Breaking the Ice - The Saatchi Gallery

BREAKING THE ICE: MOSCOW ART 1960-80s - THE SAATCHI GALLERY

Exhibition: Gaiety Is The Most Outstanding Feature Of The Soviet Union., 12th November 2012 - 9th June 2013.

'Janis Avotins' is one of many artist's who are all part of a current group exhibition in The Saatchi. this exhibition mainy concists of artists who work illustrate's the authentic effects on post-soviet survivors.

Avotins thinly  painted canvases draw us into a fragile world haunted by collective memory. often using a minimlistic, monochromatic aesthetic reminiscent of fellow latvian artist Vija Celmins, Avotins' washes and technique blur and erase the specificity of his subjects, imbuing them with an air of mystery  the figures are phantom-like, in a state of tension somewhere between sketchily existing and melting into the background. A 'lininal' state of 'being'

A thin, imprimatura wash of dark oil paint stains the canvas's weave and lint-flecks to create a gauzy, grainy, speckled effect – like looking into fog or falling ash. Isolated forms and figures emerge – ghostly, luminous, sometimes oddly solarised: the result of leaving areas of canvas wispish and unshaded.

 These images  playfully engage with the relationships between analogue photography, the way history can edit and turn individuals anonymous, and with our own collective memory-making – impressions fading in and out of existence.

In one work here work, a ghostly, isolated right hand is placed exactly in the middle of a canvas, becoming the mysterious central focus within an overwhelming nothingness. In the other works, singled out yet unrecognizable figures appear framed by a similar vacuum, soaked in washes accompanied by the symbolic material presence of the canvas’s grain. Recent compositions include architectural elements, but figures remain phantom-like, in a state of tension somewhere betweensketchily existing and melting into the background.

'Liminality' and 'Nothingness' :

The following body of work is an attempt to eradicate everything that should give the viewer any sense of place or identity, it takes the minimalist approach in trying to tap into the idea of the liminal 'nothingness'

These works are removed  from almost all sense of representation  in order to offer more uncertainty to the viewer, and to eradicate any sense of belonging and eliminate any feeling of comfort the viewer may find in correlation to an object within the composition.

The works emulate so much ambiguity that the style of painting itself is now also in the liminal phase between abstract and representational art.



These works offer the viewer a glimpse of what they may interpret as an everyday object and the uncertainty of it ‘being’ or ‘not being’ while capitulating themselves to the psychological  space around these objects and offering them a taste of the liminal nothingness that may lie
ahead of them, reminding them
of the 'fragility' and scarceness of
of ones life.