Excur[e]sion

Zane Tuča’s artistic world rests on a seemingly subtle, restrained visual vocabulary, yet its voice carries rather complex tonalities. The monochromatic colour palette, the layering of nearly translucent forms, and the inexhaustible web of graphite strokes bring about an irrational feeling that any prolonged interaction with the piece, even the very act of looking, might disturb it. The slow-paced, the dragged-out, and the toned-down set Zane Tuča’s work apart in both form and content, the latter increasingly becoming landscapes and visual notes of her own lived experiences. In the loud, intense and ever more difficult-to-discern everyday, where events are propelled by the need to be noticed and constantly present, the muffled nature of Zane Tuča’s works makes them almost ghost- or spirit-like, barely brushing against physical reality. The slowness and perceptual asceticism embody a state of consciousness that, more and more frequently, is invoked as a practice necessary for mental survival amid perpetual overstimulation. In Tuča’s art, this grounding is neither a mere slogan nor a form of somatic exercise – it is a natural state of being. At the centre of the exhibition Excur[e]sion, Zane Tuča places her own experiences of hiking and of being in environments shaped by landscapes (relatively) unsubdued by human hands. At a time marked by eco-anxiety, digitalisation and growing uncertainty about the future, being in nature has become a means of self-therapy and cognitive decompression, reshaping relationships between nature and humans that, on the one hand, rest on an awareness of nature’s power, while at the same time still subjecting and instrumentalising it as a resource for human well-being. Being in and with nature often gives us a sense that we are experiencing our most authentic selves, being our “true” selves. Entering and moving through a landscape closely matches the pace of human thought; it is one of the simplest activities in which body and mind are interconnected. 21st-century experiences can often be condensed into short narratives and flashes, projecting the “here and now” of authentic time, quickening presence into omnipresence and making these experiences accessible to anyone, anywhere. Zane Tuča’s excursion doesn’t end after you get from point A to point B. Excur[e]sion is the artist’s transformative experience, unfolding over an extended duration and at a pace that contemporary life struggles to comprehend – meticulously drawing a landscape encountered along the way may take her months or even years. The media employed by Zane Tuča – pencil, acrylic, and canvas – are likewise among the most straightforward means of representation, applied to materialise the first stage of an idea or a fleeting thought in its most immediate form. Her works are therefore simultaneously slow and quick. It is possible to retain a great deal of the primal quality of an impression in a drawing, at the same time deepening it for a sustained process of representation. The wandering continues on the canvas, where landscapes take on characters, often with quite literally human facial expressions. There might be a much simpler explanation for their origin: we’re simply not capable of perceiving a landscape without layering anthropomorphism over and beneath it. Zane Tuča’s works articulate the uncertainty of our relationship with ourselves, our surrounding nature and cycles, and seemingly never-ending change, as well as our desire for something unchanging, stable, intransient and, most importantly – real, even if we do not quite believe in a distinction between the real and the unreal. Her art proposes a utopian way of being – one we remember and recognise, yet have long since lost the ability to practise. In the title, the emphasis seems to be on the “Ex” (“Pār” – ‘over’ in the Latvian original) – something to be moved out of, left behind, transformed. The Nordic duskiness we have already encountered in Zane’s other landscapes, together with their calligraphic stillness and meditative flow of form, requires us to accept that not only the object but also the very act of observation is being observed. An unstructured, associative flow of thoughts mirrors the rhythm of walking and the sensations it evokes. A hiker is both part of and apart from the world they are observing. This duality opens up the possibility of a magical, liberating, and transformative experience, if only we are willing to surrender to it. Zane Tuča’s works also materialise those lingering feelings surrounding experiences in which a landscape “stays with you”, rather than being erased as a short-lived impression. To select a particular scene or tree, a single corner of nature out of a million, seems impossible, yet it may be precisely the way to initiate a truthful dialogue with nature: observing the parts of it that resonate with us, and tracing the line where I end and my surroundings begin, between going and stopping, between being and its illusory replica. Santa Hirša