Dream horizons

Reflecting on Djina Chemtov’s paintings, I feel like they require a special introduction, some sort of initiation. Both literally and figuratively. As if permission was needed before entering the artist‘s intimate world -only meant for a few, and move into an intermediate space similar to a vestibule from which her so personal "view from the window" will be revealed in the distance. The deeper I go, the greater the depth and semantic layers in her paintings. Perspectives and planes follow one another, both in space and from an aesthetic point of view. Every color and inch in her paintings reveal a new depth and a new meaning. Originally the artist’s privilege, later to become mine.

It is common knowledge that a painting or an artistic experience is a reflection of reality or a vision captured by the eye of the artist, specific of their artistic creativity. It is quite intriguing that nothing in Djina Chemtov's work is as literal as it would seem. Much the same can’t be said about most pictorial works of the same genre. Yet, it certainly is well worth paying attention and attempt making an analysis. Djina Chemtov puts the focus on landscape in her latest series of paintings. Landscape from a spatial but also semantic point of view: a combination of compact energy creating powerful vibrations, forming the utterly dense matter of volumes and surfaces coming into play. A matter precisely filled with the artist’s own energy, woven from thoughts, memories, lived experiences or unfulfilled desires.

Djina Chemtov's landscape is constructed from a recollection of real, beautiful experiences and desired though not experimented states of mind. All those moods are arranged in layers, as if finding in them the reason to live. Or else she blends and stores them in a memory and reveries box. This line between real and fictional memories is the state in which the artist usually creates her paintings. She manages that way to build a temporal "landscape": past and present moments, perhaps also past times, creating a kind of original temporal perspective. This is precisely what strikes and distinguishes her work as an artist. Her paintings slowly but surely and confidently create a fascination in the viewer.

For no other reason that it is not yet given to man to instantly understand the vibrating force behind this energy and react to its powerful effect accordingly. Such are the thoughts that come to mind when looking at Djina’s new paintings, paintings in which forests and plains alternate with sunsets and shadows, young girls against a backdrop of distant and magical cities, gulfs and hair swaying in the wind: so many brushstrokes, actually. What is interesting is not what I see, but what her paintings suggest. They seem to carry plenty of wind in them and glow with a mystical inner light. Which reminds me of the Chinese ideogram expressing a conception of nature as "wind-light". So I wonder if what Djina Chemtov draws is precisely nature.

Admittedly, her paintings show forests, land, many flowers on windowsills, peaches in a bowl, windy skies... But it all seems to be elsewhere, on another land, another air. What is clear, however, is that the atmosphere in Djina’s studio is very inspiring and above all a beacon of hope.


Nadia Timova
translated from French to English by Mary Gomez