�۶���Ƶ

The Fondation Beyeler will devote a comprehensive solo exhibition to Vija Celmins (born 1938, Riga), whose practice encompasses painting, drawing and sculpture. This is one of the most comprehensive solo exhibitions of Vija Celmins ever to be shown in Europe. Celmins’ visual language is both subtle and powerful. Initially, she focused on everyday objects as well as scenes of disaster and war. She then turned to the surface structures of spider webs, oceans and deserts, and later, the night sky and galaxies. Her images resist the cursory gaze; yet once we engage with them, they deploy a fascinating beauty in the interplay of intimacy and distance. The exhibition will display a selection of works produced by Celmins from the 1960s to the present day, bringing to life the mesmerizing effect of her pictorial worlds. It will also feature a small selection of sculptures, which Celmins herself qualifies as “three-dimensional paintings.” Finally, the exhibition will present a new group of works that carry forward Celmins’ long-standing and intense engagement with surfaces and spatial depth.

Celmins is a Latvian artist who became a naturalized American. Her family settled in the United States in 1948, first in New York and then in Indianapolis, after spending some time in Germany following their escape from Latvia. The artist studied painting in Indianapolis and attended a summer session at Yale University before attending the University of California in Los Angeles.

In the late 1960s, she mainly focused her attention on her drawing technique, often using subjects derived from photos of natural phenomena and environments. The subjects of her work include the ocean, cobwebs, starry skies and rocks. She took a special interest in constellations and space, making clear references to the events of 1969 when, on July 20^th^, humans had access to space.

On loan from the �۶���Ƶ Art Collection, Untitled (Coma Berenices #1)��(1973),��Untitled (Coma Berenices #2) (1975) and Untitled (Coma Berenices #4) (1973) are part of a larger group dedicated to astronomical themes. In these works, brilliant celestial bodies stand out against the darkness of the graphite making up the galaxy, stars and planets of various light intensities, which are skilfully distributed over the drawings’ dark surfaces. From the solidity of the grey backgrounds, the original white of the papers has been left exposed at chosen points, becoming the light source of the astronomical objects. The design elements are automatically placed at fixed dimensions, and with a sense of timelessness, they seem to be in communication with one another in the vast silence of the universe.

Created using such technical skill and attention to detail, these drawings command the viewer's attention toward the contrast between the subject of the work, the galaxy and the media of choice--the sheet of paper, which upon first glance is not adequate to accommodate a theme as vast as outer space. The juxtaposition of the immensity of the infinite with the two-dimensional humility of the sheet of paper is resolved by the meticulous point of view offered by Celmins, who through her intricate rendering of the smallest details, captures on paper the sensation of contemplating the universe from an astronomical observatory.