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| INGA BRŪVERE’S KALEIDOSCOPIC EXISTENCE Anita Vanaga The recent past has accustomed us to approach the written facts seeking subtexts and metaphorical language, reading in terms of what has been left unsaid, through euphemisms and taboos, notes and comments. Force is lost in this way, but subtlety and sensitivity flourish: to reveal red laughter, red itself is not used. On account of the Soviet heritage, artists are reluctant to have any dealings with the written word: so think what you will. And the thought has a life of its own from the moment it is unleashed. And afterwards the artist marvels at it: what's it to do with me? Clarity, simplicity of exposition and the ability to subordinate all the dimensions to a single aim constitute the classical approach that totalitarianism has defiled. A constructive synthesis of position and opposition, objective and subjective in Latvian social life and the praxis of art is something hard to develop. But this is precisely what best describes conceptualist works. The language of conceptualism is collective, individuality being imparted by the user. It has nothing that exists outside the system. It does not engage in visiology in the way that abstraction does, although it gladly applies the latter's findings. The supreme value of conceptualism emerges in the scheme of relationships developed between separate conceptual visual units in the system and crystallised in a new whole. Although conceptualism flirts with open forms, this ordered art movement is a closed one. It will not tolerate chaos and licence and does not long for the viewer's subjective comments or unexpected revelations, but hopes for conscious activity on the part of the viewer and the capacity for reading what the author wished to say. Nothing more. Because the work is complete. Conceptualism switches on the mechanism of control, which bears a resemblance to centrically organised, imperious thinking. It is precisely from control that the author once so strove to wriggle free, protecting the message by an ability to live elusively in surmises and inviting the viewer to do the same. The beginnings of conceptualism in Latvia may be sought in set design of the early 1970s. It appeared in painting in a refined, classical expression in Inga Brūvere's personal exhibition "Kaleidoscope", held in the Riga Gallery in April 2003, managing to surprise the admirers of the artist's talent. |
| A BIRD OF PARADISE IN THE LATVIAN ART SCENE. Maija Tabaka Inese Riņķe |
| THE BIOLOGICAL ICON “AG” AND A COMPARISON WITH THE CHEMICAL ELEMENT SHARING THE SAME SYMBOL Ieva Kalniņa Sitting on my desk is a small icon in a carved silver frame, and so, in seeking to delve into my very personal relationship with Andris Grīnbergs, I perceived this association that life presented to me. Thus, Andris has the same initials as silver - a chemical element of Group I in the Periodic Table. And both images - the silver-framed icon and the biological "Ag" - are in my possession. They have been bought and belong to me as much as the fragility of life ever permits us to obtain anything. Thus it transpires that the biological "Ag" is in a sense the brother of a copy of Ecce Homo, painted by the 16th century Spanish master Luis de Morales, known as "The Divine", in a not very deftly carved silver frame. |
