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| A Poetician Who Loves Reality: Andris Breže Daiga Rudzāte Artist Andris Breže was born in Riga in 1958. He graduated from the Wood-Sculpting Department of the College of Applied Art in 1977 and from the Design Department of the Latvian Academy of Art in 1984. He works in graphics, installations, objects, book illustration, painting, performance. | |
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| Inese Riņķe, the curator of the recent "Nothing Personal" exhibition in Bremen, says that for many of the participants, this was an opportunity to reflect on their art over a span of ten years - from that moment in 1989, when "Riga - Lettische Avantgarde" toured Germany, until the present day. Breže's CV in his exhibition catalogue is accompanied by a photograph that also seems to have been taken some ten years ago. A joke, carelessness or a conceptual hint that Breže hasn't changed?
In his creative autobiography in the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art archives, he mentions that the turning point in his thinking (and similarly with many of his generation of artists) came with the 1984 exhibition "Nature. Environment. Man" in St. Peter's church. Together with his partner Andra Neiburga and Valdis Ošiņš (the graphic designer who was later to design independent Latvia's new bank notes) Breže exhibited one of the most publicly debated yet also most respected works, the sculptural "Trip to the Country". Its Latvian title has ironic associations with a key work of a different period, Manet's "Déjeuner sur l'herbe". Breže's composition is formed from the body of an old post-war Russian Moskvich 401 car under whose raised bonnet there is living, green grass. However, the passengers are lifeless, even caricatured plaster figures, that to a certain extent recall the images of American pop-artist George Segal. Segal claimed that every minute of existence is wonderful and extraordinary. In his art he attempted to freeze quite everyday moments - waiting for a bus, sitting at the dinner table drinking coffee, listening to the radio... It seems that Breže is a poetician who loves reality. "An airplane is flying in the sky. Seventy tons of steel sadness." Breže has, in his time, taken part in performances and actions (together with Aigars Sparāns and S. Žeļezņovs), worked in poster art with Ojārs Pētersons and Juris Putrāms creating, as they themselves say, a 1980s "phenomenon of Latvian art" - large format screen prints. (The Ojārs Pētersons' print I obtained during some art days by the railway station subway is my relic and testimony of this phenomenon.) Breže's drawing skills are regarded as exceptional, others remember the watercolour exhibition in the exhibition hall "Latvija" where Breže's work stood out from the others on show. During the late 1980s and 1990s he was active in the field of installations creating them from objects he has found (bread trays, felt boots, photographs from headstones), natural ready-mades (coal, firewood, moss) and various mechanisms that give his objects kinetic qualities. Just as legendary as the St. Peter's church exhibition I think is the 1988 show in the Theatre Museum that featured the works of Breže, Kristaps Ģelzis, Juris Putrāms, Ojārs Pétersons and Oļegs Tillbergs. Breže calls it a "transition stage" on the way to "Riga - Lettische Avantgarde". It was here that Breže showed "Earth Managers" - hypertrophied muscle-bound labourers working with various tools that have been found and whose handles have been replaced with neon lights. To quote the master again: "They became a symbol of the Riga exhibition; German critics associated them with metaphors on the then popular Russian socialist art, but that was incorrect, because the pathos of A. B.'s work was universally human, as it is to this day." Important for Breže, I think, is the narrative work aspect that makes his dialogue with the potential art viewer full-blooded. Fellow artist Sarmīte Māliņa says that his works have a feeling uncharacteristic of the Latvian mentality, something akin to pulling out the soul. A kind of pain overflowing with irony. As in the short poem by Žebers: Standing and staring at us A small boy with stern visage Perhaps we will show him Some secret underground passage Never mind, you'll grow up soon You'll be stout as a man should be And your little girlfriend too Will no longer be able to jump among the mines. Žebers' "Tattoos" have now become a rare antique. His poetry can help us to understand Breže's art. His artistic means of expression is his manner of thinking. Breže's art legends are infinitely capacious, the selected components highly poignant and recognisable. (For example, a glass of tomato juice placed on a red draft card and alongside, a glass of water on a birth certificate exhibited in 1999 at the Latvian Artists' Union gallery.) The symbol of the images hits you like a hammer on the head. The background to his most recent work "Fountain of Friendship" - 15 white shirts like 15 sisters waving empty sleeves - is also full of meaning. During the early 90s Breže was actively using objets trouvés and natural materials. He found apparently unwanted photographs from headstones in some attic. Death brings with it sentiment and pain. Photography attempts to freeze the moment. Being both an artist and a poet at the same time, Breže constructs sad and secretive stories. Strangers' eyes in the photos silently peer into the strangers in the exhibition hall. In this context it is undoubtedly reminiscent of Christian Boltanski's 1990 work "Dead Swiss" that made use of photographs published in the local newspaper obituaries. "There is nothing more normal than the Swiss, there's no reason for them to die. Therefore these deaths are all the more terrible. They are we ourselves." That is how the artist himself described the work ten years ago. In "building" his "Musical Box" (also in 1990) that is decorated with the image of the Madonna and an anonymous portrait from a tombstone, Breže seems to invite us to place a phonograph needle on the shiny black surface of a record and listen to a funeral march. The "phonograph's" invitingly opened lid creates a quite claustrophobic mood. In his time, Breže tended to interpret textbook themes for