Andris Eglītis. Exhibition. Some Instances of Encounters between Imagination and Matter
From 24 August to 3 November 2024, the Exhibition by Andris Eglītis will take place at the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga (Jaņa Rozentāla laukums 1) discovering some encounters of imagination and matter.
Andris Eglītis is one of the most prominent Latvian painters of his generation who also works with installation, sculpture and building. His painting neither demonstrates nor represents – it explores human beings and nature in their pre-hierarchical relationship. The artist’s gaze eschews judging images from an anthropocentric perspective, and his choice of material relies on the senses as opposed to intellectual considerations.
Perhaps the most significant feature of author’s painting is his interest in colour as a substance in its own right. Eglītis does not perceive colour merely as a tone – he listens to its story and gives it a voice, working in close collaboration with everything that surrounds him. When painting nature, artist allows it to be present in the process – the soil or algae that Andris Eglītis incorporates into the composition become active participants in his work. As artist listens deeply to the environment and avoids passing aesthetic judgements upon it, he is able to look into the very essence of painting. Espousing the unity between the painter and the painted, Andris Eglītis achieves probably the most radical form of landscape painting.
Just like Savvaļa open-air art space, which Eglītis initiated, Exhibition is built as a depiction of his painting process and encompasses three different facets thereof: painterly observation, collaboration with the forces and materials of nature, the initiation of collective situations. The inquiries into forms of cooperation with both Latvian and foreign artists that take place in Savvaļa are directed not so much towards creating collaborative works as towards working independently in a shared territory. The making of this Exhibition is a similar collective experiment, where there’s a collectively negotiated goal but also enough freedom for the creative choices of everyone involved. Of equal importance here is the concept of “exhibition” – a format popular in Western culture for gaining specific spatial experience, as well as the process in which it’s being made – an emergence of an ecosystem and collective consciousness.
The form and content of certain Exhibition is shaped by a variety of creatives and the art objects themselves: Andris Eglītis’ new works combine in conversation with earlier painting series and works by invited artists. The basis of the exposition is formed by the large-scale series Some Instances of Encounters between Imagination and Matter (started in 2010) and Through the Darkness (started in 2022), supplemented by works from the series Order of Things (2009), Earthworks (2011), Specific Chaos (2012), Dirty Modernism (2014), Transition (2016), Roots and Plastics (2016), and Reflections (2020). In addition to the paintings, new interpretations of sculptural and architectural constructions created and co-created by Eglītis are also on view (an installation from the exhibition at ArtBrussels (2019), Playground for Accepting Your Mortality (2019), Fragment No. 2 (2021), Prototype of the Gray Cube (2022)).
Moreover, the visitor will find in the museum The Dictionary of Fascination by Andris Eglītis – a collection of various objects with painterly potential, along with installations that use materials that have previously contributed to other works of art. The plywood floor is an example of this, showing traces of the painting process; it was built specifically for making large-scale paintings for the opera Hamlet (composer Jānis Kalniņš, commissioned by Latvian National Opera and Ballet, 2023). One of the compositions created for Hamlet is on display in the LNMA’s third-floor foyer, offering a novel close-up encounter with the scale of stage painting.
The exhibition is organized by the Latvian National Museum of Art and Kitija Vasiļjeva, a creative producer of contemporary culture events.
About the artist
Andris Eglītis was born in 1981, lives and works in Riga and the Savvaļa open-air art space. Since 2008, artist has held more than 20 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 30 important group exhibitions in Latvia, Belgium, Lithuania, USA, India, Germany, and other countries. In 2013, he received the Purvītis Prize for the series Earthworks. In 2015, Eglītis represented Latvia at the 56th Venice Art Biennale (work Armpit, together with Katrīna Neiburga).
Andris Eglītis has designed sets for theater performances and operas as well as made commissioned paintings for the ceiling of the Festival Hall of the Latvian President’s Palace (2020) and the iron curtain of the stage at the Latvian National Opera and Ballet (2023). In 2020, Eglītis and a group of like-minded people founded the outdoor art space Savvaļa in his studio in Drusti municipality, and he is one of its organizers.
Text by Aleksejs Beļeckis
Exhibition supported by State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, Arctic Paper, Matīss Eduards Āboliņš, Oleg Burov, Uldis Cērps, Antra Priede, Kārlis Vērdiņš, Jānis Ozoliņš, Aigars Zelmenis
The Newspaper created for the exhibition is available here.
