MEDITATIVE ART 1993 -2014

Reet Varblane, art critic from Estonia wrote: In order to understand Aili Vint’s pure art, one has to have time, a wish to accept and an appropriate mental state. Light art is meditative this way. Clement Greenberg, the patron of pure art, should be happy as there is nothing else disturbing the viewing experience.

CLEAN YOUR EYES TO LIGHT

When your eyes dive into the clear light, you clean your eyes from the everyday. Just like a wine taster, who rinses his mouth with water, before tasting a new kind of wine.

It was 1993. I had just bought three very expensive sheets of snow white paper to make some graphic prints for the Osaka Print Triennial. In my studio, I placed all three rolls of paper on the table, and I noticed that the glow of white paper spread from one roll to another and the paper was singing in its pure white glory. And then it came to me: Such purity cannot be messed up with ink! So it was decided. I made some cuts to the paper and put it back into the roll. There is no reason why graphic art cannot be three-dimensional!

MAXIMALLY MINIMAL 1993
3D graphics, paper rolls.
Exhibited in Osaka Graphic Triennal 1993

Where light and shadow meet a glow is born.

3D GRAPHIC ART - THE MAGIC GLOW OF WHITE PAPER

I create just a simple form of white paper, and then trust it to The Light of God.

On this Sculpture the Glimmer of Light is so powerful that it makes the form around the white roll of paper glow back from inside and the roll disappears into the light. This glow can even erase the form and create an impression of spacelessness.

And then the paper sea came into my life

During the period when I was building light sculptures, my soul longed to paint the Sea. Suddenly I found myself folding the Sea out of paper.

I was so excited about the result!

There was an old, gorgeous frame with golden details. I wanted to appreciate my newly born art, so I placed the work in that frame. And suddenly, out of somewhere, a light appeared on the Sea… and I could not find the source of it.

Later I borrowed a big wooden frame from one of my original marine paintings and folded a really big paper into the form of the Sea again. This work was exhibited in Tallinn Art Hall.

At the opening I heard two elderly gentlemen talk about it: “What has this Aili Vint done!” — “But she is allowed to do it. She can paint the Sea.” This was my Art Academy professor Paul Luhthein.

So I showed my professors, how it was done.

Soon they figured out, that Aili Vint knows and feels the Sea so deeply that she can even make a sculpture of the Sea.

How the paper-sea was really born

Now I am going to tell you, how the paper sea was really born. One morning in my childhood, when I stepped into our back yard, I saw a snow-white sea that smelled of Grandma’s clean sheets, billowing all over the yard. At that time I was certain the White Sea was white. This is how an illusion of reality is created. It was 45 years later when it actually came to life!

Light sculptures - Sunsets

Light Sculpture of Sunset is a piece that was already conceived in my childhood, although it materialized only in 1995.

The renovation of Tallinn Art Hall was completed but all its rooms were still empty, awaiting exhibitions.

It was a 3m x 9m expanse of sky where on light itself mixes the colours of the sunset, and so subtly that no artist could equal it. You can see the model on the right.

This performance took place in 1995, in May, when our northern summer had not yet begun. The event lasted for two days. During the first day people were enjoying the beach and sent off the Sun. The next morning everyone gathered to greet the real sunrise.

See the video from 1995: https://arhiiv.err.ee/vaata/uks-pilt-aili-vint-skulptuur-paikeseloojangust