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| How about a cup of tea? Jana Kukaine, Art Critic Andris Eglītis. The Order of Things 23.04.-31.05.2009. Creative workshop of the Latvian National Museum of Art exhibition hall Arsenāls | |
 Andris Eglītis. Luxury Replica (...and the tallest pines after breaking...). Fragment. Photo: Martins Vizbulis | |
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I felt genuine pleasure at the solo exhibition of Andris Eglītis - not only for its visual meaningfulness, but also for its conceptual foundation, which invokes both Saint Augustine and, indirectly, Michel Foucault (although this reference is less obvious, as the work quoted in the title is better known in Latvian under the title Words and Things). The three questions, in their turn, formulated by the artist himself, namely, "Where does it come from?", "What is it?" and "What is it for?" in their monumentality and topicality for art are similar to other questions, equally significant, asked in his time by Emmanuel Kant, and these were: "What can I know?", "What ought I to do?" and "What may I hope?" It is significant that, as the story goes, residents of the town were able to set their clocks by Kant's daily strolls, so regular were the philosopher's habits. Consequently, this magnificent threesome could be taken as a stepping off point which leads to a more complete understanding of the order of things, further expanded by the artist's answers. They are tinged with good-natured humour, approaching a witty and ironic comment on art criticism, art theory, the artist as the author of a piece of art, etc. The exhibition, however, is neither a parody nor a joke, but rather melancholy and very humane. It seems that the phrase "the order of things" is used by the artist to denote situations and states, in other words, the substance (which could be similar to plasticine, or perhaps to vapour rising from a steaming cup of tea) of which human lives are made. The obvious change in form - instead of large scale paintings, Andris Eglītis has opted for narrow discreetness offered by the small surfaces of alternately arranged paintings - corresponds to an equally symbolic gaze into the depths and into oneself. Solid architectural structures and open perspectives of public places have been replaced by the contents of life hidden from other people by thick and dark curtains of a residence in Cité, Paris. Eglītis marks out a space where the viewer's eye roams freely, accidentally encountering an object or a situation which will be neither unambiguous nor public ever again. In the language of random interior objects and of fragmented daily life scenes the painter narrates a subjective experience of time and space, slightly lonely, even claustrophobic. This sensation is reinforced by the exhibition room, now deprived of windows and on the opening day filled with the acrid vapours of paints, which might be a good illustration to the phrase: "I feel sick from talking about relationships". | |
 Andris Eglītis. Painting No.61. From the series "The Order of Things". Oil on canvas. 42,5x45,5cm. 2008. Photo from the Andris Eglītis' private archive | |
| Human presence can be felt in the small, seemingly unfinished, sometimes only scantily sketched paintings, and it is not difficult to construe the lives, daily chores and occupations of the dwellers of these ascetic rooms. The most significant, it seems, remains at the level of the unsaid, despite the fact that it is unmistakably felt - both the desire and the inevitability mentioned by the artist in his answer to the first question. The small pieces from which Eglītis assembles his puzzle are held together by rather weak links; for good reason a couple of paintings are barely sketched in or, as they seemed to me, left empty for the viewer to fill with their own imagination, visualising for themselves the next episode of the story. | |
| It is pleasing to be aware that the exhibition pieces all have the same tonality, leaving a convincing impression, that is, fulfilling the condition of credibility, albeit having lost the criterion of objectiveness which normally goes with the word "order". Hence the exhibition urges contemplation on methods and practices - religious, intuitive or quotidian - which have been elaborated with the aim of handling the chaos which governs the domains where it is not easy at all to wipe away dust or arrange things in a row. Here I would like to make a reference to Angela Carter's Wise Children, recently translated into Latvian, and her excellent advice for extreme situations: "I think that a cup of tea would come in useful for all of us right now." Yet another surprise lies in store for the viewer, however, and that is the second (or the first) part of the exhibition. Upstairs, in the anteroom of the Creative Workshop, the artist displays an impressive, corporeal installation with a strong smell of timber, or as he himself calls it, a sculptural formation - Luxury Replica, which alludes to the first line of a famous poem by Rainis, to Latvian identity, to the aesthetics of modern design and to modern lifestyle. One is fascinated by the size of the installation, the tactile surfaces, the combination of familiar forms with an imaginary function. The contrast with the cycle of paintings is fairly striking; besides, from now on it will not be so easy to refer to Andris Eglītis as a painter only, and the cup of tea can also be laced with a shot of vodka. /Translator into English: Sarmīte Lietuviete/ | |
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