Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 26, 2003, No. 72, p. 54, Culture Section

Landscape on the High Altar

Paintings by Leta Peer at the gallery "Voges + Partner"

It was certainly strange when Leta Peer starting capturing mountain landscapes in oil on wood a few years ago. And it was more than the reminiscence of a tradition. In the format of a postcard and adorned with a gold edge, these miniatures, created from photographs or memories of the landscape of her childhood, represented more than a description of reality. Although clearly referring to tradition, they were different from a romantic view of nature, inspiring reflection on distance and closeness, the viewing and experiencing of nature, and not least of all, on art and kitsch. However, the artist no longer makes it so easy for the viewer now.

In her large format works, which are currently on display at the gallery Voges + Partner in Frankfurt (Hanauer Landstrasse 190), the artist, born 1964 in Switzerland, largely dispenses with addressing refraction directly. Mountain panoramas, snow-covered peaks appear in a changing light in a realistic mode of painting in oil on canvas; against a broad sky, clouds gather, storming or whirling around the mountain, and sometimes a light blurs this scenery, capturing everything in a somewhat diffused center, so that the word sublime seems to be completely appropriate. Peer even intensifies this expanse and this distance by covering the picture with varnish.

In the smooth surfaces, one may well see an indication of the extent to which what was once called authentic experience and unmediated view, has meanwhile been superseded by second-hand experience. Nature seems more unreachable than ever before. Yet despite all the technical skill and masterly painting, one is somewhat puzzled by some of the works with their proximity to romantic tradition. The most convincing pictures are those, in which the selected segments ought to be called unfortunate, where they involve the attempt to depict alpine landscapes; where they resist accord with the expanse, the panorama, where the sky, clouds and snow-covered abysses almost flow into one another, or a peak only just stretches into the picture, so that it seems almost abstract.

The more unambiguous a picture is, the more ambivalent the viewer's feelings. It is clearly evident in Leta Peer's photographs that she knows how to counter this hallowed solemnity with humor. Here she has mounted her paintings in pictures of high altars, where they replace the religious pictures. Illuminated by candles, crowned by a crucifix and framed in gold, a further elevation hardly seems possible, as the landscapes become images of what cannot be depicted, as the manipulation can be read as a self-assured artistic act.

Christoph Schütte

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