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| He is a success. Andris Vītoliņš Aiga Dzalbe Andris Vītoliņš Born 28 September 1975. 2002 Master's degree, Painting Department, Latvian Academy of Arts. 2000 Bachelor's degree, Department of Visual Communication, Latvian Academy of Arts. 1999 Studies at the Design Department, Latvian Academy of Arts. 1996 Studies at the Teaching Department, Latvian Academy of Arts. 1995 Riga Secondary School of Crafts. Since 2002, member of the Artists' Union of Latvia, artistic curator of exhibitions. Worked in advertising and design. Work shown at exhibitions since 1996. | |
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| Before turning to Andris Vītoliņš himself, I thought it important to check whether my preconceptions tallied with the opinion of the young artist held by various accidentally encountered people with an interest in art life. I found that people from all generations and from different walks of life have a remarkably similar impression of him. Even more unexpected was the correspondence of his own words to this image sketched out beforehand. Thus, in the end, this vision of him must be regarded, with equal claims to the truth, either as one-sided, or as accurate.
In the view of his contemporaries, Andris Vītoliņš appears as an image of a young, active, positive artist who succeeds with enviably harmonious activity in straddling such eternal opposites as the old and the innovative, the urban and the romantic, the local and the global. He has a capacity for clear perception and swift action, and so he suffers from the lack of intensity of art life in Latvia. He's not satisfied either with the stock advice given to young people: "go out, get a job and buy yourself a snowboard", nor with the seemingly progressive style of life in that network of highways, where you're allotted some space of tarmac for skateboarding. He's an artist of "only five years' standing", and older-generation artists regard him with hope and warm recognition. He hasn't set up a little "crazy" gallery in Riga, because he knows it'll soon be beset by fines and the municipal police - by the culture of prohibition. However, he's alarmed at the lack of competition and European thinking in Latvian art life, hence, in the hope that young Latvian artists will "set the new trends", the think tank U25 was established. He connects art with business, something that people generally shy away from in Latvia, and is proud of being Latvian: "it's something original, an exotic language and one of the oldest", he feels like a bankrupt aristocrat, and he certainly does not strive to shake off this elitism. He's a success because he's able to live from art. A.Dz.: You've spent the last half-year at an artists' residence in Austria. What happened there? What ideas did you bring back from there? A.V.: People had been invited there from as many different places as possible. For example, there was a Pakistani artist for whom this was her first time abroad, and who was considered a contemporary artist, even though she comes from a religious school with a thoroughly Islamic background. She painted contemporary portraits in the old style of Persian miniatures, and saw them as expressing respect towards particular individuals. My neighbour in the studio was a New York-moulded Japanese photographer: she'd already spent ten years in New York. There was a Mexican from New York, who'd spent the past year in Germany. There was also a completely unforeseeable Spanish artist who'd spent some time in the Balkans, and along with him some writers from Macedonia. Most of the people I had contact with in Vienna were older than me, a group including some absolutely crazy individuals aged about 40-50. It soon emerged that the majority of them circulate between New York and Vienna. And I was able to do some good work over there. I had a studio and the possibility of shaking off all the trifling, because artificial, problems here in Latvia. I made use of the very well settled Austrian system: you don't have to organise anything yourself, there's even a maid who makes the bed and does the washing, and I devoted myself to creative matters, to research. But the most important gain is the "baggage". Since I'd spent quite a lot of time in Western Europe last year, there were no more new discoveries for me. Rather, I began to understand life as it is over there, and seek in it that which interests me in particular. A.Dz.: And that would be? A.V.: Oh, it covers an immense spectrum, the widest variety of things. Not just walking through galleries, observing life and music... It's experience, baggage! You can't describe it in one sentence. There are things I want to achieve in life, and in Vienna I started moving in that direction. I have an abstract vision of how I want to live and work, and what I want to do. A kind of sense of an objective. For example, I used Vienna to choose which people to get in closer contact with. A.Dz.: Intuitively? A.V.: Yes, I try to rely on my intuition, because if I start thinking pragmatically, I end up feeling ill at ease in my soul. Of course, I'm interested in outstanding, inspiring people. In Latvia, we don't have enough of those "bizarre characters" who live above the level of social clichés and are wiser in this regard. They don't come into conflict with society, but live according to their own principle. That's what I'm seeking, too. A.Dz.: It sounds as if you have your own idols? A.V.: No, there aren't any. I'm always asked how other artists have influenced me. Surely, there must be