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| Directing Changing Installations Laura Prikule, Artist Miks Mitrēvics, Kristīne Kursiša. Carethings 05.12.2009.–03.02.2010. Riga Art Space | |
| The exhibition Carethings by artists Mika Mitrēvics and Kristīne Kursiša in the Riga Art Space Intro hall forms a united changing installation system, which in turn is composed of smaller subsystems. About-everything-in-turn As Miks Mitrēvics noted during a conversation with the artists (which took place on 16 December in the Riga Art Space – currently undergoing changes – and were moderated by art critic and theorist Anda Kļaviņa), there are only a few exhibition places in Riga that (at least partly) reflect the “white cube” principle. The discussion is about neutral space, where you don’t have to actively struggle against “unnecessary and disrupting details” such as protruding radiators, ill-placed (literally, rather than as defined by Robert Smithson) power points, doorframes and windowsills, dividing walls or sloping ceilings, nor is there the need to adapt space intended for totally different purposes and which may have become dilapidated or disused since the collapse of the USSR, often presenting the typical challenges of an industrial environment (the patina of ageing on the walls, lighting and heating issues, the fact that the location may be unknown in an artistic context). In short, a well laid out artistic environment without superfluous decorations. | |
 Miks Mitrēvics, Kristīne Kursiša. Carethings. 2010. Photo: Kristīne Kursiša | |
| Precisely two of these all too few, ideal cube “derivations” (the VKN Gallery in Spīķeri and the elongated Intro hall at the Riga Art Space) are the places where, in the period after the unveiling of Fragile Nature at the 53rd Venice Biennale (5 June, 2009), artist Miks Mitrēvics has displayed his works – in the case of Entropy Cube in cooperation, but for Carethings devising and realising the project together with Kristīne Kursiša. Why, if at all, should so much attention be paid to the “white cube”, which has been a fixture in the art world for so long (a basic form known since Platonic times, but which gained deeper significance in the context of exhibitions in the 1960’s and hence led to a new standard for exhibiting works), a process described in detail in the 1976 essay ‘Inside the White Cube’ by Brian O’Doherty? Firstly, because in the dictionaries of the language of art in which Mitrēvics’ and Kursiša’s changing installations speak, the basic definitions date from this time – the second half of the 20th century, when just about everything became possible in Western European and American exhibition spaces, from blocking the entry of viewers to literally “nothing” i.e. visual emptiness, and it seemed that for a period absolutely ANYTHING could take place in an exposition space. Robert Morris displayed stage props of the Judson Church dance theatre as independent artworks, Andy Warhol replicated pop culture, Roberts Smithson brought various rocks and stones into the gallery, as well as photos of withered trees he had planted upside down in the backwoods of America; Hans Haacke planted and grew grass, Nam June Paik displayed video monitors, and Yoko Ono wrote brief instructions for creating works – and Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made quickly gained a second lease of life. In an atmosphere of innovation heated up by political contradictions and an expanded sensation of freedom heightened by student riots, new directions in art rapidly grew and branched off like trees, creating over the next 30 years further “Amazon rainforests” and complicated “ecosystems” where 21st century art was born: fragmented, ironic, quoting, overshadowed by various corporate ties, apocalyptic and stupefying, but still sustainable. This has been demonstrated by a succession of artistic events in the first decade of this century, including the aforementioned Venice Biennale; the context it actualised – “making worlds” adds another dimension to Mitrēvics’ un Kursiša’s project, which in fact continues to develop this theme. An ideal architecture or system is almost impossible to achieve in a world overpopulated with six billion materialistic humans, neither is it possible to start from scratch in a world terrorised by global warming, dwindling resources and general banality. However, in the pared down, austere conditions of Riga Art Space this tandem of artists has produced an installation which is a growing, dripping, melting, audible, heated, lighted and partially living “system” – the Carethings series. According to the exhibition’s laconic conception, people need things only to develop and to find an acceptable justification for the performance of their everyday rituals. This is borne out by the typically transitory nature of the installation genre, because material things are often needed only for the duration of the exhibition to serve as transformers, charged with symbolic meaning, of creative inspiration into visual information. Some quite ordinary looking plant pots in yellow, blue and white buckets (here the question immediately arises of whether the aesthetically pleasing, tasteful and highly noticeable colour combination helps or hinders a clear reading of the idea of the work), a piece of ice, a dripping shelter, polythene sheeting, an electric stove and a ladder are just some of the objects used in the exhibition by the artists to generate specific feelings. They offer their own version about things appropriate to local conditions and degrees of latitude like a 21st century “grandpa’s shed” or “the plantfilled windowsill of the lady next door” (quoting Kursiša from the conversation at the Riga Art Space), and memories of late last century Latvia, when schools typically practiced a cult of botanical aesthetics by growing certain species of plants on their premises, which – in Kursiša’s view – is a local phenomenon that may still be going on in some places. | |
