Liisi Örd’s exhibition “Lightscapes” brings together the author’s latest work, completed this year, which represents a harmonious balance between abstractionism and realism.

At the heart of the works is light, abstract on the one hand and a real phenomenon on the other, as the title of the exhibition suggests. Örd shares a classical Impressionist-like curiosity about light and its movement, but French parks and poppy fields have been replaced by Estonian marshes and riverbanks. The landscapes on display at the exhibition are unpretentious and sincere. Within them lies the Estonians’ own sense of nature, which creates recognisable impressions – bright, pre-dusk skies, lights playing through a tree’s crown on the grass, iridescent colours on water, a glowing sunset... Örd and her photographs act as a mirror between nature and the viewer, undiluted by the emotion experienced in the fresh air. 

Emphasising the motifs, Örd’s pastel colours on canvas create an interplay of light and shade not only within the work but also on its surface – the colours blend and evoke contrasts, and the brisk brush strokes convey a flowing motion. At times, however, Örd’s mostly allusive works are so elaborate that the fresh grass growing on the riverbank feels tangible, and the sunlight shining on the surface of the water seems to caress your cheeks. Titles of the paintings, such as “Movement,” “Reflection,” “Contrasts,” “Light,” and “Silence,” help to open the artist’s oeuvre and indicate which phenomenon first attracted the author’s attention at the motive. Liisi Örd tells us more about how the exhibition came about: 

“The dimension of nature. I first sense the reflection of light on forms, the inverted reality and the tension behind the motive. My vision and perception are abstract, I am inattentive to detail, I have no sense of space, but I penetrate the object, and I have learnt most of all to grasp the light around which the whole begins to create itself.

I’m not saying the motive is irrelevant. Nature is complex, nature is pretentious, and its content and form are honest. Her northern manifestations and changes blend into one with the psyche, and you understand these conditions, think along, miss and feel in the rhythm of nature.

For me, the game of light is about movement. The light, by its nature, is shapeless; on its own, it becomes an abstraction, perhaps even an unchanged dimension. The forms around it mean this movement and journey, which otherwise would be difficult to explain. But I always feel that this abstraction is no stranger. At some point, I’ve been there.”

Liisi Örd (1984) obtained a Master’s degree in the Painting Department of the University of Tartu in 2011. For more than a decade, her works of art have been presented at various personal and group exhibitions in Tartu, Tallinn and Pärnu. The artist herself describes her style of painting as broken realism, where at times she is closer to the representation of the object and at other times plays more on the borders of abstraction. It all depends on what is currently considered important in the material. Liisi Örd considers a nature painting to be very close to her heart, especially painted from nature; according to the artist, it is a much more complex genre based on experience than perhaps expected. She describes her thoughts as follows: “The more time goes by, the more I’ve come to understand what a stunted, slightly melancholic and very quiet northern landscape has to offer. It is not only reflected in the natural landscape but in the whole environment and the people within it. This interests me. Art sometimes creates a greater reality than reality itself and opens up layers that the eye cannot perceive.”

Curator: Piia Ausman

Text: Pia Pajus