09.06.2011. - 05.07.2011.

Galerija "Māksla XO"

Elizabetes iela 14, Rīga, LV 1010

Harijs Brants "Portraits"

Gallery "Māksla XO" from 09.06. - 05.07.2011

Harijs Brants drawing show Nonexistent unrealistic real reality. Accept this idea of mine as a provocation and an invitation to look at the world through the double glasses or to experience the astonishment of routinely met human images by means of double glazing.

This world is moulded thanks to a perfectly mastered academic pencil. The suggestive, a little bit sensitively caricatured object being portrayed uncloses as a fish stuffed with various psychologisms. An anonymous fish at first glance, being all eyes in the painting, makes the beholder ask a rhetorical question: Am I a beholder or am I a being referred to the act of looking? A deep and impertinent look of characters does not domesticate and tame the beholder; a deep and impertinent look does not allow to repudiate the autonomicity of the own, the beholder's, look either; or, in other words, it does not allow avoiding the eye of the fish. Caricatured facial features and the most typical highlighted forms determine the perception, empathy and fear of the portrayed reality as of a surrrealistically dangerous fact of life. The behaviour of characters is moulded by means of connecting human anatomy and technologized culture. At this point, the fish turns into some kind of expressly developed, maybe even genetically derived creature [...].

Most characters have protruding eyes as if continuously scrutinising the changes of reality and, under this scrutiny, determining a sense of surprise arising in the viewer's field of senses. This gaze of the eyes, very important to the artist, leads me to recall the French philosopher Jacques Derrida's reflections on the eyes and hands of a philosopher. According to J. Derrida, in human existence, these two parts of the body are ascribed the most privileges in getting acquainted/communicating with the objects/entities representing the world. According to the thinker, the eyes are not only the mirror of the soul but also the condition for the presence of/giving a sense to the world. A look always remains young and susceptible to visual information that is found in the existential human trivial round.¹ [...]

Space and time in the painter's works are sort of suspended. The characters are almost separated from what could firmly state the work spacetime. Due to the titles and backgrounds of some paintings it can only be assumed that a certain moment belongs to Venice or to some other fancy everyday space. However, the background of characters in many works could be likened to the phenomenon of silence. I dare say that the silence is most perfectly poeticized and described in the texts and creative work of John Cage.

Non-literal quotation: "More silence, my ears have never heard so well before. Perhaps this silence is originally visualized in H. Brants' artistic system as well? You never know..."

Fragment from Remigijus Venckus essay  "Mathematical  Nonexistent Unrealistically Real Reality" (2010).

Professor of Vilnius Art Academy, Vytautas Magnus University, Šiauliai University.