Speech for the Opening of the Exhibition "Leta Peer: 8 Serigraphs"
at the Chur City Gallery on December 10, 1996

In the exhibition "Under 36", shown by the Bündner Art Museum, an inherently closed group of works by Leta Peer dialoged with paintings, sculptures and objects by Markus Casanova, Charlie Lutz and Pascale Wiedemann. The eight narrow, high-format panel pictures proved to be autonomous, yet they conjoined in both form and content into a harmonious series. The pictures beautifully revealed Leta Peer's artistic strategy. Meticulously chosen models from art, from architecture, and even from trivial culture were purposely employed, images and materials in multilayered combinations were transformed into a unique view of things. Despite the seemingly simple "legibility" of objects and text fragments conglomerated into a whole, in reference to the picture structure and subject matter, the paintings proved to be quite complex, as the different layers overlapped and became mutually contingent.

The exhibition with the eight large serigraphs in both portrait format and landscape format, which we are opening today, is situated in a particular concrete context: without exception, what we see here are the same motifs in a slightly modified form, which have distinguished the glass window front of the new Fürstenwald cemetery chapel in Chur, a stringent cement cube, since early November. In order to accommodate the imposing glass surface, structured both horizontally and vertically, the artist decided to use the modern technique of silk-screen printing. The individual elements, subtly differentiated in their colors, which mutually overlap on the one hand and are recurrent on the other, are composed of figurative and abstract motifs taken from three world religions. These are a Madonna with Child, the so-called Madonna of the Sea by the Renaissance artist Filippo Lippi, a segment from a faience mosaic from the Alhambra, the fortress of Islam in conquered Andalusia, and finally a terra-cotta relief from the school of Mathura in India, with depictions from the life of Buddha. As a result of blow-up, a massive enlargement, the screening and the mutual overlapping, the contrary "worlds", languages of forms and iconographies conjoin to form a unified whole. The muted, warm coloration is not unlike old, weathered frescos. Depending on the intensity of the light, the effect shifts from a strong presence to an almost only vaguely perceptible, transparent veil of color. With this ambitious work, the artists makes a fascinating and rich contribution to the discussion of art in public space and, in particular, to the difficulties that contemporary art has in dealing with sacral spaces and church windows. An outstanding quality of Leta Peer's "church window" stems from the fact that the art work is based on a pleasant unobtrusiveness. In other words, it supports the language of architecture without becoming subservient to it, and it proves to be so manifold, in the truest sense of the word, that initially "only" the shadowed veil of color spreads its pleasant comforting effect, and the more complex, iconographic, but also formal moments - such as the very stimulating interplay of positive and negative forms - only reveal themselves when one looks more closely, sinks into them and takes them in.

It is a characteristic of a glass window that it stands as a transparent membrane between inside and outside space, first becoming effective when light falls on it. The serigraphs printed on paper are different. Although the same screens were used for them, because of the segment, the stronger presence of the colors, and the format, in which the screening is manifested quite differently, the effect is an almost completely different one. "Brush Stroke Exercises" is what Lenz Klotz once called one of his paintings, which was created when the artist felt it would be a waste to wash out a paintbrush that was still full of paint from a different picture. With the remaining paint, he quickly painted a new, small painting - and certainly not the worst. Leta Peer also continued the work that she did with the glass windows of the Fürstenwald chapel with the existing tools and motifs. The result is what you see before your eyes in this exhibition with the eight serigraphs - works that prove to be independent and innovative despite their close connection with art in the sacral building, art works that derive their potential, not least of all, from the tension between cool distance and emotionality.

Beat Stutzer, Bündner Art Museum Chur