 Miks Mitrēvics, Kristīne Kursiša. Carethings. 2010. Photo: Kristīne Kursiša | |
| The artists have also successfully used the exhibition to present their views on local popular culture. Andy Warhol’s Campbells’s Soup cans are replaced here with plastic buckets for collecting dripping water, a stove with one heating ring, a glass thermometer with yellow caps and an electric heater, as well as somewhat unstable constructions – indoor plant holders, objects which are very popular and still widely used today. However, there is a range of factors which, in a similar way to the Fragile Nature displayed in Venice, reinforce a sense of unreality or staginess of what is happening, utilising other approaches, some of which are also characteristic of contemporary art – if we take this broad term to mean the reflection of the trends, feelings and problems of modern society in creative work. In addition to these tactics of reality as fiction, game or film should be added, firstly, the considerable dominance of the total area of the hall or “negative” space over the “positive” space occupied by the objects placed there. Secondly, the transparency as regards the sources of various sounds and other atmospheric fluctuations (we see how heat is generated, from where the “wind” blows, the source of the light, how large the area earmarked for the “development” of the plant is, how water droplets form), that is, demonstration of the controlling and restricting of the process. Thirdly, the use of totally new objects unscarred by reality to create forms which are easy to imagine in a later stage of the entropic processes – rusted, punctured or torn – seems “fictitious” and staged. As Miks Mitrēvics declares, “everyone has their own version about who the Big Director is”, but the developments reflected in the small stage managed systems (carethings) also refer to events at the macro level. The season chosen for the exhibition is also an amplification of the aforementioned factors: the outside temperature in Riga in December is the least conducive to the process of growth, and in stark contrast to the +23C shown on the thermometer inside the little “greenhouse”, the melting ice and sporadic “warmth zones” encountered whilst moving through the gallery. The powerful emotional amplitude is also marked by the coexistence and convergence of the sounds of panpipes with the soft rumbling of air heaters, and in retrospect, this is also felt in the contrast between the artificial lighting and the energy of the solar batteries used in Fragile Nature. Observing the creative processes of Mitrēvics and Kursiša over the last few years as a continuous, unified and rounded whole, we can see that one of its foundation “pillars” is the collision point between nature and civilisation, a second is the confluence of memories of the past and technologies heralding the future, while a third is the careful combination of intellectually obtained knowledge with intuitive knowledge and emotion. There is no shortage of differences in how each of the artists works, starting from how they find and implement ideas through to the feeling they achieve or want to achieve in their works, but this is what creates intrigue about what can be expected in the future from their ongoing creative interaction. There is a risk inherent in using artistic approaches more widely accepted in Western countries (their transferral and development in a local context does not always engender broad public support or resonance). In contemporary art in Latvia, and possibly other Eastern European countries, “poetic conceptualism” means walking a “thin red line” and avoiding both the pressures of rationalism and excessively long, hyperaesthetic meanderings into conditionality and relativity. The sector’s infrastructure is based on traditional, mainstream artistic values, the local cultural heritage lacks a serious, future-oriented vision for development (which Latvia as a country lacks at present), and society is depressed by the economic crisis. These are all significant hurdles that artists who practice here, or who in some way associate themselves with this place, are forced or compelled to take a position on: i.e. to identify, understand, recognise, overcome, respect, ignore, demystify, wipe out, exhibit or to isolate themselves in order to realise in the global artistic space the kind of ideas which are vitally important for its further development, rather than promoting the already well-advanced general degradation processes or neatly slotting themselves into existing categories of values and directions. The search for points of connection and harmony between the identity, attitude to life and education of people from Eastern Europe and the values and trends of Western art is probably one of the main tasks for the generation of artists that includes Miks Mitrēvics and Kristīne Kursiša. However, perhaps it is these concerns which also harbour the potential for a new avantgarde. /Translator into English: Filips Birzulis/ | |
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