Water 84 © Denise Lira-Ratinoff
ephemerides
2011
ON DENISE LIRA-RATINOFF'S ART
When I first met Denise I was reminded of Giacometti’s Walking Woman. It was not really the external comparison, but the underlying ideals that are represented in his bronze, that I also found in Denise. She is thin, in motion, unencumbered, fragile looking, yet made of bronze, feet deeply rooted in the earth. When I came to know her better this view persisted and deepened.
Both Giacometti and Denise are keenly aware of the fragility of life itself, and they continuously express this through their art. Denise uses her camera treat to Nature in the same manner that Giacometti treats the human subject in bronze.
Nature and Environmental Awareness
Nature is the subject of Denise Lira-Ratinoff’s art. It is the ideal of purity, awe, splendor, and mystery. Hers is a pantheist ideal, “Nature is my theme, my home, our home, is the cycle of time of any place, nature is my religion.” Like the poets and landscape painters before her, she seeks Arcadia (Aρκαδία), an elusive ideal found in Nature, captured only by the best artists. Denise is in this continuum, but with the modern twist of our contemporary notion of environmental awareness of the fragility of the blue planet.
Rather than exist in the confines of a studio like the Romantic landscape painters such as John Constable, Denise inserts herself in situ in order to capture Nature itself. Traveling to the most extreme locations she lugs her equipment in boats and on glaciers working from dawn to dusk. Like the Romantics before her, the clouds, streams, and waterfalls enthrall Denise. In addition she shows us a deeper spiritual meaning: we must see and believe that our fragile blue planet is dying. The hope is that in the little time we have remaining we will save it.
Freedom too is an unrelenting theme of her life and art. As a young girl her father painted a seagull and wrote on the canvas “Nonita you are as free as a seagull”. She and her companion, live simply unencumbered by consumerism. They travel often and with their overall meticulous organization they have pared their load to its simplest terms. They are fearless to travel to the most remote corners of the planet.
Essential Forms and Technology
A second aspect of Denise’s work is her attention to the essential forms found in nature. The line, geometrical shapes (rectangle, triangle, circle), crystalline structures, and plains of color are captured in breathtaking simplicity. Like Cezanne, she seeks to communicate the truth through the unalloyed expression of her deepest artistic vision. The truth here is a modern conception: profoundly personal, sensatory, sincere.
As a result, this sincerity leads her to resist all temptations to finesse the image. Manipulation of color or shape or transposition does not exist in her work. Nor are the compositions ever staged. It is the unvarnished alchemy of the subject, the light and her eye that makes her artwork.
This love of purity is at peace with technology. Denise will embrace any tool that will help her achieve the best results. The equipment she uses for her work is the state of the art. Even her body of work is stored in the cyber cloud, which she also finds more ecological. We see in her the convergence of technological developments and artistic vision to achieve a global awareness.
The Trilogy
Denise has developed a philosophy for her naturalistic conviction that she calls The Trilogy. It is based on the continuum of life and death as expressed in glaciers, waters and deserts.
The glacier represents a pristine form of Nature, cold and pure. It holds the potential of vast quantities of fresh water, the essential component of life itself. Her images of the icebergs awaken us to the fragility of our own time as we see the glacier die; the icebergs are calved off. Her studies of these floes poignantly demonstrate the fragility of time and existence. Her intuition goes far beyond the idea of immutable time; she aims to encapsulate the moment. The notion of hic et nunc (here and now) is what she shows us. The image of the Iceberg serves as a metaphor for a moment in time. It changes before our eyes. One is reminded of the Pre-Socratic notion that everything flows (Τα Πάντα ρει), as the philosopher Heraclitus declares: “Everything changes and nothing remains still .... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream".
The Waters represent the middle phase in the unending dance of birth and rebirth, life and death. It is the in-between phase where we exist in the human realm. In her art, a nagging feeling suggests to us that it will soon disappear, and will become a memory.
The last moment in the trilogy, the desert, represents the absence of the water that brings us to death of life itself. The cycle is completed, only to start again millennia later. Such has been the history of the planet.
Biographical Details and Influences
In 1997 Denise had a premonition concerning a large round foreign object in her head. This inspired a series of paintings: heads in black and white with round objects inside. These intuitive and introspective self-portraits diagnosed a large round tumor in her brain. Once the surgeons removed it, her perspective completely changed, and her focus shifted to nature.
