Archive

On the Side of the Sun. Testament to Time by Uldis Briedis

The essence of Uldis Briedis’ photographic archive is measured in time and not size. His path as a documentarian has crossed several time zones – the Soviet period, the National Awakening, the chaos of the 1990s, our current time and something else rather unfathomable to the mind - which I’d like to refer to as congealed time in Siberia. The exhibition at Daugavpils Mark Rothko Centre is going to be the largest show of Uldis Briedis’ work to date, and will feature, as a testimony to time, a significant number of images gathered over 50 years.

What is an image? Life and the Art of Perception

Petra Langsdorff, Siegfried Lehman, Sven Hoffmann From the time we are born till we die, we are all surrounded by images. Our time is the time of images, whether moving or fixed. From Plato’s doubt about the images we see, the question “What is an Image?” has occupied the minds of philosophers, art historians, etc. and continues to do so today. Does our mind form the images we see, as Kant believed, or is our mind a blank slate on which the images leave their stamp, as Locke thought? As Harald Klinke puts it, “Visual perception involves thinking, and thinking makes use of visual imagery. … Picture-making is […] central to being human. The power of images stems not from the images themselves but from humans, who give them meaning.” (Art Theory and Visual Epistemology, 2014: 5&6)

VALENTINE’S DAY

A visual story, drawn from the collection of Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art centre, about today and yesterday from today’s perspective. Do we know more than we can know?

CERAMICS

SANITA ĀBELĪTE ELĪNA TITĀNE Full moon – that is how two outstanding artists, Elīna Titāne and Sanita Ābelīte, describe their exhibition. Full moon was shining during a ceramics residency that had the artists live and work side by side at Daugavpils Fortress. Coincidentally, full moon was also shining whenever Elīna Titāne and Sanita Ābelīte returned to Daugavpils later on. As it happens, even the opening of the artists’ joint exhibition occurs with a full moon casting its light upon their work.

LATVIAN CONTEMPORARY WATERCOLOUR

Latvian watercolour painting is becoming ever more complex. Its emotional rendering is richly nuanced, and pictorial culture is of key importance. In this exhibition, watercolour painting represents all aspirations and quests that have emerged in the course of the historical development of this medium, which makes it difficult to give a straight definition to all these phenomena. Instead of clear-cut, rigid notions, we can talk about movement across a continuum. From graphic to pictorial qualities, from lyrical to expressively dramatic traits and so forth. It means that contemporary watercolour painting cannot be reduced to narrow concepts which fall into strictly outlined technical methods. Rather, one should speak, with good reason, of a broad and open watercolour concept with a wide range of techniques for highly expressive rendition.

Looking outside, looking inside

Arnis Balčus, Ieva Balode, Ieva Epnere, Romans Korovins, Līga Spunde, Alnis Stakle Looking outside, looking inside   “Looking outside, looking inside” is a joint exhibition of six Latvian artists. It showcases artwork which explores the states of looking and seeing. The artists scrutinize the interconnections between experience, memory and forgettance, considering those as both a collective phenomenon and an element of private life. Although the exhibited artwork is grounded in questioning the reality and its representations, it is also markedly introspective, that is to say, it addresses issues such as the artist’s internal states, materialism of the medium, self-representation, identity and self-therapeutic artistic practices.

Harald Jegodzienski

My Path of Questioning What ideological stance do I take and what artistic beliefs do I adopt to support it? Is artistic expression an adequate medium of communication with my fellow humans? What can communicate a message and why does it want to be communicated? Do I wish to stir feelings or address the spirit, or maybe both? If I must have artistic expression, what is this ‘SELF’ that wants to announce itself? Where are the ends of individual ‘red threads’ which reflect my true goals at an age of being flooded with images and information?

Colours

Green – the woods outside my window; blue – the endless variety of the sea; orange – the sun in a summer sky; brown, grey and black – fresh furrows and the road beneath the melting snow; red – the roses in our gardens. The colours in my work are drawn from the splendour of Latvian nature. I create my fibre works by painting little sticks and wrapping them in copper wire, by gluing and sowing, putting layer upon layer until the work seems finished. For digital printing, I use my own photographs. Real to begin with and taken in different seasons, they are processed until I’m left with blurred colour fields. Colour as a flash, an abstract field, a vision. Hardly any white, but in this colour, which includes all others, I am living right now.

The recent paintings of Jon Arne Mogstad: Looking into the contemporary sublime?

The notion ‘dialogue’ could be interpreted as something that is open, never ending, unfinalized. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, “... there is neither a first nor a last word, and there are no limits to the dialogic context (it extends into the boundless past and the boundless future)”.1 In his three recent series of paintings, Mogstad sets out to explore the pictorial space, referring to art history, time and presence. He offers a dialogue in which to find traces of his own art since the 80s, the history of art from Early Renaissance via Baroque and Romanticism to Dadaism, Hard Edge paintings and Abstract Expressionism. Mogstad is investigating different angles and perspectives, and a plethora of pictorial languages from the more figurative to the more abstract ones. In addition to referring to the history of art, his paintings even relate to music, literature, poems, film, and popular culture.

Rhapsody to Womanhood

Free-form romanticism, expressed through symbols and perceptions, is a peculiar narrative of that sensual and elusive feminine charm, which is a reflection of current processes and a longing for identity in the modern world. Who are we, really, and what are we like? A conscious and nuanced choice of colours and selection of subjects, not unlike a rhapsody, replace one another, featuring different characters and performances and highlighting the emotional aspect of lived experience. Touching the canvas changes perception. Conjuring a dynamic interplay of colours works wonders. It is living and experiencing through painting. An opportunity to transform events trough creativity helps to stay true to one’s beliefs and to that which gives a sense of fulfilment.