Vija Celmins: Night Skies

“Celmins seems to do something for which photography is often praised — to direct our attention to a subject usually overlooked. She does that, but the subject is not what her mimicry of accurate mimesis suggests… Celmins ushers the attention into the presence of another subject altogether—the conventions of picture-making.”

—Carter Ratcliff

Krakow Witkin Gallery proudly presents a survey of Vija Celmins’ night sky editions made between 1992 and 2016. In Celmins’ works, an open-mindedness in regards to the origins of her source imagery (authored and anonymous photographs, clippings, scraps, etc.), along with a keen balance between visible process and detailed rendering, points towards an ethos, as well as aesthetic, of equality. Furthermore, Celmins’ insistence on imagery without a singular focal point emphasizes her interest in equalizing the power of source, process, image, medium, and subject. In the exhibited night skies, Celmins has skillfully created no greater emphasis on either foreground or background. The white of the paper becomes the stars when surrounded by the dark sky of ink. Addition and subtraction work hand in hand. This exhibition provides an in-depth opportunity to explore the vast spaces between and within the source imagery utilized, techniques engaged, media used, decisions made, and the final artworks.

“Although reluctant to call herself a “printmaker,” Celmins has created a concentrated body of prints that convey a keen interest in the exploration of process and mark. But her prints have little to do with the fastidious pursuits of the specialist printmaker; rather they exploit the distinct attributes of the medium to address her ongoing aesthetic and intellectual concerns. Instead of pursuing technical innovation, Celmins turns to traditional intaglio, lithographic, and relief processes to endlessly manipulate and adjust her images.”

—Samantha Rippner, curator of “The Prints of Vija Celmins,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002

Who best to both ask the questions and provide guidance than the artist, herself, and so, below, are a few thoughts, notes, and quotes by Vija Celmins:

• An image that guides one over every part of the surface and in fact describes the surface.

• What I thought I was left with was not a picture of something (something which was really absent). And not really an illusion just rendered. BUT an artificial construct that made a third kind of reality between the image and the surface… A FICTION • AN INVENTION that has its own reality.

• The push and pull between flatness and image. Neither getting away from the other.

• Do not insist on meaning / insanity in insisting on meaning (Frank Bidart, ‘The Arc’)

• It lies somewhere between distance and intimacy

• My feeling is that every decision about the size of the borders has a corresponding effect on how one perceives the image.

• I like to say that I redescribed an existing image, not copy or reproduce.

• Shaping the image to fit a certain emotional and physical tone is a real effort. I don’t like to leave evidence of that effort. I don’t want you to come up to the work and say, “How long did that take,” or “What a lot of work.” I want you to say, “Wow, this is kind of amazing.”

(With many thanks for Vija Celmins and Doris Simmelink for making this exhibition possible)