I am not an unwelcome guest nervously waiting behind the door, I have been invited in.
A little box of miracles. I remember old photographs of children watching a puppet show, their eyes carrying the notion of a miracle. I have been granted permission – to devour candy because it is holiday, to throw a coin into the fountain.
I will quote myself, hoping you won’t mind – a shadow upon a shadow, upon a shadow, upon a shadow.
How to make a fabric more fully fabric? And which one is more a fabric – the one forming a shape or the one carrying an image of a shape? But – why do I need to make a distinction, why am I looking for opposites?
To-do list
I
let reflection bring with it a connection of images, and not a division of surfaces
II
let the deceptive fall to the ground and not build action or certainty upon it,
let it fall to the ground and continue on ahead, observing the contours
of the path’s surface
III
let the sun kiss me
Poem by Ieva Viese, translated by Jayde Will
I am not being cheated. It is not a disguise concealing honesty. The veil brings joy, the veil has features, not only that which is behind it.
The transparent and the impenetrable are next to each other, I am beside them both, I want to look inside them both. So it is at other times, too.”
Linda Gabarajeva
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Beate Poikāne, Seemingly Hidden
Beate Poikāne lives and works in Riga. She uses a diverse variety of media in her art.
Beate engages in the thematic and visual study of the margins between imagination and reality, between image and space. She creates art in the space between documentation and fiction.
In creating a liminal space where the antecedent has been departed from and the forthcoming has not yet been reached, the viewer is invited into the space as an active participant and encouraged to keep imagining.
The installation ”Seemingly Hidden” is a series of large-format photo prints on fabric and scale models of the space.
There are six elements in the installation: ”insight”, ”the hidden 1”, ”the hidden 2”, ”the passage”, ”the unambiguous”, ”the opaque”.
The prints on fabric depict images of draped fabric. These images are reproduced on fabric, creating a divergence between the spatial and the photographic.
The use of drapery is a reference to European painting tradition. Instead of being a background element, they are at the center of the piece. The illusory spatiality invokes the early attempts to depict perspective and spatiality in painting.
The artists’ studies of spatiality and visual representations of perspective are seemingly furthered in the installation, where an attempt is made to depict a spatial object on a flat surface, as it was attempted by painters of the Early Renaissance, such as Giotto.
The relationship between artwork and space is of pivotal importance to Beate. The preconditions of the space, such as the layout, interact with the installation the same as the different elements of the piece interact with each other.
translated by Eliza Pikane
The installation ”Seemingly Hidden” was on view in Riga from June 2nd-13th, in the new, artist-led gallery ”Dom”.
beatepoikane.com
ig: beate_poikane
Artist: Beate Poikāne
Exhibition title: Seemingly Hidden
Venue: DOM gallery, Riga, LV
Date: June 2 – June 13, 2021
Photography: Beāte Gredzena, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist
