Lucy Elkivity - Exhibitions

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Exhibitions

Sometimes in the Dark

Sometimes in the Dark

Lucy Elkivity

Tova Osman Gallery - 7/11/08 - 27/11/08

Letters of the Soul / Mordechai Geldman

At the background of Lucy Elkivity's paintings dwells the Buddhist Zen calligraphy. Her works (which are not presented in the current exhibition) include calligraphic pages with Hebrew letters at the bottom of which a sort of Haiku poem is printed. Zen calligraphy and Haiku Poems have a religious feeling about them, and are meant to bring the viewer to the experience of ultimate reality, of "suchness" - and Elkivity's calligraphic works follow the same tendency. They grant words and even letters an enhanced material presence and thus inspire contact with the sphere allegedly found beyond language. The flickering Hebrew letters in these works often remind us of the role of letters in the Kabala.

But Lucy Elkivity's works, presented in this exhibition, develop this calligraphic genre and divert it not beyond but rather "under" the letters. Her works include representations of animals, insects and birds that resemble letters but also creatures whose development is not yet complete, some of them in a process of metamorphosis. These beings and their environment always have spots and lines encoding mental commotions, seemingly not included in a recognizable identity. These show the decomposition of the representation or a state preceding its crystallization as an identifiable form, which has a name. Sometimes these metamorphosis processes create new beings, assembled from the fragments of several different representations.

Lucy Elkivity's paintings do not take us into the holy metaphysical void of the Zen paintings, but into the world of creation dwelling in our unconscious. They're showing that which repeatedly comes into being from the spirit hovering above the dark abyss. In the unconscious, representations of the self and desire are in constant formation. The "primary processes" of the unconscious select modes of representation revealing themselves in dreams., Displacement and condensation, the main mechanisms of the primary processes, utilize "ready-made" representations, but also create hybrid entities. Sometimes the unconscious fragments these representations and destroys them, but often it also uses their parts to create new creatures. Due to their tight link to the processes of the unconscious, the works of Lucy Elkivity can be described as spontaneous surrealism.

The dreamlike spirit in Lucy Elkivity's works is subject to gloom, represented by the black color she uses. But even in this gloom one finds creative flight of the mind and overt longing for the beautiful and delicate, or even the sacred. The foul blackish puddles gathered in them are balanced by clarity, striving toward names, words and letters, and also toward the purity of the white spaces. Sometimes this balance evokes recollection of Kafka's stories, and her insects look like relatives of the bug Gregor Samsa turned into. This recollection is influenced also by the illustrative element in her works. They often look like illustrating mysterious narratives, which never were and would not be written, exactly as dreams do. The dominating black in her works is not just a representation of an abysmal gloom, but also of the ink used for writing.

Lucy Elkivity's works have a rich cultural and inter-textual background. Their connection to Zen Buddhism, Kabala, Western Surrealism and Action Painting adds to their intricacy. But at the same time her paintings also possess an original quality: through them we can sense a depressive and painful personal aspect, the gentleness and delicacy originating in her femininity and even a degree of humor.

Mordechai Geldman

Continue to Sometimes in the Dark's Gallery...

Figurative Calligraphy

Hanita Contemporary Art Museum

09/2007

Curator: Hana Barak Engel

The word "Calligraphy" means "beautiful writing". Today calligraphy is understood not in the way it used to be once. We do not expect from painters to paint family portraits because photography captures likenesses quicker and sometimes better. The same shift of expectations happened to calligraphy, too. Today we do not think of calligraphy as means of keeping our thoughts since printing does it cheaper and much more convenient for reading. Calligraphy, released from its traditional "burden" - to be the "written text", becomes "the art of written forms" -- the most flexible, intimate and immediate tool for the realization of the movements of an artist soul.

Lucy Elkivity creates her forms using her brush in very different ways. Light gray washes create illusion of the third dimension; great black masses stand out dramatically; thin, fragile black lines add character and movement. Sometimes she feels that white background, black ink and washes of different shades of gray are not enough and she adds colors: gentle pinks, pale blues.

Lucy paints or delineates sad images. Her world seems to be melancholic, inhabited by strange creatures which are composed not of heads and limbs, but of blots and lines - the calligraphic anatomy which refuses to be ruled by the mundane logic and does not speak of the species of these creatures, but of their mood, transferring it to the viewer. In some works we can recognize a familiar form - a beetle - and though maybe a zoologist would not be able to classify it, the beholder feels perfectly well "recognizing" the creature.

These works look very close to Chinese or Japanese brush painting, which is a Siamese-twin-sister of calligraphy in these cultures. The freedom of brushstrokes, the delicate transitions of gray, dramatic blacks, spontaneity and "immateriality" of her brushwork create perfect harmony. The large scale and the "blow-up" composition add another thrilling dimension to the emotionality of these works.
In this series of paintings, Lucy Elkivity writes the sequence of her calligraphic, gentle and moving personal forms.

Leo Ray

Continue to Figurative Calligraphy Gallery..

Mute Voices

Gallery Twenty Four,Tel-Aviv

03/2006

Curator : Judit Kriwisky

"If I do not paint her, she will die. Until I do, she is a mute voice"

This exhibition presents a series of blot-based works, that reflect the artist`s coping with the process of conception and gestation of the artistic deed. The blot, the shadow, the form - they all nest, whisper, move, look for a way out , being finally laid on the canvas as driven by hallucinatory creatures seeking life out the womb they have just conquered.

There is a story being woven by the blots, which cannot be described but by inner speech. It demands the creation of an idiosyncratic system of signs for truthful expression, even though that aim is unattainable.

The works are realized in mixed media, including acrylic, ink and pencil on canvas and paper.

Doris Arkin