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| The visible as transient, the invisible as permanent Pēteris Bankovskis, Art Critic | |
| Probably everybody wants to live in a way so that they’re not touched by the sharp realities of life, or if they are, then as little as possible. Clearly, it doesn’t always turn out as we’d like, but one or two people know how to explain why this is so. See, art, for example. From ancient times, people have had a tendency to ask who needs it, what benefit there is from it, and why the people who say they create art try to present the fruit of their labours in all manner of ways on the table of our daily needs. In the case of so-called visual art, by organizing, among other things, exhibitions in museum halls, galleries and outdoors, publishing books and catalogues, and yes, organizing markets, biennales, auctions and competitions for prizes, too. Even the Purvītis Prize, for example. The human being is insecure, both as a physical and physiological construction and as a spiritual concept. There is never enough stability. There are ancient reasons for this. Many hold the view that the initial reason, with consequences that will be irreparable right until the end of time, is disobedience. But we want stability. We want humanness – some more consciously, others not so much: something which is almost impossibly difficult to define, but relatively easy to oppose. Who or what should be opposed, that’s a question of choice. Well, look, recently I heard a laconic explanation that the point of culture is to make us more human, to help us avoid the sharp realities of life, perhaps to distance ourselves from the bestial. This is put rather coarsely; the person who was talking about this was a finer wordsmith. But there is some truth in it. Truly, why should one group have to become original creators, unless it’s to prove themselves as human, at least partly spiritual creatures? And why should others have to get acquainted with what they’ve created, if not to stir something in their spiritual essence? One could, of course, go to an art exhibition to establish that from this date to that date, pieces of canvas woven from linen thread and covered with pigment powders diluted by water or some other solution were stretched over wooden frames and located vertically on the walls of some space. But even this purpose for visiting an exhibition is very human – it leads to arithmetic and statistics, which may be boring, but is still a very human way of perceiving the world. Most people who visit museums and exhibition halls, even if they’re accountants, customs officers or, God forbid, owners of gambling dens, are somehow able to put their anti-depressants and “excel” tables aside for a moment and try to meet… Yes, meet what? In the case of Vilhelms Purvītis himself, most likely, that spring, that scent of premonition which was around at that time, well at that time, when, well – you’re unable to understand, but it was like that, well, so… And over the poor quality colour reproduction from a school book, over the rustling remains of the conversations, looks and touches of past years cast away by the draught, shines the elusive, like a blow straight to the heart by a golden awl, like a cross-stitched flash of thought: there have been and may still be times when I FEEL HUMAN. That could be the whole point of visiting an exhibition. And this could be the point of Purvītis. And the point of a prize named after Purvītis. | |
 The final exhibition of the nominees of the Purvītis Prize 2013. View from the exposition of Andris Eglītis | |
| Certainly, danger exists and stands on guard in all things. The humanizing sting stirred by the sense of sight may for someone be set off by a wooden eagle with fake amber eyes, once purchased at a souvenir kiosk, but for someone else – by the embroidered glove lost by an unknown child, and trampled underfoot in the first mud of spring. Or even a snatch from a Viktor Tsoi song, overheard while walking in the tunnel near the bus terminal. And there’s no need to go on about the magic of the colour combination, tonal subtleties or balanced composition. Nor about concepts, discourses, paradigms, social narrative or authentic expressions. Nor about a lasting place in art history, about the place of honour in a museum collection or a record price at auction. The artists who were candidates for the Purvītis Prize for their achievements in 2011 and 2012 were Harijs Brants, Andris Breže, Ivars Drulle, Andris Eglītis, Andrejs Grants, Miķelis Fišers, Gļebs Panteļejevs and Krišs Salmanis. Their works could be viewed at a joint exhibition at Arsenāls. In my opinion, the works of Sarmīte Māliņa and Kristaps Kalns should also have been there, but these are my thoughts and nobody there asked for them. A lot has been written, and in all sorts of contexts, about all of these artists and their art exhibitions. So here’s just a few sketchy outlines to the search for the presence of humanness. Andris Eglītis received the prize. Was he, in his attempts to express his “natural person” selfawareness, able to directly affect us with the natural colour means of this