On Friday, 1 March at 5 p.m. Liivia Leškin opens her solo exhibition Closer, Much Closer at Vabaduse Gallery displaying her new paintings. The exhibition will remain open until 27 March 2024.
Liivia Leškin:
„I think, considering the viewer, the most just form of expression is abstract art. Without formulating one’s emotions, premonitions, fears and all the rest that takes place in the subconscious.
It leaves the door open for both a shared experience as well as an entirely personal perception.
If a line or colour conveys an honest emotion and directs the viewer towards a certain path, then it is already good.
Here lies the justification for the fact that my work is rooted in myself.
What is going on around us today is brutal and full of the unexpected.
But we can allow ourselves to spend time in art, in nature.
It does not serve only as a consolation, it is more akin to love.“
In recent years, Liivia Leškin has devoted herself entirely to painting, increasingly distancing herself from the purposefulness of design thinking. One of the main elements characterizing this exhibition is the rediscovery of the line and using it in a new context. The artist’s paintings exude an emotional charge, but also a certain feeling of incompleteness and ambivalence, that the viewer is invited to explore and interpret in their own way.
Liivia Leškin was born in 1956 in Tallinn. She graduated from the State Art Institute of the Estonian SSR in 1980, majoring in fashion. From 1981 to 1987, Leškin worked for the Tallinn Fashion House, as well as the editorial board of the magazine Siluett published by the same concern. From 1987 to 1997, Leškin worked as a lecturer of fashion design at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where she continued as an associate professor from 1990 onwards, and as the head of the fashion department from 1990 to 1993; in addition, she also worked as a visiting lecturer at several Scandinavian art colleges. Leškin was a founding member of the collective ON Grupp which was initiated by a group of applied artists and designers in 1990 (together with artists Katrin Amos, Ülle Kõuts, Ülle Rajasalu and Leanika Korn); from 1994 to 2020, she managed Liivia Leškin’s fashion company. She has participated in numerous personal and group exhibitions as a fashion designer, fashion illustrator, costume artist and painter, and she has created, among other things, large-scale interior textiles. Since 2019, Liivia Leškin has dedicated herself entirely to painting and shown her work in five distinct solo exhibitions. Since 1989, Leškin is also a member of the Estonian Artists’ Association.
Vabaduse Gallery is supported by the Estonian Ministry of Culture, Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Liviko Ltd.