this project.  One of the most peculiar features of the works displayed in the exposition is the concentration of their authors on the serious figurative and compositional watercolour. During the recent years it has also become the most distinctive feature of Byelorussian watercolour painting, which reflects the high cultural level and great potential of the national school.

 

Respect for the tradition and commitment to the creative achievements of Byelorussian artists combine well with the modern interpretation of the image, experiments with form and plastic of the colour and the use of various techniques of watercolour painting. Various ways of compositional thinking, spectacular manner of watercolour painting and a great  thematic  range beginning from the works carried out in a traditional style and ending up with the fabulous images and author’s mystifications – all these inevitably attracts our attention…

 

More than half of the participants of the exhibition are representatives of the Vitebsk watercolour school. The Vitebsk watercolour school was formed during the second half of the XX century and is well-known in the European art context. The works of its representatives have always been notable for the elaboration of the painted area, compositional rhythms and expressiveness of colour being taken into consideration, and for their receptivity to the art tendencies of today.

 

Founded in 1995, the association ‘Vitebsk Watercolour’ unites many famous aquarellists. ‘Vitebsk Watercolour’ association has been taking the lead in holding art exhibitions all over the world. It has also been the coordinator and organizer of a range of projects. Among those projects is the international watercolour biennial ‘Akvarelnaya Syabryna’, which is aimed at the extension of creative interrelations between the representatives of different watercolour schools and is also concerned about the development of Byelorussian watercolour. It would sound as no exaggeration if we say that the background of  Byelorussian watercolour is tightly connected with buy clomid Vitebsk, where there is still a great epicentre of creative initiative, which is aimed at further development of watercolour painting and at making it more recognized.

 

Though, a circle of aquarellists consisting of graduates of the Belarus Academy of Art, whose works are also displayed in the exposition, demonstrate remarkable stylistics and virtuosity in handling materials. They plunge deep into the nature of colour and improvise freely, using all the possible watercolour devices, but still staying within the limits of a peculiar author’s manner.

 

Here you see a dynamic space of modern Byelorussian watercolour, which is communicated as a field of interpretations of the world around, traditions and mentality of Byelorussian people and contemporary artistic tendencies. It is doubtful whether such a small exposition can reflect fully and panoramically this unusual, sometimes incomprehensible and finally undefined field. But this exposition is certain to be an organic part of such a sphere. It provides a picturesque image of modern Byelorussian watercolour.

 Dr. Mikhail Tsybulsky (Belarus), curator buy levitra online of the exhibition

 

 

IRENA LUSE: SOLO EXHIBITION ‘SENSITIVITY’

Is it possible to establish the difference between paintings created by man and a woman? As it turns out – yes. And one of the brightest examples is the art of Latvian painter Irena Luse.

No, it is neither a question of technology nor that of theory of composition. It doesn’t differ, since the students of both sexes are educated alike in Art Academy of Latvia, where Irena is a professor as well. It is a feeling that is not possible to capture in words that lets one say – it has been painted by a woman. A barely perceivable inner fragrance, light, combination of colours that gives the feeling of flutter and lightness, and even joy of the heaviness of being.

Irena works in different techniques of painting, like oil, pastel, watercolour. Her creative biography is plentiful –works have been shown in many prominent art forums in Europe and elsewhere and she has had several solo-shows as well. However the painter keeps surprising with the freshness of her style, with her sincerity in revealing the subject and with her unique intimacy, interpreting her main theme – complicated inner emotional experiences and world perception. That perfectly indicates artist’s mission – to buy priligy online elevate subjective feelings on the level of generalized symbols.

The artist has managed to create this elusive impression of dispersed light coming from invisible, inner source first in her oil paintings and then she has developed and improved it in pastel.

However, watercolour is a special media – it obliges one to do the work perfectly, since any mistake, any correction can hopelessly destroy the union of pigment and water on the grainy surface. It happens naturally in Irena Luse’s aquarelles – there is no other way, since her world of nuanced colours is just for this technique. Her dancing, flying images fill the painting, moving in the rhythm of a music audible solely to them. They incorporate into colour spots of composition so naturally that a vision of utterly inseparable, harmonic environment is created. It is so because Irena lives a life of her own – captures moments that escape the notice of the others, but are as if fixed in artist’s perception, tasted and dissected through the deepest levels of awareness. Exactly this sort of a process – a momentary touch of brush, intermingling with layers done before is characteristic to aquarelle painting, this way creating a complete entirety. A stopped moment.  Fast drying illusion of reality. The lightness of a bird.

The artist travels a lot in order to maintain the sharpness of her perception and the circulation of emotional energy. She has acquired impressions for creative work in Mexico, China, USA. She has studied the collections of European art, forming a noticeable and invaluable cultural experience both for her art and her work with students. It is a universal space of art that interweaves the world of her images making them close and understandable to viewers of different languages of thought.

Fragile figure buy clomid of a woman, existing beyond space and time, is the domineering motif in almost all the artworks. She dances –alone, with a man, intermingling with a crowd; she is mentally naked rather than simply undressed; she loves – not solely a man but also her own lack of corporeality, flowers, animals, rain, sea and also the rest of the world where she fits so well in and is capable to merge with so perfectly. It is a woman’s environment that she knows so well and feels it as a whole world. It isn’t difficult to understand that the prototype of this image is the artist herself –not physically but by visualizing the different expressions of her soul and giving shape, colour and character to them by painting. This image may clone itself; multiply even within boundaries of one composition until fulfilling the whole painting. Essentially it doesn’t matter whether there is depictured one figure or countless number – all of them are the various manifestations of the only, real one. Maybe that’s why the artist hasn’t given specific features to her flying woman; her image is painted in universal, anatomically correct proportions.

A component in Irena Luse’s paintings that unites everything is light, as the utmost necessary element for the existence of colour palette. In the foundation of her compositions lies a harmonious combination of different areas of colour. These pure, melodic colours glow from within, making light the main material for creation of artwork and thus the different use of colour pigments becomes a secondary issue. No matter what painting media the artist uses, her colour range is admiringly lucid; you can never observe the so called effect of burn. Despite the specific, somewhat vague outlines of her images, the elements of composition never melt into blank, brownish grey mass; they are like an ancient stained glass window, so perfectly clear in their transparency. So airily – both visually and subject wise.

This is the essence of feminine painting: to harmonize the inner emotional world with the visual reality of colours, and make them both reveal and supplement each other, rendering pleasure to others. Having accomplished the technique perfectly to play skilfully with ones subjective experiences, thoughts, feelings, and to make viewers feel, dance, live through all the range of momentary emotions themselves.

Eva Lapinska (Latvia), Master of Arts