Aija Zariņa, Kaspars Brambergs, Ginters Krumholcs, Artūrs Virtmanis
Rīga Art Space, Kungu Street 3
03.02. - 26.03.2017
In Latvian one may encounter a traditional phrase, "no laika gala". It means – from the beginning of time, from times immemorial. This phraseological unit as an element of language with an additional semantic layer functions only in a particular usage. Outside, for example, in the title of the exhibition, “no laika gala” can also be understood and interpreted as – “beginning at the end of time”. "End" is the most common synonym for the word “gals”.
The phrase “no laika gala” expresses the concept of time as a segment or ray, where two points – the initial point and the end point, or at least one of them – are fixed. A point marks the boundary between “before” and “after”.
If we consider time as a period, an era in art, this imaginary point – either yet to come or already gone – is of critical importance. In the rhetoric of modern art, the avant-garde, contemporary art it marks the border between the old and the new – times past and the current time, which will continue into the future. Meanwhile the theories whose markers are grouped together by the prefix "post" – from postmodernism to the recent concepts of post-media and post-truth – refer to the preceding periods of time as completed entities.
In Latvian art, due to its specific cultural situation, a movement discernible from the end of time is formed by an apocalyptic worldview where the current time is revealed as receding.
The exhibition presents artists for whom boundaries between different periods of time are not insurmountable obstacles. They choose subjects with immense potential for generalisation and are influenced by forms from the previous centuries, simultaneously offering unmistakably original and contemporary solutions.
Vilnis Vējš, curator of the exhibition.
More information:
Luīze Lismane
Rīga Art Space
Project Manager
Phone: +371 29386903
Web: makslastelpa.lv