Exhibition specs

• Printed on warmtone, deep matte paper, 230gsm • Mounted on 5mm foamboard • White ash-tree box molding with a fillet spacer • GroGlass art glass

In reference to the 2016 Summer Olympics, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the exhibition Olympic Body problematises the traditions of sport and physical culture and their relationship to specific visual and narrative canons.

The development of the body’s physical abilities and specific systems of exercises were originally related to the army. Only during the second half of the 19th century gymnastics was added to school programmes and became particularly popular in the authoritarian atmosphere of the 1920s and 30s. The 100-year history of the Olympic Games with their reference to Ancient Greece shows that they have not merely been a competition of top athletes. … Read More »

The Swedish photographer and a living legend Anders Petersen (1944) is known for his ability to find a common language with complete strangers, thus creating intimate, distinct human portraits. About his creative work Petersen says: “The stuff I do is a kind of private documentary photography. It is a real challenge – to be present, but maintain the distance.”

The Danish photographer Jacob Aue Sobol (1976) uses camera as a tool in order to create contact, closeness and intimacy with people and random places, even if only for a short period of time. Sobol compares taking pictures with hunting: “Relationship that hunters establish with the surrounding nature is very important. This feeling has left a great impact on my life and work”.

Exhibition specs

• 122 prints 67x100cm for Petersen• 40 prints 100x150cm and 5 prints 150x225cm for Sobol• Petersen pictures on Hahnemuehle … Read More »

Over the last five years, Lenkkeri, who grew up in Mänttä and attended school there, has photographed his hometown whenever he has returned there. He has noticed that he has depicted Mänttä both as it is and as he remembers it to have been.

– Mänttä is a manifestation of dynamism and vitality in the field of Finnish art and amongst small Finnish towns. Mänttä is never the same when I return there. My impressions of stagnation are as if they were about some place else. I believe I have misinterpreted my impressions. This town is full of vitality and is yearning for change, but the same tall chimney is still standing by the lake whenever I return,” he says.

Exhibition held in Gösta Art Museum in Mänttä, Finland.

http://villelenkkeri.com

Exhibition specs

• Printed on Hanson Platinum Rag

Artists of two generations – Arturs Riņķis (1942), a designer and one of the first pioneers of the kinetic design movement in Latvia, and Iveta Vaivode (1979), an internationally recognized photographer of the youngest artists’ pleiad, have met here together to create their own dialogue in time and space, each applying different kinds of media – from installations and photographs to video, animation and sound. The idea for the project was born into world in the fall of 2013, inspired by Arturs Riņķis’ Kinetic Art Garden In the Middle of Nowhere, which is situated in the suburbs of the countryside town Sabile, Kurzeme region. Over the years this fabulous place has served, for both artists, as a laboratory where relationships between mediums of art were further developed. Finally, in 2016 their ideas have been solidified and now exhibited for the … Read More »

Although Ojārs Pētersons describes his works as the exercises of a playing trainer and only succumbs to their interpretation with the greatest reluctance, in essence they are attempts at abstraction from generally accepted assertions. His works are rich in the irony, which he often uses to resolve questions that matter to him, thus depicting his attitude towards the information overload so characteristic of this age. However, their conceptual stratum is not confined to an anecdote that can be told in a few words – his works are perplexingly complex and carefully calculated.

In conversation with Ojārs, I attempted to touch upon his vision for this exhibition. Upon perusing the sheet of paper he gave me bearing the names of the works, it seemed that I was almost bound to decode the intentions concealed behind the mysterious phrases. It seems that each … Read More »

The exhibition will be comprised of newly created works by established contemporary Latvian artists with international experience, as well as art by talented emerging artists. The artists taking part in the exhibition are Imants Lancmanis, Aigars Bikše, Barbara Gaile, Indriķis Ģelzis, Inta Ruka, Evita Vasiļjeva, Krišs Salmanis, Darja Meļņikova, Kaspars Podnieks, Māra Brīvere, Krista Dzudzilo and Reinis Dzudzilo, Ieva Kaula, Ernests Kļaviņš and Andrejs Kļaviņš, Maija Kurševa, Liene Mackus, Līga Marcinkeviča, Mārtiņš Ratniks, Ieva Rubeze, Zane Tuča, Vilnis Vītoliņš and Brigita Zelča – Aispure. Exhibition curator: Helēna Demakova.

The artists taking part in the exhibition
were invited to refer to individual elements of consciousness integral to their being, which are related to a yearning for peace, as well as to broader natural and social movements, which instil or destroy peace to a greater or lesser extent.

Exhibition specs

• Kaspars Podnieks, 5 frames … Read More »

Cultural nationalism strives to create and maintain visible borders between the insiders and aliens. Latvian town and regional community Zilupe (Blue River) shows us the simultaneous presence and absence of the boundary. Situated in the east of Latvia Zilupe borders to Russia and Belarus. Individuals of several ethnic origins live in this rural region, but Russians make up more than 50 percent of its population. However, in reality in the Blue River region the border between Latvia and Russia exists only on the topographic map. The everyday life attests to a mixture of cultures: inscriptions in the Latin alphabet alternate with ones in Cyrillic; EU subsidized food packages are consumed alongside with the smuggled goods from Russia. Ethnic, linguistic and cultural difference make it a liminal place, a constant source of fear recently elevated by Latvian media to a spectre … Read More »

Where are we? What is this space, which encompasses us? How does time pass around us and what is it? Do we realise the true proportions between ourselves and the world? Essentially, each of us is always in several spaces (places) and times simultaneously. It only seems to us that around us, everything is more or less homogenous, constant and linear.It turns that we live within coordinates in which it is quite amusing to talk about stability or predictability. In truth, it is an infinite labyrinth and network of time in which we seek the right path throughout our lives. An endless overlapping of reality and feelings, a mingling into something resembling a wavelike “soup”. In reality, one can even talk about a continual feeling of finding oneself on the “edge of the world”, something akin to a border zone … Read More »