example, Malevich's "Black Square". In the 1997 exhibition "H. Vorkals, A. Breže, O. Pētersons, J. Putrāms", Breže exhibited his "Black Square" - a spatial object with a giant mesh cage full of coal. BreΩe plays with the shiny blackness of the coal that, once illuminated, shows the nuances of black in their broadest amplitude. The master varies the size of the coals, concentrating the larger pieces in one corner thus creating a square within a square. I think that both conceptual and aesthetic qualities have been equally important in Breže's art. Every detail has been compositionally thought out, not only in the context of the work as a unified whole, but also as the interplay between space and art. And BreΩe always respects the space literally "growing" his art into a specific environment. As an example we cite his "Firewood Circle" exhibited at the Rundāle Palace. The ring shaped pile, complemented with green turf, demonstrated his feel for tonal nuances and rhythm and his ability to place the accents. He has the ability to imagine, see and compile objects into a unified and unambiguously readable laconic whole. In the mid 90s firewood is Breže's favourite raw material. "What we gain from realising the project is quickly disappearing warmth and ashes dispersed by the wind," he says justifying some project. Breže is a romantic who will, for example, use the image of the wind in an exhibition hall. In the "Latvia - XX Century Somersault. 1940-1990" exhibition this was provided by a high-powered ventilator. Many friends and acquaintances when describing Breže use the term "sophisticated", which is also a quite precise description of his art. Strange, but even his kinetic pencils draw lines with monotonous, rhythmic elegance. (We may quote Kaspars Vanags: "Witty, with a fine sense of humour.") And we are touched by the small pig-tail waving skeleton on the cover of Hitchcock's book of stories "They Bite". In his analysis of the 1992 exhibition "Quality ‘92", Wilhelm Schmidt wrote: "In the middle of the exhibition there is Andris Breže, the best artist but at the same time the most secretive. But that's his own choice." Master of the ready-made I marvel at his ability to see art in the most varied of natural products. He transforms piles of firewood into installations. He has a very sophisticated sense of colour, a sophisticated view on every thing. It is as if he gives structure to non-structured materials. And it is always connected with the special beauty of the found material. Everything in his works is perfect - the composition, idea, colour. He knows how to find. A phenomenal master of the ready-made. Inese Riņķe A bard In Latvian art Andris Breže could be compared with Boris Grebenshchikov. A bard. Take only his stinging dedication to the film forum "Arsenāls": Tra-la-la Tra-la-la The cats shat in the Arsenal. His works - Le Tatlin, Black Square, Draft Card. Birth Certificate, Flag, a felt boot in a glass case... However there is a deeply Latvian feeling in the choice of materials - wood, coal... A sophisticated draftsman. I know of no other like him. His drawing is so fine that once, when we were studying at the academy, Andra Neiburga and I thought one of his drawings was an ordinary sheet of white paper and we used it to protect the top of a table from the sharp scalpels... When Andris realised what had happened he didn't say a word. He remained silent. That was the first time I saw him. His simple documentary works may be likened to dense documentary cinema or photography. Socially poignant, touching and direct. It is as if Breže wanted to carry the whole of the Soviet era on his shoulders alone. And the works "detach" themselves from him so elegantly when we hear in the background the James Bond theme on his mobile telephone. On our last group trip to Bremen, artist Kristaps Ģelzis said: "Well Brosnan will be Brosnan." He is a good dancer and now takes delight in Katrīna Neiburga's successes in art. Sarmīte Māliņa Breže is Breže. And Žebers The right moment to get back at Breže has been missed. Not long ago they were the same size, now Toms is taller and probably more powerfully built. The plan of revenge was hatched when my son Toms was aged three, 15 years ago, and Breže, as ever, was in his youthful prime. It was after the opening of Dzintars Zilgalvis's exhibition when Breže threw my child headfirst into a pile of snow outside the Museum of Decorative and Applied Art. Toms then said: "That's what your friends are like." He crawled out of the snow, brushed himself off and calmly irate said that when he was bigger, Breže would get the same treatment. Now my child is grown up, furthermore he reads poetry and understands that Breže's synonym Žebers is also an outstanding "quality mark". (This, of course, is a reference to my all time favourite project "Quality ‘92" in the exhibition hall "Latvija" in 1992 in which Breže also participated.) I know that I think Breže is an exceptionally talented and interesting artist and a poet to boot. What I don't really know but I have heard a story that makes me smile even on the most gloomy of days. The story is told by Ojārs Pētersons that these days we hear all kinds of hero stories but the KGB, however many times they tried, they did not manage to recruit Breže. By the way, the precondition for an honest attitude to art is an honest attitude to life. Helēna Demakova A gentleman He is someone who takes responsibility. He can also do thankless jobs - for example, in Bremen he arranged our exposition, which is by no means an easy task. Breže is a gentleman through and through. I recently saw the restored installations from the "Earth Managers" series. Impressive. I am still moved by them today because I sense the naïveté that has gone from his art in later years and which I miss. His objects have a perfect and stylistic composure, but I would like to see them balancing on the edge of risk, the presence of emotion. Today, people understand his method of creating images very well; the means he uses contain information that the viewer knows. His art is characterised by a broad verbal narrative; on the other hand, the visual form is highly minimalist. The principle of contrasts. It is as if he is genuinely perfect. Aigars Bikše | |
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