This experience led her to a reality, a second sight, with a new wonder and awe for the natural environment. The post-operatory period afforded her the opportunity for deep introspection. She had time to think deeply about the essential qualities of life and art. This experience permitted her to come to peace with herself, develop her intuition with a keener sense of subtlety, and then embrace the physical reality with abandon. She lost momentarily the sight. One is reminded of Monet when he said that he wished to have been born blind and then suddenly to have gained his sight so that he could have begun to paint without knowing what the objects were that he had before him.
After her operation, Denise, like Jackson Pollock, abandoned easel and palette. For both it was a revelation.
She went one step further. She gave up the painting and took up photography.
As the basis for all life, her camera captures a panorama of light. Like Monet, she uses a high viewpoint eliminating the foreground, and in most cases the horizon line. Both artists share a style of composition in which the light spectrum alone radiantly defines the image. Denise’s keen eye appreciates the wonder of sight itself in a special way that is only possible for someone who knew blindness.
Travel and Photography
The British and other European Romantics conceived “travel” as a rite of passage. These travels take the voyager on an adventure that prove character, challenge conventions, and open eyes to a new way of understanding the human experience. Denise seeks to take this a step further, and not merely pass through a foreign country, but to be acclimatized to the culture and the daily life of the people she visits. Whereas the Romantic traveler seeks out what is exotic and diverse, and celebrates these differences highlighting a new environment and light, Denise looks for those common elements, what is consistent in the human condition. She desires to transmit her mirror of nature in a universal language.
Taking up the camera and continuing to extensive travel extensively, she has not confined herself to a studio in a new city. Her studio is Nature in its most raw and extreme state.
at first sight and The Other
at first sight is not only an ongoing cycle of her exhibitions, but a powerful concept. Denise uses it to describe one’s first and genuine encounter with the image. at first sight is a model she uses better to understand the first impact, the visceral reaction that one experiences the first time eyes are laid upon the image. The human world with its languages based on concepts is put aside to pay attention to our intuition and to the power of the image itself. Concepts, particularly language, are set aside to give priority to the image’s supremacy over the human subject. At the end of her exhibitions Denise is interested in the viewer’s reaction to her work, so that she can gain insight as to how her work is actually being perceived.
There is a second theory important to understand Denise Lira-Ratinoff’s work: her constant concern for “The Other”. The Other can be a living thing: a real person, known or unknown from any culture; or a creature, a plant or a matter that shares the images that are simultaneously universal and real. Her concern for The Other is her principal motive for creating art, and is constant in her life as an artist. Denise is not interested in the imaginary world, but in Nature itself. This interest it is always present in her work.
Denise’s images are as simple as they are beautiful. While one may refer the philosophical constructions she has made to serve as a way of creating and understanding the human interaction with the natural world. Even her own biography serves us in providing co-ordinates of time and space, hic et nunc, as we encounter the majesty of glaciers, waters, and deserts.
Denise’s art lies in the factual awareness of our changing environment. It is also a coherence between her life, work, and subject-matter that gives her credibility. Denise inserts herself into these dangerous and inhospitable conditions, the wind, the screeching crush of ice, the below-zero temperatures. The viewer is able to share in her sacrifice and her sense of pain; yet somehow we are also experience relief from such pain.
The environment will continue its march to its conclusion. We may slow or hasten her progress by our actions as we live in some fashion of sustainability. It is clear that Denise’s work has not only heightened our awareness of such matters, but encapsulated moments of history of our blue planet.
© Mar Sanchez-Ramon, PhD
New York, February 26, 2011
2010
ONGOING PROJECT | "at first sight III" | TRILOGY
Denise’s next exhibition "at first sight III" is part of a trilogy, based in a dialogue that questions public consciousness, the importance of time, of life and death, headed in the direction of natural disasters.
“Water is one of the main forces within my proposals, which becomes a process of discovery and an appalling way to show reality.
Without water, there is no life and here is where the constant search of this project begins. This is a reality that needs no translation. It is a universal language that could reach extinction.
This is the mystery of nature, which I present devoid of identity. I only indicate the presence of the captured instant, insisting on creating consciousness regarding the importance of time.
Time is the backbone of this trilogy. The unexpected and the unrepeatable is what produce the intrigue, the questioning and the dialogue. This is what is essential and the combination that I search for between the simplicity of each image and reality.”
Part of the installation is composed of light boxes which purpose is to emphasize time, in terms of the life of each image and how these images disappear one the light is turned off. The meaning of the disappearance makes each photograph more intimate, thus creating a closer bond with the audience.
This multidisciplinary installation will be representing the diversity of water in different oceans and in addition, what was water at some point in time and no longer is.
