In her 60-year career, Vija Celmins has produced a total of 220 paintings, paintings and prints, and for good reason. Most of her work seems impossible, as her choice of images (under the mirror, desert, galaxy) is vast and indestructible. She doesn’t draw people. Her preference, she said, is “no composition. No gesture. No artificial colors. No distortion. No self.” However, she exists in all these images, delicate and animated. There is no misunderstanding in her work.
She also created depicting objects such as rocks, slate blackboards, a large pencil, a large pencil scattered on the floor, and a rope ladder fixed to the ceiling. Each object is realistic, not something that can be recognized as engraved. Similarly, many of her paintings are not read like paintings, but obviously are not photographs, as people are seen in close-up paintings of antique blue books she found in Japan and painted in 14 different colors. Her image from the Hubble Space Telescope has no painting of two stars. She made paintings of eroded shells, snowfall, burning planes, close-up surfaces of vases and moon surfaces.
Her night sky, desert and ocean paintings have no boundaries, and can convey the vastness of these places that cannot be captured. The paintings are tactile, huge and fragile, with only the edge of the canvas being the parking point, cutting off space in the air. Sometimes the image is unrecognizable. Without her title, it would be hard to see the surface of a plate or desert floor. vaseStarting from 2017-18, it could be the old Saatchi’s wear leather, elephant’s leather or a 19th century book that combines leather. Without a title, we will be thrown into the canvas, close up, checked, seek approval. This microscopic view is mystery and power. Celmins also has extraordinary technical capabilities to place 3D objects on a 2D surface. Once you know what it is, you’re shocked. That’s the surface of the shell!
About her Knife and dish1964, she wrote: “No composition…No gestures (dead pot painting) No artificial colors No distortion collage No sign or effort, no self, no big painting – it’s hard to do this.” It comes again -No self. This is hard to do, forgetting the self that is painting the knife and the dish without any personal connection with the knife to eat. The power of Celmins’ works is not that they seem so realistic, they most certainly do so, but that still life has its own independent character. Knife and dish Measure only 16 x 18 inches. Modesty and beautiful, this is a long consideration.
Her work ignores imagination. How is that possible? graphite The seaIn 1969, it was an endless ocean, stirring, and the water wrinkled and waves seemed to be hanging in time. When she draws this, is she on tr? Celmins said of the painting: “This work is a reviewed record + a strong look, something inside to me and what is said to me. A relationship, a certain innocence and time disappearing. The size of these works is large, presented in the areas contained, while still feeling huge, without boundaries. And she is more than just a painting of the ocean. She did five. How do these paint by hand? Is this the ocean or dune after a sandstorm? Celmins says she is recording the surface of the ocean.
pencil1966 with oil on the ink on the canvas, feeling alive, but completely symmetrical and inert. The shadow lifts the octagonal end and tip, as if it was lifted out of the frame. Night Sky #16 20 layers of paint were used. Each layer is sanded between the two, mixing together with a charred tan, ultra-blue or white shard. She’s early Night sky Change the graphite to charcoal. The circles of different sizes are stars, filled with liquid rubber and polished. about Hoshita San1982-83, she said: “Print of pencil. Paper and pencil. Romance relationship. Dance. Dance, keep paper + lead.” The more you stare at the drawing, the more it moves, retreats and moves forward.
Her desert floor has a pile of bleached rock-scattered helter-skelter. In the dry, light sunlight, the barbecue landscape once again exudes a boundless space. But unlike marine paintings, these are lifeless. The desert, she said, “is located between distance and intimacy…another space…” Her snow paintings – white, obscure, impossible, the chaos of white darkness, as vast as her desert and the star-shrouded night sky. Celmins is the master of the eternal space.
Celmins was born in Riga, Latvia in 1944 and became a refugee in 1944. Four years later, she and her family immigrated to the United States and arrived in Indianapolis, where she attended high school and later attended the John Herron Art Institute. She continued to study scholarships at UCLA. Today, she lives and works in Sag Harbour, New York City and Long Island.
A large solo exhibition, “Vija Celmins,” is currently on display at Fondation Beyeler in Beyeler, Basel, and is curated by the museum’s chief curator Theodora Vischer, author and curator James Lingwood. From the 1960s to the present, ninety paintings, paintings, sculptures and prints showcased sixty years of her work. The 208-page illustration catalogue that comes with the exhibition is excellent. It is poetic and very elegant. Writers and artists have papers, poems and ideas: Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk, Julian Bell, Marlene Dumas, etc. It is a rare catalog and refreshing to read its literary writing. The catalog was edited by Theodora Vischer and James Lingwood as Beyeler, designed by Teo Schifferli and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Berlin.
Celmins’s work is a meditation on the natural world. In all paintings, long-standing consideration. networkSince 1992, it is like a grid that describes space-time in physics books. It can also be a fractal, infinite, never-ending spiral, event vision at the edge of the black hole – a dangerous journey toward the nihilistic black center. This painting is an inversion of energy. She describes her spider web painting as a “painting about small changes in quality.”
In the catalogue, artist Glenn Ligon galaxy1985. “The image is made up of small dots, hand-painted onto a copper or zinc plate with a rocker (a metal tool with small teeth) … This produces, once the plate is ink, solid black. Solid black. Wipe this black with a polish, and the primer exposes the exposed metal. These are stars. One can only imagine the gentle and thick concentration required for the print. “The giant quality took a long time,” Celmins said. ”
Celmins also said her work is not political or expressive of anything outside. She passed the “intuition… + strict…work in the darkness is still ‘in the darkness’, and it can be said that for a long time until my efforts go out or become too repetitive, otherwise I can’t hold them anymore, otherwise the work doesn’t seem to require me anymore.”
“Vija Celmins“Until September 21, 2025, Foodation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland.
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