Art Gallery of Ontario

Introduction Vija Celmins: Maybe what I would like is the viewer to have an experience that is a sort of a waking up experience like drawing in a breath and saying, “Oh!” Nancy Lim: Welcome to the audio guide for Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory. I'm Nancy Lim, assistant curator of painting and sculpture here at SFMOMA. Gary Garrels: I'm Gary Garrels, the Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA. This is an exhibition I've been thinking about and planning and working on for almost 10 years and I hope you will find it as engaging as I have. Nancy Lim: We'll also be hearing from Celmins' longtime friend and fellow artist Tony Berlant. Tony Berlant: I think I first met Vija around 1962. She was just so technically accomplished. Vija Celmins: Most of my work and the images I work with come from my own ordinary life activities. I’m not a symbolic painter or political painter, I don’t have any real big message in that way. It’s a looking experience.