Raissa Venables
dal 4/12/2008 al 16/1/2009
Segnalato da
4/12/2008
Raissa Venables
Wagner+Partner (old location), Berlin
Maybe too lofty? The works of Venables break the photographic laws of optics as the artist procures a new freedom in the arrangement of the picture through digital processing and intervention. They recall medieval thematic perspective. Spaces and objects are represented according to their spiritual significance, not their natural appearance.
Since the Renaissance we have become used to seeing spaces in painting in
perspective. What slowly appears in Pre-Renaissance Italy with Giotto’s new spatial
perception find its zenith with Brunelleschi with the invention of central
perspective around 1420. The painted space is constructed mathematically towards a
vanishing point. The pictorial alignment of all objects in it conforms to an
illusionist rendition of reality. This is no different in the later appearing
photography; the mathematical construction is replaced by the laws of the optic
lens.
The works of Raissa Venables break the photographic laws of optics as the artist
procures a new freedom in the arrangement of the picture through digital processing
and intervention. The works of Venables recall medieval thematic perspective. Spaces
and objects are represented according to their spiritual significance, not their
natural appearance. This is assisted by the artist’s expressive choice of colour.
What appears formally like a regression in the dealing with spaces, is the order for
Venables: while her early work were set primarily in private, intimate spaces, in
her new exhibition the artist shows large and public places. Mundane and sacred
spaces are the theme of “Maybe too lofty?”. Venables explores the unconscious
experience we have in such spaces with acute sensibility and gives them an outlet.
The artist traces the places and ends up in a new “thematic perspective”, which
corresponds much more to a anthropological way of seeing.
Her newest works have a formal and colourful elegance. They guide us through big
train station cathedrals, into century-old churches and hidden temples. All places
are “lofty”. One must only be able to see. With her new solo exhibition Raissa
Venables gives us back a piece of the ability to see.
Opening reception with the artist: Friday, December 5, 7-10 p.m.
Wagner+Partner
Karl-Marx-Allee 87 - Berlin
Free admission