Vija Celmins’s Retrospective Is Spectacularly Subdued
Vija Celmins: Clouds, 1968. ©Vija Celmins, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
[…] Celmins’s painted objects from 1964, such as Envelope or Hot Plate, appear solitary and detached—mirroring, perhaps, the artist’s own sense of isolation upon arriving in the United States. They feel lonely and spare, and betray an artist at work in an interior world marked by restraint and introspection. To study these works closely is to enter that world, to see through her eyes, and to share in the same quiet intensity required to produce their meticulous, photorealistic detail. They possess an uncanny stillness, as if suspended outside of time—familiar yet estranged. These objects resemble consumer goods, yet are stripped of the vivid commercial energy that animated the work of Celmins’s Pop Art contemporaries.
