לאו ריי - וילנה 2010    

 

Leo Ray, Paintings, Drawings

St. John street Gallery

4-30 January 2010

Curator. Violeta Simulyniene

 

http://www.respublika.lt/lt/naujienos/kultura/kulturos_naujienos/nuo_drambliu_iki_rembranto/

 

Free translation 

 

The acquaintance with Leo Ray's paintings, drawings and graphics, which are exhibited in St. John Street Gallery, is a moody

journey with a clever and ironic travel fellow, who loves merry paradoxes. It is a journey through his own life. 

 

You can see no more than he allows you. However, the author is  generous, his fantasy is endless, it is inviting us to look further, what is awaiting there after a turn...

 

The spaces of the gallery extend in enfilades, its walls with bigger and smaller niches fit for this kind of journey very well. A journey of intriguing, surprising, joyous and unexpected revelations, sometimes demanding to stop or even to go back, because one understands that the author for some reason wants you  to meet the two-legged creatures, funny elephants with protruding ears, angels and dogs. He tells his own life story, which begins by his self-portrait with a cat. There has been a lot of things: biblical journeys, friendly talks with Rembrandt and this blue rain, wetting a woman, a bird and a dog...

 

We had an opportunuty to get acquainted with the artist's drawings and calligraphy  in the LA Gallery few years ago. Algirdas Petrulis (a painter, professor-emerytus, 90 years old -- translator`s remark), had wondered then: such an original and strong talent, where does it comes from? Such a playful, primitive form and such an intellect? 

Professor Gurskas was the one who knew the answer: Leo Ray was one of his talented students, who later emigrated to Tel Aviv. By the way, the teacher humbly said that he was not sure if he could call the artist his pupil. L. Ray defies these doubts:"Professor Gurskas is my favorite, beloved teacher. While learning calligraphy with him, I learned to paint". An unexpected, a paradoxical admission. 

 

Leo Ray's drawings remind us again about his free, virtuoso hand. I think, that they could be defined as intimate diaries, moody etudes or improvisations. They surprise beholder by a lot of unexpected things, hidden in as-if-mundane landscapes. And they bring to him a joy of witnessing the possibilities of brush, pen and ink in the hands of a virtuoso.

 

Audrone Jablonskiene