Leta Peer  -  Along with Simon
Exhibition at the Galerie Ruth Leuchter, Düsseldorf
11 April - 7 June 2008

In her paintings and photographic works Swiss artist Leta Peer reflects the relationship between image and reproduction, realisation and idealisation. Using a limited number of motifs and subtle changes of perspective she examines the concepts of identity and home and confronts subjective experiences and objective measures. Since 1999/2000 her paintings have focused exclusively on the Lower Engadin landscape, the region in which she grew up.

Leta Peer concentrates upon two subjects, the jagged or snow covered mountain tops and their cloudscapes, and the green meadows with blossoms and flowers – as such, topoi generally identified with Switzerland, and equally associated with the idyllic and dramatic, with narrative and pathos. The views and insights alternate between (indentifiable) portraits and typological documentation, zoom into plants and keep a certain distance from the mountains. They maintain a physical, almost photographic presence and (as in the case of the bright red flowers) immediately dissolve into the convergence of brushstrokes and remain, under a glistening varnish, an artificial, constructed counterpart. They were created during a lengthy period of painterly dedication and of keeping a deliberating distance.

In this manner Leta Peer provides us with the panorama of a specific area which she strips of all civilisation and portrays as unspoilt and as a state devoid of all temporal conditionality. She unveils, in the interplay of light, massive materiality, and decorporated atmosphere, the essence of this landscape. Her paintings examine the question of to what extent traditional motifs with cultural and conceptual connotations can still be received today without prejudice and as currently valid.

For this examination of her motifs in the context of her own background Leta Peer continues to use photography. Using temporary installative presentations of (small format) paintings which she has documented photographically, the last years have seen the emergence of autonomous photographic works in which she digitally integrates her own paintings into found situations. Her most recent series now lies at the heart of the exhibition at the Galerie Ruth Leichter in Duesseldorf. The “Mirrors” are made up of five medium scale photographic pictures which show the autonomous factualities of interiors, valuable picture frames, and paintings – the five works forming the “Along with Simon” series – as plausible unities.

What we see are scenes of demolition in a ramshackle room. In each of these rooms, characterised by bare walls, piping, racks, and open passages, hangs an ornate frame housing, instead of a mirror, one of Leta Peer’s paintings. These paintings capture the streets, houses, the surrounding scenery of her village, in a very unspectacular fashion and in the light of day.

In this explicit artificiality of photographs between reality and fabrication everything has both a compositional and a contentual meaning. The union of ruinous modesty, aggressive presence, and the luxurious element touches upon different areas of public and private life. Contrasting the interior and exterior calls upon our emotional, psychological world; alternative concepts are addressed. – But Leta Peer also approaches these pictures in a biographical way. The paintings are based upon photographs taken by her deceased brother who, in this manner, foresaw the path to his grave in their Engadin home village.

Leta Peers works always arise from the tension between privateness, being personally affected, and common visual validity. With the recurrent, allegedly conventional subjects which run contrary to our society (its fleetingness, speed, fashions, codes) and by using the ‘classical’ medium of painting Leta Peer generates artistic contributions of great intensity in today’s world.

Leta Peer was born in Winterthur in 1964 and studied in Basel. Since 1994 she has continuously been invited by galleries, Kunstvereine (art associations), and museums to show her work. Following her 2005 exhibition this is her second solo exhibition at the Galerie Ruth Leuchter.