The series Glaciers is the bond between the three stages.
ON DENISE LIRA-RATINOFF'S ART
When I first met Denise I was reminded of Giacometti’s Walking Woman. It was not really the external comparison, but the underlying ideals that are represented in his bronze, that I also found in Denise. She is thin, in motion, unencumbered, fragile looking, yet made of bronze, feet deeply rooted in the earth. When I came to know her better this view persisted and deepened.
Both Giacometti and Denise are keenly aware of the fragility of life itself, and they continuously express this through their art. Denise uses her camera treat to Nature in the same manner that Giacometti treats the human subject in bronze.
Nature and Environmental Awareness
Nature is the subject of Denise Lira-Ratinoff’s art. It is the ideal of purity, awe, splendor, and mystery. Hers is a pantheist ideal, “Nature is my theme, my home, our home, is the cycle of time of any place, nature is my religion.” Like the poets and landscape painters before her, she seeks Arcadia (Aρκαδία), an elusive ideal found in Nature, captured only by the best artists. Denise is in this continuum, but with the modern twist of our contemporary notion of environmental awareness of the fragility of the blue planet.
Rather than exist in the confines of a studio like the Romantic landscape painters such as John Constable, Denise inserts herself in situ in order to capture Nature itself. Traveling to the most extreme locations she lugs her equipment in boats and on glaciers working from dawn to dusk. Like the Romantics before her, the clouds, streams, and waterfalls enthrall Denise. In addition she shows us a deeper spiritual meaning: we must see and believe that our fragile blue planet is dying. The hope is that in the little time we have remaining we will save it.
Freedom too is an unrelenting theme of her life and art. As a young girl her father painted a seagull and wrote on the canvas “Nonita you are as free as a seagull”. She and her companion, live simply unencumbered by consumerism. They travel often and with their overall meticulous organization they have pared their load to its simplest terms. They are fearless to travel to the most remote corners of the planet.
Essential Forms and Technology
A second aspect of Denise’s work is her attention to the essential forms found in nature. The line, geometrical shapes (rectangle, triangle, circle), crystalline structures, and plains of color are captured in breathtaking simplicity. Like Cezanne, she seeks to communicate the truth through the unalloyed expression of her deepest artistic vision. The truth here is a modern conception: profoundly personal, sensatory, sincere.
As a result, this sincerity leads her to resist all temptations to finesse the image. Manipulation of color or shape or transposition does not exist in her work. Nor are the compositions ever staged. It is the unvarnished alchemy of the subject, the light and her eye that makes her artwork.
This love of purity is at peace with technology. Denise will embrace any tool that will help her achieve the best results. The equipment she uses for her work is the state of the art. Even her body of work is stored in the cyber cloud, which she also finds more ecological. We see in her the convergence of technological developments and artistic vision to achieve a global awareness.
The Trilogy
Denise has developed a philosophy for her naturalistic conviction that she calls The Trilogy. It is based on the continuum of life and death as expressed in glaciers, waters and deserts.
The glacier represents a pristine form of Nature, cold and pure. It holds the potential of vast quantities of fresh water, the essential component of life itself. Her images of the icebergs awaken us to the fragility of our own time as we see the glacier die; the icebergs are calved off. Her studies of these floes poignantly demonstrate the fragility of time and existence. Her intuition goes far beyond the idea of immutable time; she aims to encapsulate the moment. The notion of hic et nunc (here and now) is what she shows us. The image of the Iceberg serves as a metaphor for a moment in time. It changes before our eyes. One is reminded of the Pre-Socratic notion that everything flows (Τα Πάντα ρει), as the philosopher Heraclitus declares: “Everything changes and nothing remains still .... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream".
The Waters represent the middle phase in the unending dance of birth and rebirth, life and death. It is the in-between phase where we exist in the human realm. In her art, a nagging feeling suggests to us that it will soon disappear, and will become a memory.
The last moment in the trilogy, the desert, represents the absence of the water that brings us to death of life itself. The cycle is completed, only to start again millennia later. Such has been the history of the planet.
Biographical Details and Influences
In 1997 Denise had a premonition concerning a large round foreign object in her head. This inspired a series of paintings: heads in black and white with round objects inside. These intuitive and introspective self-portraits diagnosed a large round tumor in her brain. Once the surgeons removed it, her perspective completely changed, and her focus shifted to nature.
