Layla Rudneva-MacKay: Pointing at Trees
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At first, Lucie merely thanked
me shyly for my letters; soon she found a way to repay me: since
she did not write, she chose to give me flowers. It all began like
this: we were strolling through a wooded area when Lucie suddenly
bent down, picked a flower, and handed it to me. I was touched; it
didn't surprise me in the least. But when she stood waiting with a
whole bunch of them the next time we met, I began to feel a little
embarrassed.
I was twenty-two and
painstakingly careful to avoid anything liable to cast doubts on my
virility or maturity; I was ashamed of having to walk along the
street carrying flowers; I did not like buying them, still less
receiving them. In my embarrassment I pointed out to Lucie that it
was men who gave flowers to women, not women to men, but when
I saw the tears well up in her eyes, I hastened to add how
beautiful they were, and accepted them.
There was nothing to be done.
From then on, there were flowers waiting for me every time we met,
and in the end I gave in, because I was disarmed by the spontaneity
of giving and understood that Lucie cared for it; perhaps her
tongue-tied state, her lack of verbal eloquence, made her think of
flowers as a form of speech; not in the sense of heavy-handed
conventional flower symbolism, but in a sense still more archaic,
more nebulous, more instinctive, pre-linguistic; perhaps, having
always been sparing of words, she longed for that mute stage of
evolution when there were no words and people communicated by
simple gestures, pointing at trees, laughing, touching one
another....
Whether or not I grasped the
essence of Lucie's flower-giving, I was finally moved by
it...
Milan Kundera,
The Joke,
p.78-9
Layla Rudneva-Mackay's latest exhibition is
comprised of paintings of flowers. Although a significant deviation
from the photographic works she has become known for; her
distinctive approach to subject matter, treatment and medium are
still evident here and in this light the new works are less of a
deviation than they may first appear.
As a photographer, Rudneva-Mackay's practice often
involved studies of arranged subjects - people, objects and
settings - revealing an interest in form and patches or fields of
colour in a way that was clear but not explicit. Instead, the
images' relation to language is detached, as if the visuality of
the works is underlined by a certain silence or a poetic turn in
title.
The paintings currently on show are reminiscent of
Post-Impressionist works and recall their observation
of what has been traditionally considered less lofty
artistic genres. Created at a time when painting was processing the
advent of photography as a documentary commonplace it was clear,
next to the new medium's formalism and austerity, that paintings of
flowers could be more interesting than the Academies might have
first thought.
A vase of flowers might also be a cone and circles.
And what is it to show someone something rather than telling them?
The act of observation and its material expression demands a
radical slowness and humility of gesture - painted or otherwise -
and the steady, abstracting attention of the eye…all things that
define Rudneva-Mackay's practice.
Located in New Zealand on Auckland's Karangahape Road,
Starkwhite presents a programme of artists' projects, solo shows by
represented and invited artists, independently curated exhibitions
and occasional forays into new music and other interdisciplinary
practices.
Please contact the gallery for further information and
images.
Starkwhite
510 Karangahape Road, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel. +64 9 3070703
Monday to Friday: 11.00am to 6.00pm
Saturday: 11.00am to 5.00pm
starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz
http://www.starkwhite.blogspot.com/
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