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| Nests of Thought and Bridges of Bliss Raimonds Kalējs, Art Historian Phenomenon: An exhibition by Ivars Drulle and Māris Grosbahs 21.03.-19.04.2009. Riga Art Space | |
| For the artists of a less traditional inclination, Riga Art Space is like Mecca is to Muslim pilgrims, because it welcomes the most innovative and conceptual expressions of imagination and creative thought. Perhaps this is indirectly to do with the literally underground location of the premises, and the generally revolutionary way this exhibition hall was taken under the wing of culture, fighting off mercantile parking lot proprietors - although the qualitatively multicultural tendency is probably down to the professional and steadfast work of the Art Space event curators, who don't judge a good art/culture project by its compliance with defined canons and affiliation with some mythically prioritised medium.
This holds true on this occasion also, with the large hall of Riga Art Space hosting Phenomenon, the joint project of two young artists, Ivars Drulle and Māris Grosbahs. Its conceptually provocative premise is most clearly expressed in their exhibition statement: "The project's task is to successfully arrange a multilayered exhibit in a way that should create an atmosphere where the space will not be overcrowded and where its observation would provoke reflection on society, mass insanity and information overload - juxtaposed against loneliness and the impossibility of true conversation." This altogether convincing message is intriguing enough to make any selfrespecting observer of current art trends rush to evaluate the "juxta-positions" profferred, which are exhibited in the guise of spatial objects, sounds, lighting, photographs and video works. | |
 Ivars Drulle. Barbecue (An angry crab, a rusty shell from World War 2, a bankrupt businessman and a octopus, veteran of the sea battles, with five legs). Model: Stomax, paint. 40x18x15cm. 2008. Publicity photo | |
| Ivars Drulle, who after his studies in the U.S. has added a sound component to his already vast array of sculpting materials, now focuses even more on a purely conceptual feeling of expressing creative ideas through symbolically recognisable elements. In this case, his missive has been split into three easily discernible segments of the exhibit: painted figurines which resemble characters from puppet animation films, spatial and filigree-fine bridge structures executed with virtuoso craftsmanship, video and photo material which adds movement to the static quality of the abovementioned objects, and, overarching it all, an array of sounds to cement the impressions elicited. Each of the works has its own autonomous message, story and vision, intentionally set apart from the searches for identity so common in the context of global current art, and turned into a personal perception-defined intimate essence of individuality and happiness in visually accessible installations. These are stories of dreams and loneliness, alien to the modern-day apocalyptical hyperdynamics; these are fairy tales and fantasies of scenes that are in discord with pragmatic reality and em-ploy mutually incompatible elements - the octopus and the crab in a group cooking sausages by a campfire in Barbekjū (‘Barbecue'); delicate bridges with the non-prognosticating anticipation of solitary existence as an invitation to hopeful communication in Skat, esmu salabojis tiltus... (‘Look, I've Repaired the Bridges...'); moments of ethereal bliss in Vecs vīrs klausās radio (‘Old Man Listening to the Radio') and Nu tad beidzot (‘Well then, finally'). Only formally outside of the context lie the overseas dream interpretations of the photo series Sapnis I-III (‘Dream I-III'), which shows just one molecule's worth of the assortment of countless American Dreams - grand, shiny, sunny, comfortable, white, greedily devourable etc. A separate, concluding part of Drulle's exhibit is the two-dimensional sketch Nekad nesatikšanās tilts (‘The Bridge of Never Meeting'), which notionally fits in with the concept of the exhibition, yet is actually somewhat laconic, and, it seems, proposes the hypothetical possibility of intellectual incompatibility between artist and potential spectator. | |
 Māris Grosbahs. Please Give Me a Single Original Thought, Dammit! Installation. Polypropylene, metal, spotlights, video, sound. Variable dimensions. 2009. Publicity photo | |
| The objects and installations by Māris Grosbahs also harmoni-ously integrate into the overall perspective of the exhibition. His exhibition too consists of several formally and by content separate works of art. His retrospective work Viens ir viens (‘Alone Is Alone') brings to mind his solo exhibition at the gallery of the Artists' Union some time ago, where the artist provoked his largely unseasoned audience by exhibiting enlarged copies of fragments of his own skin, making a statement about the work of art as a sort of a personification of the artist. Grosbahs' Robežlīnijas (‘Borderlines') is one of the components of a larger project; this collection of footprints of state border trespassers cast in pink plastic polymer and created by border guards during the Soviet era expressively fixes an original, timeless record of a particular age. Conceptually fine in its realisation is the aestheticized reanimation of a film reel found in a rubbish dump in Nevajadzīgā dokumentācija. Ceļojums (‘The Unnecessary Record. Journey'). The overturned nests of thought, in turn, pose a sceptically rhetorical question regarding the uniqueness of creative potential in the most large-scale of all the exhibited works, Lūdzu, dod man, idritvai-kociņ, vienu oriģinālu domu! (‘Please Give Me a Single Original Thought, Dammit!'), which provokes serious reflection on the subject of the endless phenomena of the galaxies of artistic inspiration.
All in all the exhibition creates an impression that is eclectic but, formal oversaturation notwithstanding, uniform in its message. In the labyrinth of stories it offers, each and every one can find their own landmarks to help them find their way to the nests of thought or bridges of bliss. /Translator into English: Līva Ozola/ | |
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