such figures. But there aren't any for me, at least not serious ones. I have only a little set of phenomena that interest me. Since idols are bound to fall sooner or later, as you develop further, and then it comes as a great disappointment. I don't have a favourite colour, or car, or an idol. And every time I feel silly that I have nothing to say in this regard. A.Dz.: Well then, tell me about your most important sources of inspiration! A.V.: When I paint, I avoid studying the art created by others. Immediately after seeing exhibitions, it's hard to work, because the images are still in my head, intruding. For inspiration, I often visit various unusual museums: tram museums, museums of technology and so on, and seek out peculiar objects. Recently, I visited the sluice gates and hydroelectric power station on the Danube. I also like cars, and architecture, too. Often, I simply go to see some particular building. I'm interested in the way it's built, how it's wound up with the infrastructure, its materials and plays of light. Much more than art journals, I read journals on technology and architecture, as well as the business press. Music has an enormous influence on me: I always have music playing in the studio. Sound influences me more than art. Perhaps music is too technical nowadays? In actual fact, if you succeed in attaining a completely harmonious state of mind while painting, a state of liberated consciousness, when you don't have to think about anything, then you obtain a completely clear view of what you're doing, a meditative state. And then you no longer need any inspiration. A.Dz.: How do you differ from other artists? I suppose Vienna gave you a chance to evaluate the differences clearly. A.V.: It was interesting in getting an international opinion or discussion of myself and art in general. For example, the attitude of Pakistanis from London towards art is very different from what it is here. They start talking right away, describing what something might mean to them, what it might symbolise. Europeans try to relate everything to the facts of their history. Several people have told me I should go to New York, probably because my works contain a lot of industry, which tends to be associated with America. Apparently, it's all the rave over there. A.Dz.: Was your work Latvian? A.V.: I showed some fairly large paintings, which probably have no visible indication of Latvianness. In my view, there's a kind of schizophrenia in Latvianness: on the one hand we criticise Europe, and criticise Russia even more, but neither are we able to accept an existence that's nowhere - neither here, nor there. And this comes through in our art. A.Dz.: Yes, the industrial motifs in your work might be seen as devoid of national elements. But, in the end, don't they relate more to Eastern Europe than to America? A.V.: There's more of this kind of thing in America. A.Dz.: On the other hand, the abandoned radar stations, missile bases, bridges, factories, factory farms, etc., seem to represent a radically expressive element of the Latvian rural landscape. A.V.: It's the past, of course... And this is what has decided my choice of subjects. I was born in Liepāja, and I was messing around in the Karosta naval port district when it was still functional. I remember the parades of Soviet marines on the sea, with fighters flying overhead: only an insane empire can put on shows like that. No talk of ecology or noise limits: it's the kind of energy that makes the earth tremble! So what, if someone could get killed? In Vienna, I painted the interior of a tram. They have old, clanking wooden trams from the 50s and 60s, that smell of oil. Riding in a tram, I remembered the petrol smell of Soviet ships and cars. Some inner connection appears there, at the level of the senses. A.Dz.: And still, what makes Vītoliņš what he is? Do you work on your image? A.V.: I used to work in advertising, at the DDB agency. This was an ideal school for me. Yes, I think about my image. That's why, at some point, I stopped creating my experiments. You might say that the image has helped me to start living from art, to concentrate on one particular direction. However, I wouldn't want to do like the majority of American artists: to perceive art as a carefully calculated business. I really don't know what it is that could make me different... Well, I haven't been trained in the classical school of painting, so I don't know how to draw or paint. A.Dz.: And what do you know? A.V.: As I got older, I started not to know. There's a period when you start learning, you learn and then it's fine. And then you slacken at learning. At our Vienna exhibition, the Spanish artist, a graffiti and provocation artist, helped me arrange the paintings, mumbling that he hates canvases. He wanted to collaborate: to spray-paint something on the paintings, but I suppose he was a bit scared to. A.Dz.: When did you understand that you're an artist? A.V.: When I could no longer do any other kind of work. Three times, I've seriously tried to abandon art, but something's always thrown me back into it. Nowadays, I no longer try to fight myself. I've come to believe in some kind of mysterious energy that comes together with a click and carries you in the necessary direction, in order to fulfil that which you subconsciously wanted so very much. Rationally, with your mind, you can oppose it, and move in the categories of the surrounding milieu and society. It makes you feel uncomfortable, it's a real muddle, until you start to think and live in harmony with your will. A.Dz.: Which are