Orit LIVNÉ 's still life drawings lure the viewer into an intensely private, dark and enigmatic world. Her simple yet meticulously composed pencil drawings act out a drama of light and shade, space and immateriality, upon lead-saturated paper canvases. Light, as a subject in Livné 's drawings, always seems to emanate from within. The partial light which she allows to seep through the black leaded plane acts upon the opaque surface-matter, defining form, planes and substance and bringing the objects of perception into being. The effort of the light to break through the drawings' surface imbues the representational space and the objects within it with a precarious inner glow, a sense of transience - fleeting moment of metaphysical grace which, however intense, is soon to be absorbed back into undifferentiated darkness. |
