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| Zane Veldre Dita Birkenšteina, Student, Art Academy of Latvia | |
| A year ago painter Zane Veldre (born 1986) graduated from the Painting Department at the Faculty of Visual Arts of the Art Academy of Latvia (AAL) with a Master’s degree. So far she has participated in several exhibitions, the most prominent being Pilsētas-bērni (‘The Children of the City’) at the exhibition hall Arsenāls of the Latvian National Museum of Art (2010), Migrācija (‘Migration’) at the new exhibition venue of the academy (2012) and the international contemporary art festival Survival Kit 4 at Tabakas fabrika. The works of Zane Veldre are visionary tales about observed everyday events and situations, people whom she has met, and emotions and ideas that have been engendered through direct or mediated communication. The young artist sees artistic appeal in minor daily treats such as sipping a cup of coffee, a cigarette break or time out in a coffee shop, when people switch off for a moment from the clamour and duties of work in order to chat with others and simply relax. In her works Veldre gives prominence to aesthetic attractiveness and believes that art does not necessarily have to be narrative, but rather visually evocative, and must elicit new interpretations over and over again. Although Veldre studied painting, her signature style is explicitly graphic and finely detailed, most expressively reflected in her figurative compositions. She also paints lively abstracts, where broad, clean areas of colour mingle with vigorous splashes of paint and a fine, attractive line. Perhaps it is the graphic delicacy interwoven in Zane Veldre’s paintings that could be defined as the key to the artist’s handwriting. | |
 Zane Veldre. 2012 Photo from the private archive of Zane Veldre | |
| While still studying in the academy bachelor programme, Veldre spent nearly a year in Porto (Portugal) as an Erasmus exchange student, and after that worked as an intern in an art gallery. During this period she started working with materials and formats not traditional to painting. By painting on the most diverse materials, for instance styrofoam, the format is subjected to the composition. In her Bachelor’s degree graduation work Caur miesnieka logu (‘Through the Butcher’s Window’) which was exhibited in the exhibition ‘The Children of the City’, the compositions literally trespass outside the right angled frames – they spread out onto freeform panels, where the story continues and the viewer is offered a chance to see what is usually left outside, “offscreen”. Although the compositions with their expressive characters would not be disharmonious and dry even with-out these “extensions”, they do gain a full-blooded resonance with them. It seems that the deliberate choice not to observe standard physical restrictions has encouraged Zane Veldre to agree to create illustrative wall drawings for the bar Chomsky and the bookstore Robert’s Books, at the same time establishing her own graphic identity, a unique look that cannot be mistaken for any other coffee shop, bar or store in Riga. The name of the bar indicates that the portrait on its walls is the world famous linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, whereas Robert’s Books has acquired a sizeable crowd of flamboyant characters that can be categorised, according to the artist’s definition, as lovers, losers and superstars. The illustrations of these figures vividly highlight Zane Veldre’s graphic handwriting and an ability to create and capture eloquent and even suggestive characters. The energetic line and its restless, broken rhythm serves to make even the most bored and exhausted lover or loser appear exciting and dynamic. All these unusual and slightly worn-out characters are highly evocative, vivid and multifaceted images that well represent the artist’s interest in illustration. Until now, Veldre has not tried out her hand at book illustration (though she does not exclude the possibility of this for the future), yet late last year, along with several other Latvian artists, she contributed to the second issue of the local illustration magazine Popper. The issue’s topic of “patience” was enlarged upon in the broadest range of variations, demonstrating even diametrically opposing opinions about what it means to be patient. In the double-page spread illustration under the name of Zane Veldre there is a man with a weary look and a shopping bag next to a mountain of products whicht makes us understand that, in the author’s perspective, patience lies in the simple daily rituals of a city dweller: the queuing for the checkout in a super-market that often tests the limits of patience of any shopper. These illustrations once again attest to the artist’s skill in producing clean, laconic work. The contrasts of colour blocks establish an eloquent dialogue between the light, bright shopping, impatiently waiting for the moment when it will be packed into a bag, and the shopper, whose unavoidable and exhausting test of patience has literally gathered into a dark cloud. | |
 Zane Veldre. Kilo and Half of Life. Acrylic on canvas. 180x250 cm. 2012 Publicity photos Courtesy of the artist | |
| One of the qualities that Zane Veldre appreciates in art is a clear artist’s statement that is grounded not only in emotion, but also on rational considerations. She is one of those young artists who enthusiastically seek a theoretical framework for their work, referring to art historians, philosophers and writers in relation to each idea and aspect. Veldre is sceptical about artists’ intentional carelessness towards their own work, in the sense of clinging to an idea internally, an unwillingness to analyse and support creative ideas with rational foundations. She adopted the idea for her Master’s graduation work A Kilo and a Half of Life (2012) from Russian writer Daniil Kharms’ concept about a shift in the equilibrium of the Universe that is equal to one and a half kilogrammes. A Kilo and a Half of Life is a tale about the quest for harmony and quixotic efforts to find the point of equilibrium. Kharms’ idea about a shift from some absolute balance, leaving space for what may be termed accident, resonates with Veldre’s conception of art, where one of the most beautiful values in the creative process is randomness. The work A Kilo and a Half of Life came into being by the artist flirting with randomness during the painting process, and has resulted in two large-scale abstracts A Kilo and a Half of Life and That is About You. The artist refers to these and other previously started compositions as “pupae”, although the striking tracts of dark paint and active, bright splashes interwoven with tangles of delicate lines on a gentle, neutral background are more likely to create associations with the powerful blast with which these pupae have exploded, like a bullet of paint in a paintball game. The multi-layered expanse of paint imparts to the compositions a luscious and appetizing colour palette, especially effective in the areas where the subtle lines and paint drips contrast with the broad blocks of colour, creating the effect of an explosion. Currently Zane Veldre is working towards her first solo show. Although to the artist the concept of the project is clear, for now she keeps silent about it, leaving us intrigued till autumn when the exhibition will open its doors at the creative workshop of the Latvian National Museum of Art exhibition hall Arsenāls. Translation into English: Laine Kristberga | |
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