Exhibition > Past > Haus Gallery

Haus Gallery 11.05.2004-11.06.2004

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Paintings

New paintings by young artist Eda Lõhmus.

Eda Lõhmus (1978) has already earlier been called as “the one, standing on the edge”, who does not coincide or hook well up with any of the directions of the newer Estonian painting. She is standing in a considerable distance from both of the “new savage ones” and the new wave of hyperrealism, the conceptual projects and the pop language. It is even complicated to find from among the classics of the modern art anybody, who could be placed next to Lõhmus. Maybe the late water-colours by Peeter Mudist?

It seems simultaneously extremely easy and extremely complicated to analyze an abstract painting. From one side we can insert here almost all thoughts which occur in our heads and still find from a certain form method, certain way of solution a knight move as in chess, which justifies our choice. But from another hand – when you can say everything, you can not say anything. And of the works by Lõhmus can actually be said quite little and even this is actually throwing dust into others’ eyes.

One thread could still be given to us by the headings: “Puu” (“A tree”), “Puude vahel” (“Between the trees”), “Metsas” (“In the woods”), “Metsa sees” (“Deep inside the woods”), “Hall järv” (“A grey lake”), “Järvel” (“On the lake”). Nature, isn’t it? From here on: when a person looks at nature, then we are not anymore dealing with an honest, direct, sincere watching. It does not matter, how hard he tries, still there are some specific cultural phenomena, which start to glow through – certain manners, how we have been taught to watch the nature. And if a person also tries to take this nature, which has been mediated by culture, onto the canvas or to take nature into the double Nelson grip of culture, then we often just get a picture of the nature, which does not talk either to us or to the nature. Eda Lõhmus does not let this happen. She has decisevely refused to “depict the nature”, furthermore – Lõhmus has even refused to follow the patterns, which have been planted into us. She makes a successful attempt to find again this intact nucleus, the one, which would tell us, how things really are. Sunset, abundance of colours and swans inside it, are you saying? A grey lake, a lost reddish stripe, a curve in the middle of the lake – is telling you Lõhmus. And she is right. These are the paintings of perceptions, of fragrances without any possibilities of wording, of lost colours. Sometimes here gets lost a single recognizable object, for instance a pier, but Lõhmus does not let it disturb herself. Her paintings have never been depicted anywhere in the nature, they are every time born “here and now” between Lõhmus and who knows what. These are works, which we can not have seen earlier. Or can see later.

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