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Inga Meldere
Youth, 2024
UV print, oil on canvas
60 x 50 cm
Inga Meldere and Luīze Nežberte
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SUNPOLES
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KIM? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, Latvia 20.9 - 17.11.2024
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Kim? Contemporary Art Centre’s autumn season exhibition
programme opens with a special collaboration: a spatial
installation by Inga Meldere and Luīze Nežberte, encom-
passing newly created works by both artists, as well as
works never previously exhibited in Latvia. The exhibition
space includes several series of works: sculptures, instal-
lations, drawings and paintings which study and reflect
regional, social and culture-historical details. These series
of works establish a dialogue between the practices of two
artists from different generations, which reflect the rebirth
of narrative in visual art, an ethically grounded approach to
matter and respect towards the heritage of the past.
When beginning to prepare the exhibition, Meldere
and Nežberte researched the architectural heritage, which
follows from the work of Latvian architect and ethnogra-
pher, founder of the Ethnographic Open-Air Museum of
Latvia, Pauls Kundziņš (1888–1983). Kundziņš’s unique
contribution consisted of studying and preserving for future
generations important architectural elements, such as the
so-called “sun-shaped” (“sauļotās”) columns in Latvian
wooden architecture from the 18th century, which are
noteworthy as historically significant formal exercises,
and which furthermore open the way towards a search for
parallels, comparisons and context with “idea fields” on a
register similar to those seen, for example, in modernist
artist Constantin Brancusi’s (1876–1957) Endless Column.
In her individual practice, Meldere is preoccupied
with abstracted and poetic painterly investigations – “hand
exercises” – based on what she has observed as part of
her daily routine, read, or noticed on her smartphone.
References to what has been experienced are interpreted
visually: paraphrased and approximated in fragmentary
oil-on-paper sketches of seemingly recognisable objects
or creatures. Printed on canvas and articulated in spa-
tial installations, these references conjure up a variety of
surreal situations. Employing interdisciplinary, innovatory
and speculative approaches borrowed from her education
in painting conservation and contemporary art, Meldere
delves into tracing transience, and into questions touching
on social history, authenticity and microhistories.
Meanwhile, Nežberte, in her series of works
included in the exhibition, takes up the conceptual thread
related to forms of vernacular architecture by making sculp-
tures. These are column-like vertical structures assembled
from modular elements, their forms borrowed from the
sketches Kundziņš developed for the bandstand of the
1926 Song Festival, as well as from stylised replicas of the
columns from the first state-protected cultural monument
in Latvia – the Community House of the Congregation of
Moravian Brethren in Gaide. By organically integrating
object, image-making and text, a series of metal sculp-
tures made specially for this exhibition uncover Nežberte’s
fascination with the techniques of collecting, quoting and
collage. These formal experiments with objet trouvé and the
dissipation of authorship through creative appropriation are
further transposed in the zine accompanying the exhibition,
which brings together inspirational and research references
in visual and textual form, as well as a specially created
literary passage by poet Raimonds Ķirķis.
Further developing collaborative practices, the
questioning of authorship and the authority of the solitary
artist figure, part of the exhibition is a collective collabo-
ration – a spatial sand installation, or “pigment room”, the
making of which involved the artists Ieva Putniņa and Elīna
Vītola. The artists use methods to extract Lake pigments
from local plants such as meadowsweet, yarrow, cow wheat,
blueberry, sea-buckthorn and birch, and to place them on
a white sand “canvas,” thus broadening the imaginative
potential of painting and showing the resources of contemporary Latvian
and Baltic flora.
As an artistically sensitive and tonally rich pres-
entation, Meldere and Nežberte’s Sunpoles also touches on
aspects of ecological, economic and social sustainability.
Reflecting on the potential announced by Symbiocene, or
reflections on humanity from outside the anthropocentric
consciousness, the exhibition highlights the necessity to
resolve the issues raised by chaos and constant change
with the aim of replanting (in ourselves) understanding
towards the interrelationship between humanity and nature.
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Curator: Zane Onckule
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Photo documentation: Ansis Starks
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With the participation of artists: Ieva Putniņa, Elīna Vītola
Text of the accompanying zine: Raimonds Ķirķis
Project management: Evita Goze
Project assistant: Katrīna Jauģiete
Communication: Žanete Liekīte
Technical team: Andris Maračkovskis, Aldis Bušs
Graphic design: Stefans Pavlovskis
Proofreading LV: Ilze Jansone
Translation ENG: Valts Miķelsons, Lauris Veips
Proofreading ENG: Will Mawhood
Exhibition mediators: Marta Andersone, Beatrise Šulte,
Marija Viņķele
Acknowledgements: Zuzāns Collection, Riežupe Sand
Caves, Terēze Juškus, Reina Semule.