earth? Or perhaps a genuine dialogue had been replaced by learned phrases, grabbed as exemplar but rarely thought through words about the earth, from which we’ve come and which we will once again become? Who knows whether even Eglītis himself could give us a real answer, and the viewers of his work will not be able to either. Because we, no matter how hard we resist, are simultaneously a component of the process (earth – earth), as well as a reflection (memories, contemplation etc., about the process of “earth – earth”). There’s no doubt that this is very fundamental: we are given to know that we are right in the thick of it all, yet the knowledge of this flourishes and declines together with the being. As one finishes, so does the other. Beautiful. Harijs Brants’ charcoal drawings are about his partners in conversation. There’s a reason why magazine ‘Rīgas Laiks’, soaring in the coquettish world of half-truths, has fallen for Brants and his partners in conversation. Our learned liberal and laboured human semi-readiness for “dialogue”, which combines in a wonderful way with the elementary insight that there’s really nothing to talk about, that our vocabulary is paltry and that our mouths are dry, creates phantoms. These little people of preconceptions. And that’s how it is always. In Leonardo’s sketch books, in Goya’s whims, in Pushkin’s manuscript vignettes – as if in passing, as if unwillingly, these little “preconception people”, homunculi, whose word is legion, force their way into the autonomy of the author. Brants, as opposed to many others, doesn’t rush to smother these little people with a paper press or to strike them down with an ink bottle, but invites them to dinner. And does the right thing, as maybe these are the spirits of our relatives, right here beside us – in purgatory. Miķelis Fišers goes further, where things are even worse. Using various “mental” technologies, he tries to merge with his incubi and succubi. A kind of game you don’t want to sign up for. But the call from the deep has something intoxicating and sickeningly attractive. For many. Unfortunately. Ivars Drulle also knows, though more theoretically, it seems, about those inhabitants of the deep. But a positive spirit has entered into him somehow, possibly during his time studying in the USA, which makes him look at them and on human weakness from above, like at a tragicomic puppet theatre. Something like the way that many of today’s politicians, “columnists”, financiers and military people look at humankind: I say, we’ll teach you tolerance, democracy and human rights. In Andrejs Grants’ photographs, moments have been captured which were of value (for him) there and then. That’s how it is, of course, in everybody’s photographs. But a few, with the help of some kind of unclassifiable fragment, succeed in capturing the sadness about the ephemeral emotion of that “there” and “now”. Or rather – are able to create a pattern of light and shadow which in a favour-able situation can resonate the corresponding light and shadows through to the viewer, and make them copy their own memory or image of consciousness onto the image provided by the photographer. In the case of Grants, he makes one sense, in a special way, that a camera can also be used for the creation of a work of art – in spite of, not thanks to the era of reproduction. However, the many who imitate him pretend not to notice this. Andris Breže creates “poetry” with discarded items, abandoned places and revived memories. Like all of us, with the arrival of middle age. Ever smaller seems to be the flame of that candle towards which, driven by momentum, the creative urge, that sometimes tiresome insect, is irresistibly drawn. And ever more suffocatingly this candle is smoking, covering everything with black, soft soot. But the smoke itself, despite everything, rises to the heavens. The heavens to which everyone wants to soar, if not otherwise, in their childhood dreams about what it would be like to fly like a bird. Gļebs Panteļejevs, a sculptor who works with heavy types of metal and heavy stone, the truest prisoner of gravity, despairingly, stubbornly, spitefully and in whatever other way, wants to tell us that the dream of flight is as fundamental as a gravestone. Well yes, like a myriad of dancing midges above a grave, I imagine, in the sloping rays of the evening sun. In the barely discernible breeze. But this breeze, like compassion, like a prayer sent up with a clear intention, is at the centre of Krišs Salmanis’ exposition. There’s nothing there: vertical gusts of air created by a ventilator with a piece of paper stuck to the ceiling. One could say – a sort of crude allusion, just like the video loop with the collapsed shed. The visible as transient, the invisible as permanent. Elementary. But it says it all. The most fascinating in the Purvītis Prize nominees’ exhibition were the monologues by the authors of the works which could be heard in a recording. It seemed that they were all speaking from the heart and saying what they thought. This doesn’t usually happen. Translation into English: Uldis Brūns | |
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