Regionale 4

Regionale 4 / 13 Houses Show Art from the Region Nov. 30, 2003 to Jan. 4, 2004

EXCELLENT

Homage

Leta Peer: "Devoted to a Landscape #7", 2002. Sublime mountain world, golden altar – is this exalted landscape painting suffocating in the fragrance of incense again? Not quite. It is more an expert gaze gauging itself again against the lines of flight of history without obeisance to the dictate of the medium: rarely have painting and photography been so cleverly queried from close proximity as in the new works by Leta Peer.

The artist inserts the landscapes digitally in pictures of late Medieval high altars. Through this glorification, what is sublime is relativized in the sanctity of the sacral place that has become suspicious, and it casts off cultural encumbrances (landscape painting has always been suspected of being a mere replica). The idea of shifting the context is nothing new in itself. Those who know, however, that Peer's mighty mountains are hand-sized miniatures on wood in the original, which she has in turn painted from memory or from photographs, will be delighted to find the true magnitude in this work: the capability of a subtle revaluation entirely devoid of aesthetic violence.

Alexander Marzahn
Kunst Raum Riehen.