In early 2023, Iva began what would become a year-long correspondence with Patrick Theimer that explores the tenacity and ambition of her multidisciplinary practice. The following is an excerpt from that exchange, and the full conversation will become available soon. Be sure to stay connected for more...
So much of your work references the real vs the abstract, nature vs. the unnatural. You state your paintings could not happen without the experience of nature. What is nature?
Iva:
In her book Elixir, Kapka Kasabova points out that the word in our native Bulgarian language for nature is “priroda”, which translates to “with kin”. Nature to me is the ground and the weather. It’s a field, it’s energy, chi, and intelligence. Water has intelligence, birds perceive magnetic fields, wolves can change the behavior of rivers, and owls’ auditory mapping involves intricate mathematical computations. The human species is just one expression in nature within an infinite set of possibilities. Life is a rhizome.
So much of my embrace of nature has been shaped by my experiences and artistic influences. I love walking and gardening. I once taught a pigeon how to fly. My interest in Tatlin’s constructions was strongest around 2012… until I went to Paris to visit the Picasso Museum. I realized that while Tatlin moved in the direction of utopic constructions, Picasso remained stuck with the body. Now I lean in the direction of Picasso. And Brassai’s photographs of graffiti on the stucco walls of Paris became hugely important to my way of thinking about surface and mark making. Other important figures include Miro, Fontana, Thornton Dial and Judit Reigl. My ongoing conversations with Dona Nelson and jill moniz are another part. I realize I gravitate toward immigrant and queer voices, multi-disciplined artists who spoke in foreign tongues and worked between mediums. Since March 2023 I have been entirely immersed in Miro, Tapies and the Tansaekhwa movement in post-war Korea. My daily practice of painting is my resistance to the alienating narratives and brutal practices of my era. I continuously look for models and lives that engage and honor the intelligence of all matter. It’s about attention. What am I looking at?
The strongest of these influences has admittedly been Miro, specifically his pursuits of what he called “anti-painting”. In the late 20’s Miro revolted against traditional painting techniques as morally unjustifiable, stating: “A refusal to make ‘pretty’ things pushed me to use the most sordid and incongruous materials possible. I denied my own gifts and turned against my facility, refusing the ‘miracle’ as a sign of my contempt for success.” But he does go on to admit that despite his efforts his works succeeded: “What can I say. I can’t be anything other than a painter. Every challenge to painting is a paradox, from the moment that challenge is expressed in the work”.
That’s really stuck with me. Like Miro, I strive to be an artist of violence and resistance, a painter, a creator of forms who uses everything at her disposal to not acquiesce. And I even made a list, a sort of manifesto, as an ongoing response to motivate me forward:
Destroy everything, especially the assumed conditions of the ground and its traditional white, passive, seemingly empty space waiting to receive and absorb the artist’s mark. The ground is: a method, a regime, and a record. All is present in the layers, a synchronicity revealed through juxtaposition and entwinement.
Make it a skin.
Inhabit. Squat in the middle of the painting in the position best for giving birth and weeding a garden.
Erase the illusion of space. Seal up the cubist space.
The stretcher is now an archaeologist's sieve. The fragments are there amidst the gray.
Record what is revealed by the surface. Rub, discern and draw out the contours.
Candidly, and perhaps not so surprising, my favorite activity is searching for four leaf clovers, my eyes completely submerged in green. I love looking at a field and finding the glitch. I am extremely good at it.
Nature is the glitch.