This experience led her to a reality, a second sight, with a new wonder and awe for the natural environment. The post-operatory period afforded her the opportunity for deep introspection. She had time to think deeply about the essential qualities of life and art. This experience permitted her to come to peace with herself, develop her intuition with a keener sense of subtlety, and then embrace the physical reality with abandon. She lost momentarily the sight. One is reminded of Monet when he said that he wished to have been born blind and then suddenly to have gained his sight so that he could have begun to paint without knowing what the objects were that he had before him.
After her operation, Denise, like Jackson Pollock, abandoned easel and palette. For both it was a revelation.
She went one step further. She gave up the painting and took up photography.
As the basis for all life, her camera captures a panorama of light. Like Monet, she uses a high viewpoint eliminating the foreground, and in most cases the horizon line. Both artists share a style of composition in which the light spectrum alone radiantly defines the image. Denise’s keen eye appreciates the wonder of sight itself in a special way that is only possible for someone who knew blindness.
Travel and Photography
The British and other European Romantics conceived “travel” as a rite of passage. These travels take the voyager on an adventure that prove character, challenge conventions, and open eyes to a new way of understanding the human experience. Denise seeks to take this a step further, and not merely pass through a foreign country, but to be acclimatized to the culture and the daily life of the people she visits. Whereas the Romantic traveler seeks out what is exotic and diverse, and celebrates these differences highlighting a new environment and light, Denise looks for those common elements, what is consistent in the human condition. She desires to transmit her mirror of nature in a universal language.
Taking up the camera and continuing to extensive travel extensively, she has not confined herself to a studio in a new city. Her studio is Nature in its most raw and extreme state.
at first sight and The Other
at first sight is not only an ongoing cycle of her exhibitions, but a powerful concept. Denise uses it to describe one’s first and genuine encounter with the image. at first sight is a model she uses better to understand the first impact, the visceral reaction that one experiences the first time eyes are laid upon the image. The human world with its languages based on concepts is put aside to pay attention to our intuition and to the power of the image itself. Concepts, particularly language, are set aside to give priority to the image’s supremacy over the human subject. At the end of her exhibitions Denise is interested in the viewer’s reaction to her work, so that she can gain insight as to how her work is actually being perceived.
There is a second theory important to understand Denise Lira-Ratinoff’s work: her constant concern for “The Other”. The Other can be a living thing: a real person, known or unknown from any culture; or a creature, a plant or a matter that shares the images that are simultaneously universal and real. Her concern for The Other is her principal motive for creating art, and is constant in her life as an artist. Denise is not interested in the imaginary world, but in Nature itself. This interest it is always present in her work.
Denise’s images are as simple as they are beautiful. While one may refer the philosophical constructions she has made to serve as a way of creating and understanding the human interaction with the natural world. Even her own biography serves us in providing co-ordinates of time and space, hic et nunc, as we encounter the majesty of glaciers, waters, and deserts.
Denise’s art lies in the factual awareness of our changing environment. It is also a coherence between her life, work, and subject-matter that gives her credibility. Denise inserts herself into these dangerous and inhospitable conditions, the wind, the screeching crush of ice, the below-zero temperatures. The viewer is able to share in her sacrifice and her sense of pain; yet somehow we are also experience relief from such pain.
The environment will continue its march to its conclusion. We may slow or hasten her progress by our actions as we live in some fashion of sustainability. It is clear that Denise’s work has not only heightened our awareness of such matters, but encapsulated moments of history of our blue planet.
© Mar Sanchez-Ramon, PhD
New York, February 26, 2011
2010
ONGOING PROJECT | "at first sight III" | TRILOGY
Denise’s next exhibition "at first sight III" is part of a trilogy, based in a dialogue that questions public consciousness, the importance of time, of life and death, headed in the direction of natural disasters.
“Water is one of the main forces within my proposals, which becomes a process of discovery and an appalling way to show reality.
Without water, there is no life and here is where the constant search of this project begins. This is a reality that needs no translation. It is a universal language that could reach extinction.
This is the mystery of nature, which I present devoid of identity. I only indicate the presence of the captured instant, insisting on creating consciousness regarding the importance of time.
Time is the backbone of this trilogy. The unexpected and the unrepeatable is what produce the intrigue, the questioning and the dialogue. This is what is essential and the combination that I search for between the simplicity of each image and reality.”
Part of the installation is composed of light boxes which purpose is to emphasize time, in terms of the life of each image and how these images disappear one the light is turned off. The meaning of the disappearance makes each photograph more intimate, thus creating a closer bond with the audience.
This multidisciplinary installation will be representing the diversity of water in different oceans and in addition, what was water at some point in time and no longer is.
The series Glaciers is the bond between the three stages.