your best works? A.V.: The latest ones and those still to come. It's hard for me to look at works even just six months old: I want to change them. In that case, it's best to part with them: that's history. The present is better. A.Dz.: Do your pictures - the drawings and scenes arranged from figures in the book "Tales From the Life of Children" - depict you yourself in childhood, or is it more about what you think of the children of the present day? A.V.: I simply wanted to play around. It seems you have to try to retain the mind of a child throughout your life, since, as long as you have the mind of a child, your intellect will develop. If you can play around with your thinking, then you can react very flexibly to serious things as well. You have to play, because it's one thing to concentrate on holding a particular approach... But anything is threatened by professional cretinism: a person develops only one particular field, becomes an irreplaceable specialist, but as a result blindly threatens their field with destruction. Children like the pictures. A.Dz.: By what professional criteria do you assess the work of others, for example, how do you select works for the U25 exhibitions? A.V.: Ah, that's intuition! For U25, I look for diversity, and for the works not to resemble what's on offer at the galleries in Riga. It seemed important for there to be artists participating about whom no opinion had yet been declared. They're not my age: the name indicates that the artists are under 25. I think some of them could easily make it into the art scene of the West. A.Dz.: Did you turn to organising exhibitions because of your personal interest and enjoyment, or is it because otherwise there's nothing happening? A.V.: In truth, organising exhibitions is annoying, and I have no wish to do it. There's a lack of any active art life and art market in Riga. Art management in Latvia is simply absent, to put it mildly. In other words, it's simply boring to live that way. Of course, you can condemn the situa-tion and get on the next flight to London, but I chose a different way. At that time, my interests were in line with those of Ivo Strante, who supported the idea financially. We had a lot of discussion as to how to provoke Latvian society to thinking, rather than consuming ideas seen elsewhere, how to start bridging the gap between artists and business, the holders of capital. Since it's not as if we lack artists, and business does have an interest in supporting them, but we're short of people who could think up ideas, write them up well and sell them to investors. There's a lack of dialogue with other professions. Over here, even poets and actors are separate from artists. But the history shows that the most potent development of creative ideas has occurred at periods when people from different professions have come together, worked together, drunk together, etc. And that's why we began this expensive activity of organising events and exhibitions. So far, it appears that something really has begun to shift, but the fruits of this work we can expect only in the years to come. A.Dz.: What interests you most in contemporary art, and what, perhaps, repels you? A.V.: I'm repelled by the way that original concepts with a political touch are turned into ventures for grabbing great amounts of money. Still fresh in my memory is a project I took part in when I was in Austria, dedicated to the Danube and events surrounding it. There were a large number of videos and photos exhibited, relating to particular sites and issues, speculating with the Holocaust and the genocide in Bosnia. But at the same time, it was repulsively conspicuous what a luxury life the art people were leading at the expense of all this pain. Imagine this: the opening event was held in a respectable Hassid district, with the top Vienna society, representatives of cultural policy, etc., a whole sea of alcohol served by barmen, food, drink, and, in the background, 40 TV sets showing interviews with the victims of the Balkan warfare. The afterparty was held aboard a ship. Once again, there was a sea of food and drink, lighting DJs and decorations. A great atmosphere. Club chairs everywhere. Tonnes of money. I'm lolling about on the captain's bridge, enjoying life, at the expense of the victims of the war in the Balkans and the Holocaust. It's harder to say what captures my interest, since there are a great many positive events. I like the diversity offered by the world. A.Dz.: Do you regard yourself as a socially active artist? A.V.: I suppose I do. Although, like everyone, I enjoy the good life. For that reason, I like the democratic character of Europe: being an artist, you can find yourself at one moment drinking wine at the heart of high society and its capital, and after that you might end up in an altogether different, crazy district. In Latvia, I'm frightened at the possible development of a ghetto of millionaires, as in Mexico, Brazil or Russia, something that seems quite possible in the absence of a critical perspective. Now it'll be interesting to see what happens with the Andrejosta district: the first serious test and the best art critic will be the winter (as it was for the armies of Hitler and Napoleon). We'll see whether there's everyday life there or not. One can understand the investors, who want to control the situation and are worried about the artists worming their way in. But there has to be a high percentage of freedom in this affair, it can't be conducted along rational lines. | |
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