17/07/2018 Severine Grosjean
Illustration is one of the most important forms of visual communication: it informs and finds, enchants and decorates, educates and inspires. Artists create incredibly diverse illustrations across a spectrum of styles and genres, taking advantage of a rich history and extraordinary innovations that have emerged in recent decades. In a world of digital communication where everything is accelerating, the way to expand evolves but to paraphrase a replica of the movie The Big Lebowski, “the illustrator remains”. The Latvian artist Paulis Liepa explores ideas in the fields of architecture, color and form. These works are refined and modern capturing complex thoughts using simple lines and colors reflecting the geometry of industrial design and the Russian constructivist and modernist aesthetics. The impressions of everyday pieces and objects are deliberately echoing the aesthetics of the 1970s. He is a Latvian graphic artist of the new generation, working with the most basic graphic techniques – collography and cardboard cutting.
To amplify this “old age” effect, Paulis Liepa exposes his work to direct environmental influences – layers of coagulated glue, pieces of cardboard scraped with a knife, superimposed layers of paint, giving the impression that the works have been abandoned and forgotten and rediscovered today. With a subtle irony of the obsession of graphic artists for a perfect and aesthetic image, the works of Paulis Liepa “exceed” this label. In the works of Paulis Liepa, we can not distinguish a collection of signs which, conceptually and in their content, are a search for the truth. However, this battle of influence between cross sections and simplification of forms gives the impression of a cold and almost surgical calculation. In most of his works, Paulis creates series where the forms are repeated independently of their functions, this is the case of “Stars” and his last series entitled “Cubes”.
Thus, we realize that the graphic work of Paulis Lipea is an integral part of society. Graphic design is often the mirror of social and cultural contexts. It cannot, therefore, be an impasse in the study of these concrete objects, and in this sense cannot free itself from an approach of a “visual culture” that is too theoretical and disconnected from material reality.The work of the image, the sign, the layout, the setting in space are at the heart of the proposals of Paulis
Liepa. The approach of this orientation is characterized by the exploration of different creative processes, by the search for different writings Paulis Lipea promotes experimentation-like a laboratory to aim at the result of an answer to a given question: What is the truth?
Partnership: The Nomad Creative Projects
