|
|
| Trespassers: an anatomical theatre, the “Madagascar Phenomenon” and the chronicle of the crusades Alise Tīfentāle The initiators and curators of the exhibition, Solvita Krese and Māra Traumane, have undertaken a sober scientific assignment: with surgical ruthlessness and a sterile scalpel, they have extracted a period of living time, placed it in formalin and displayed it for general inspection, together with exhaustive annotations. They have detached very carefully and left outside the anatomical theatre (the tomb, the collection, the herbarium) all that might hinder a concentrated view of the exhibits, leaving only some of the most typical symbols of the age. No sentiment, no social banter, no subjective memories of the "white bread and milk from a glass bottle" kind, no celebration of the oddities of totalitarianism, nor any masochistic delight in oppression. Only the pure thing. A sterile, faultlessly minimalist and laconic piece of work, which probably forced more than one viewer to take a new look at Latvian art of the eighties. Thus, the present task is to discuss the exhibition with the enthusiasm of a naturalist and the thirst for knowledge of an amateur historian of religion, to approach the works as if they were examples of delightful exotic plants and read the comments like a gripping chronicle of the First Crusade. Distancing oneself from life, from private memories and personal experience. Ignoring the fact that the artists represented here are either our contemporaries, who might be encountered accidentally at an exhibition opening or in an elegant bar, or else are figures already canonised as saints of Latvian contemporary art. |
| The “Butterfly Effect” and the whale bone, or Stories About Frontiers Ieva Astahovska The exhibition "Trespassers. Contemporary art of the 1980s" at the Arsenāls Exhibition Hall, 18 February to 13 March Some time ago, the seventies were in vogue, and quite recently the sixties were fashionable again, harking back to the beginnings of true pop culture, as we know it today. The "Trespassers" exhibition highlights the eighties. The main protagonist in this exhibition is the age, or, more precisely, the spirit of the age - this special, characteristic spirit, nowadays slightly dust-covered. Seemingly very familiar, but already somewhat remote, viewed almost dispassionately "from outside". For many, however, the view is perhaps not so dispassionate: for the first time in almost twenty years, works by the Latvian avant-garde of the eighties, which have chanced to be preserved (saved) in sheds, cellars and attics, have been retrieved, restored, brought back to life and presented for emotional "reassessment" after a fairly short time - but in an age that is already worlds away. Back in those days, the opening of frontiers and the world, the emotional climax accompanying it and the visions of the future, all appeared very promising to the artists, but, looking back on it all today, it remains the highest peak of recognition - part of a wave of East European art in the West, which was to surge in the first half of the nineties (but a pinnacle of achievement that art today and the youngest generations of artists can only envy.) And most of the heroes of that day have nowadays left the limelight of the art scene - like actors who've already played their star roles. |
