RIGA FRINGES
Stella Pelše
The collection of photo and video images of Latvia's capital city in the exhibition organised by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art on this occasion is reminiscent of a kind of chamber style event with relatively predictable results. Compared to the annual exhibitions of the second half of the 1990s, here we see far less pretensions to widening the boundaries of artistic expression; the public too seems less easy to offend with more unusual solutions, which from one aspect can only be a good thing. Nevertheless, after visiting the exhibition there was a certain sense of lack of surprise and experience of new discovery in the air; or perhaps these are only reminiscences of some past romantic modernist age? The oft-mentioned repetition of the Riga theme makes us remember last year's exhibition "Metropolis. Riga" in the atmosphere of Riga's 800 year anniversary. This, however, had a different objective - to synthesise past and present images of the city within thematic sections with the help of mainly documentary and more or less objective testimony, and only partly including artists' works "on the subject". Unlike "Metropolis. Riga", the aim of this project is definitely less pretentious and more subjective; its main function was not investigative, but what then?
|
|
|
