On September 4 (Thursday), at 7 p.m., Vilnius art space “GODÒ gallery” presents artist Leo Ray’s solo exhibition of drawings “Memory Box“.
Leo Ray’s exhibition “Memory Box“, composed of works never before shown, created over the last decade, highlights the artist as a master of the single brushstroke. The title of the exhibition was inspired by the unstoppable passage of time itself. “Art is a connection between the future and the past,” the author says. “We are a fragile pedestrian bridge between them. By the way, we imagine past cultures not so much through their written heritage as through their visual art. Just as we judge the 17th-century Dutch through the paintings of Vermeer and Rembrandt, so too will future generations judge us. I suspect their opinion of us won’t be very flattering… But art is not created to please future critics. It simply is.”
The circumstances of Leo Ray’s life — dividing his time between Lithuania and Tel Aviv, Israel — shaped a spiritual state that is easy to guess: a constant longing (in Israel for Lithuania, in Lithuania for Israel). Leo Ray is an artist we could metaphorically call someone who gazes at the horizon. And the horizon line itself is the line of longing. Nothing evokes drama in a person more than longing, and drama always convinces with its authenticity. Thus, a single gesture-stroke of the artist is enough to create a cat’s smile, another stroke — to stop a tear in the eye of a sketched lady. In his scroll-drawings, the sense of drama in the narrative is particularly strong — every figure, be it a bird, dog, cat, or human, experiences impermanence. The process itself suggests this, as the artist draws on a rolling scroll of paper (10 meters long), pushing everything else into the past.
When drawing, Leo primarily uses a brush; often, he emphasizes the painterly quality of a drawing with thin, sharp pen lines, but the brush remains the main tool. A line can be transparent, thin, wide, heavy, light, dark — but above all, alive and calligraphic. Leo Ray studied physics at Vilnius University, and later art at Vilnius Academy of Arts, where he discovered the love of his life — calligraphy. Calligraphy taught him to catch the horizon line in a single breath and create a drawing in one motion. It seems enough for him simply to inhale and exhale, and the drawing is already there! His evident attention to light, sensitivity to half-tones and shadows, may well be the influence of physics. Imagine a painter, standing among other artists in an open-air workshop, looking at the clear evening summer sky and declaring that this is not its true color. The sky is not really blue.
Leo Ray’s creative emotional drive is accompanied by knowledge and science. For him, the natural aim as an artist is to forget everything he knows and strive for inner freedom: to trust not so much the head as the hand that holds the brush, leaving behind a line, a stroke, a mark. This elusive force, awakening in a person the will to create, is the hope of changing at least something in an increasingly harsh and deteriorating world. Leo Ray says: “Art turns our gaze toward higher spheres, allows us to break free from daily routine, or, in Picasso’s words, blows the dust off it. Art turns our gaze away from physiology and the finiteness of life, testifying to the existence of a higher, incomprehensible — I would say unknowable — realm. Let this be a kind of escapism. If I have brightened a few moments for a few or a few dozen close people, that is my mission as an artist.”
For decades, Leo Ray has often been compared to Pablo Picasso — both draw inspiration from the idea of the freedom of children’s drawings. Yet, upon closer look, this similarity proves to be only superficial. Ray aesthetically interprets the spirit of children’s drawings, emphasizing spontaneity, but he does so lyrically, creating deeply personal stories of his own time. Therefore, we might prefer to call him not Picasso’s brother, but rather a more distant cousin. Into such an “artistic kinship” we could also include Paul Klee and Jean Dubuffet — artists who, like Ray, abandoned realism in favor of free forms. Yet their freedom is never accidental: beneath their work lies knowledge of anatomy and a strong sense of composition, making even the freest, even seemingly naïve forms convincing in their professionalism.
Curator Aistė Gabrielė Černiūtė
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About the artist:
Leo Ray was born in Vilnius in 1950. He graduated from Vilnius University and Vilnius Academy of Arts. Since 1991, he has lived in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is a painter, graphic artist, and calligrapher, and has also previously worked in medal art and small-scale sculpture.
He has held more than 30 solo exhibitions in Lithuania, Israel, the USA, and Switzerland. In 2006 and 2014, two museum exhibition catalogs were published. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Israel, Lithuania, the USA, Japan, Finland, France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, and more.
His works are in private collections worldwide, as well as in public collections at: Vilnius Art Museum, Kaunas Literature Museum, Telšiai Alka Museum, Israel Museum (Jerusalem, Israel), Zagreb Museum of Arts (Croatia), Balchik City Gallery (Bulgaria), Grafikens Hus (Mariefred, Sweden), Pushkin Museum (Moscow, Russia), Vuchetich Sculpture Fund (Moscow, Russia), Florean Museum (Baia Mare, Romania), Museum of Israeli Art (Ramat Gan, Israel), Ein Harod Museum (Israel).
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The exhibition will run until October 2; admission is free.
Gallery address: Malūnų st. 6A, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Opening hours: Tue–Fri 1:00–7:00 p.m., Sat 12:00–6:00 p.m.