Exhibition > Past > SEB Gallery

SEB Gallery 21.04.2010-04.06.2010

Simply the Best

Malle Leis’s 48th solo exhibition is a small collection of watercolours important to the author. Naturally every piece of art that an artist has created is important for him or her as they are sequent parts of his or her creative work. Every next one in this line originates from the previous ones; every previous one influences all the following ones. Yet there are those in that line to which the words of a Tina Turner’s song apply – it is simply the best. Simply the Best. And like the mentioned Tina Turner’s song this exhibition wants to be celebration of something that in the author’s opinion is the best.


 
Leis has considered watercolour painting as such always as the best, now for over 40 years already. It almost isn’t appropriate to ask why - it just is; it is so with all human likings. The watercolours of this exhibition have accumulated in the author’s studio over time; all of them have been framed and displayed once in one exhibition or another whether in Estonia or elsewhere. Some of them have been hidden right after the exhibition; some have just remained out of attention whether due to the subject of the picture, the picture’s size, frame or anything else. Over time they have become dear and important to the author, they have influenced her later creative work – even some of the newer paintings in the current exhibition - by being in sight every day. These are Simply the Best of Leis’s watercolours.


 
In every artist’s opinion his or her creative work is the best thing in art, Simply the Best. Without such attitude any real art probably couldn’t exist. A good athlete always observes his competitor next door and knows exactly how fast he runs or how far he jumps, knows even who is better at the moment. A good artist is involved in his or her thing only, he does not track every move of another artist, let alone who is best; he or she compares his or her doings only with some extreme perfection, an ideal. Sometimes with such that actually doesn’t exist. The number of such ideals followed by different artists may be indefinite, so every artist may peacefully consider himself to be the best. One only has to have faith, he has to dare to think so. Leis dares to think both that she is the best and also that her watercolours are the best.
Villu Jõgeva

 


 
The exhibition will be open until 4 June.

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