Eva Sakuma - Shadow of an Image 1.6.-30.6.2020
Shadow of an Image is both the name of the exhibit and of one of the works presented by artist Eva Sakuma at her third independent exhibit at the praguekabinet gallery.
Eva Sakuma’s paintings find themselves in an interspace where darkness is not the antithesis of light, as the two belong to and complement each other. Trees, plants, stones, water, sky, night, day, dawn and dusk, the forest and its scent, silence and shade are, together with music, not only a source of inspiration in the artist’s life, but also a mysterious world at which one can only look without the possibility of true knowledge. In her paintings, Eva Sakuma creates imaginary spaces with abstracted fragments of reality, which as a residue of objectivity target the viewer’s subconscious and give her paintings greater intensity of the perception of the shadows of forgotten ancestors and the light of the present.
The current exhibit differs from those of the past mainly due to the significant internal coherence of the exhibited works, as they create a compact whole, both in form and content. The paeonies found in almost every painting are a sort of metaphor for happiness, which is lost through its simple duration. At the same time, however, their captivating beauty forces the viewer to stop and realise the importance of a kind of stagnation in the ceaseless effort to progress in the sense of emancipation from natural dependence. Though it may seem at first glance that paeony blossoms are the main motif in this cycle of paintings, they are rather much more of a pretext for inner coherence and a reminder of the fact that everything is connected. In the same way, a piece of one painting is reflected in any of the nine works, a fragment of one is a part of the another, in each of which the memory of the other is hidden. In some places the paeonies are black and white, in others they are in colour; they appear in the background or, conversely, in the foreground of a painting, in the frame and outside of the frame, as if it was not possible to grasp and define the beginning or end of the story of the old paeonies. Despite that, they attract the observer’s eye not only with their sensual beauty, but also with their transience, and thus they become an ideal symbol of the delicate mission of bringing to the viewer an opportunity for confrontations. At the mental level, they remind us of the world and traditional ideas of its depiction, though at the same time they are free of realism and concreteness and therefore much better find their way on the emotional level to the basic feelings and concepts of which our lives are composed. We establish a relationship between our inner world and the surrounding landscape, thanks to which we are more aware than ever of the temporary nature and transience of human actions. Eva Sakuma's paintings transcend mankind, shifting reality into the inner, deeper and mutual relationship of humanity with nature.
Exhibition curator Ela Suárez Illerias
