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  1. Inga Meldere
Youth, 2024
UV print, oil on canvas
60 x 50 cm

    Inga Meldere

    Youth, 2024

    UV print, oil on canvas

    60 x 50 cm

    Inga Meldere and Luīze Nežberte

    .

    SUNPOLES

    .

    KIM? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga, Latvia  20.9 - 17.11.2024

    .

    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.

    .

    Curator: Zane Onckule

    .

    Photo documentation: Ansis Starks

    .

    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.