Archive

I See Nature Like Paint: Gillian Ayres paintings 1972-83

One of Britain’s most significant abstract painters, known for her huge vibrant canvases bursting with colour.  Inspired by abstract expressionist art in the United States, Ayres painted in a lyrical, gestural, non-geometric abstract style that stood in contrast to the hard-edge forms of her contemporaries. Never didactic, her oeuvre illustrates an artist constantly experimenting with the possibilities of paint.

FINAL EXHIBITION OF THE 7TH INTERNATIONAL CERAMIC ART SYMPOSIUM

CERAMIC LABORATORY It is already the seventh time the International Ceramic Art Symposium CERAMIC LABORATORY is taking place in Latvia, every year bringing together a number of professional artists and creating fruitful platform for creativity and exchange of experience. This exhibition shows ceramic artworks created by the Symposium participants here in Daugavpils Fortress, working creatively for two weeks.

International Painting Symposium “Silva Linarte 2019”

The universe is an endless interaction. Phenomena, objects, signs and humans are deeply interconnected. At times, this link is short-lived, ephemeral, seemingly transient, but ever so often, it becomes something lasting, creative and stimulating. Silva Linarte (1939-2018), artist and art educator, had and continues to have a special connection to Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre. Not only because she was born in Daugavpils district and inherited a familial connection to Latgale region, but also because she has been constantly present in its activities and undertakings ever since the centre opened its doors to the public. In August 2013, one of the all-time largest solo exhibitions of Silva Linarte’s paintings, “Reflections”, was unveiled at the Rothko Centre, followed by further cooperation in multiple art projects. Silva also loved to pay the centre a casual visit, drop by to see the new exhibitions, talk to the staff and give her own take on what she had seen. She used to say that the centre had a particularly creative and artistically rousing environment.

AIR

Marietta Patricia Leis   Air begins at our feet and lifts upwards as it swirls around the planet touching each of us with life.  AIR, an exhibition of paintings and photos, is intended make the beauty of air, whether dark or light, visible to our eyes. As we all breathe Earth’s air communally we are both the recipients and the guardians of the air that we share.

BASICS

Exhibition of Baltic contemporary ceramics On July 5, 2019, as a part of Latvian Centenary programme a number of meaningful events to explore the emergence of professional ceramic art in the Baltic States with a view to outlining the historical stages of its evolution and tracing their impact on the current global image of contemporary ceramic art will take place at Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre. The events are organised in cooperation with Latvian Centre for Contemporary Ceramics.

BASIC ELEMENTS

Kirsi Kivivirta The surrounding urban landscape and its different spaces inspire Kirsi Kivivirta. She uses geometry, perspective and visual illusions when creating her imagery. The references to landscapes in the artworks speak about the relationship between urban humans and nature, with wildlife assigned only to memories. Kivivirta’s works are always based on a clear concept. To emphasise this, Kivivirta tends to leave her work white in colour. Drops and Flow II, however, include a modest palette of tones. Kivivirta is drawn to minimalist ideas that enable the medium to speak for itself. In Kivivirta’s porcelain wall compositions, one can experience movement and rest, dynamic force and contemplation. She plays with displacement and trompe l’oeil effects as well as distorted perspectives and horizons.

CILICIA BREEZE

The geography/culture encompassing the meanings, values, identities and subjectivity signifies the place where the “self” is re-discovered, experienced and re-produced. The artists who are after creating their own myths are nourished by the light, colours, textures/patterns, history and culture of the geography they are surrounded by, no matter how much they are influenced by the surprising aesthetics of artists around the world. Artwork in this exhibition points to the need to build a shared reality through individual voices of the artists. Each piece of art reflects the artist’s sensitivity. As a whole, the exhibited work represents a reality far beyond the culture of the artist as experienced.

Maibritt Ulvedal Bjelke “CHROMATIC MATTERS”

While Maibritt Ulvedal Bjelke’s art is all about painting, she has never been afraid – indeed rather eager in fact - to challenge her own medium of choice. The original dialogue she subtly introduces between the support, the canvas, and the actual “painted presence” (rather than a static given image) that is presented to the viewer, is both instantly seductive and intriguing for a good reason. The artist paints as a dancer dances, taking into her stride all the visible and invisible particulars, re-configurating the open space that she subtly demands for her art, by the way of determined moves and unexpected dynamics. With Maibritt, canvas surface, frame borders, paint strokes, drips, are deftly submitted to an unwritten law: that of the specific artwork in the make, in which they all are to play an equivalent active role, and more and more in volume, though without eclipsing the core of their identity: paintings.

LOCATION/ DISLOCATION. BETWEEN REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING

The exhibition looks at time and space as well as memory and the principles of organising space as a field of investigation. Here, space, relates not only to geographic size, but also includes psychological, cultural and social contexts. Finding themselves in perpetual motion, people form their relationships and determine their trajectory of movement with close attention to the spatial conditions. Whereas the perception of space in fact varies according to the place from which it is viewed; experience, social and cultural context, perspective and countless other factors.

BORIS LURIE “ARTIST AND WITNESS”

Boris Lurie (Jul 18, 1924 – Jan 7, 2008), an American artist and writer, born in Leningrad into a Jewish family and grew up in Riga. From 1941 to 1945, he was imprisoned in German concentration camps. His mother, grandmother and sister were killed by the Nazis in Rumbula.