Vija Celmins. Works 1964-96

At first Celmins specifies his world of reference in his study and creates paintings from everyday objects in the foreground such as, the stove switched on, the fan, the steaming electric pot or a gun that has just gone off. Giving these objects a status of images, Celmins’ objective is to manifest concentrated presences which contain a lot of tension, so that the life of the objects are the modern painting’s new stories. Without abandoning the creation of images and reducing his palette to greys and the use of graphite, in the late sixties he begins to incorporate photography and newspaper clippings as iconographic sources. Again, the foreground -as in the case of airplanes or automobiles- nullifies any possibility to create scenes and stories. Furthermore, at this time his interest in surface areas is aroused: of the ocean, the lunar surface, the desert or galaxies, which he manifests through the realisation of series which reveal his shift towards the intensity of a description of the surface. Examples include: Immense Sea (1969), Ocean with Cross (1971). Galaxy-Cassiopeia (1973). Star Field (1982-1983) or Night Sky (1994-1996).

In his work Celmins insists on the principle of art as a representation of reality. In addition to his paintings and drawings, the piece To Capture the Image of Memory (1977-1982) in this regard is an experimental test of his conception of art. On a table there lie several pairs of stones, one is real, found; the other is an identical copy, which he created. Thus, the artist doesn’t speak of false or true -whether referring to stones or the surface of the sea- but of reality and its image.