Yuri Elperin’s solo show, Cycles of Being, opened at the Lipont Gallery in Richmond on Nov. 15. The show consists of Elperin’s large abstract mixed media paintings of the last few years. The art is powerful, eloquent and elegant, reflecting the artist’s personal voyage across Europe, Asia and North America, but also humanity’s collective journey. Memory, history and spirituality merge and interplay.
Elperin was born in Riga, Latvia, a year after the Second World War ended. Unable to pursue his artistic goals inside the limits prescribed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he emigrated in 1977. Searching for artistic freedom, he lived in Rome for about a year while waiting for his Canadian immigration papers.
“During his time in Rome, and his subsequent travels and research across Spain, France and Italy, he immersed himself in Western modern art,” notes the Lipton Gallery’s site.
In Vancouver, Elperin has had a decades-long career as a commercial photographer and in film, and he became dedicated to being a full-time artist in 1998, according to the gallery. His current show explores Eastern and Western philosophies.
Many religions and philosophical tenets of both Eastern and Western cultures throughout time are concerned with common questions: What is life? Why are we humans here? What is the purpose of life? How does everything link together? Elperin’s art contemplates possibilities, and the show’s name, Cycles of Being, underscores the cyclical nature of our unending chain of existence.
The paintings in this exhibit are three-dimensional, a fusion of paint and sculpture, golden leaf and marine plants. Paper, wood, metal and fabric combine and emerge as more than a sum of their parts.
The images tell stories, convey legends. They inspire questions and personal responses. Every title card in the gallery is a mini story, and the abstract artistic style suits the complexity of the philosophical exploration.
No reflection of the outside world manifests. No photographic likeness. Just meditations on the timeless themes of life, death and rebirth, which lead to further associations on the part of viewers.
The first painting that meets our eyes upon coming into the gallery is “Phase One” – a golden spread on the dark background. Does it reflect evolutionary theory or the world’s divine beginnings? One will interpret it according to one’s own beliefs.
“Beginning of Endless Knot” continues the viewer’s journey, with its contrast of blue and gold, a simple circle versus a complex knot. In Buddhism, the endless knot represents, among other things, interconnectedness.
“Impermanence” reminds us that everything in the world is ephemeral. The red twisted shape, sinuous and enigmatic, teases with its perpetual dance. To me, it defies definition and implies that everything around us, physical and mental, is transient – the only constant is change.
On the opposite wall, the painting “Wu Zetian Dream” is a symphony in blue, a tribute to the only female ruler of China, Wu Zetian (624-705). During her reign, China became one of the greatest powers of the world. Many historians consider her the force that revitalized the Chinese culture and economy.
Many paintings in the exhibition include a circle as one of their main elements. The exhibit title piece, “Cycles of Being,” refers to the Buddhist idea that existence is an eternal sequence of birth, growth, transformation and renewal, that life and death are not linear, and that all living creatures are linked. This concept is represented by a mandala, a circular image of the universe.
Other images involving a circle are those of the five elements of wood, fire, earth, metal and water. The artist’s visualization of them incorporates what could be called the traditional colours and energies of those elements (blue for water, red for fire, for example), but go beyond literal meaning. Again, all is connected, there are no beginnings and no ends.
Readers can meet Elperin on Nov. 26, 3-5 p.m., at the gallery. The exhibit runs until Dec. 4. To learn more, visit lipontgallery.ca.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].