Author: editor

Stem
Victor Gogly
24/04 – 23/05/2026

clock

winter as a solid reminder
otherwise our arrogance
will destroy everything
as usual
even our hopes are damaging
each breath burns calories
draw with moreish grey
I will listen
but it will cost you

– Krišjānis Zeļģis

Victor Gogly (b. 1994 in France) lives and works in Vantaa, Finland. He is a graduate of the École Supérieure d’Art et Design Le Havre-Rouen (2019). Within his work, Gogly endeavors to capture both the textural and immaterial transitions between human, non-human, and animal relationships to one another and our world. On painted canvas as well as through collage and sculpture, Gogly’s beings transform and interact with one another within spectral spaces where physical boundaries are obfuscated, and mankind’s relationship with nature is re-examined, offering the possibility for change.

He has presented his work in group exhibitions at SIC space, Helsinki (2024), DS Galerie, Paris (2025), CAC Bretigny, FR (2023), Pitted Dates, Helsinki (2023), Beaux-Arts, Paris (2022), and Jardin du Crépuscule, Montréal (2021). Gogly has also participated in several online exhibitions curated by Underground Flowers, Dharma Initiative, Church, and Solo
Show.

Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation), Riga Municipality

A terrestrial crustacean living undercrumbles of walls made from prehistoricorganisms
graphite, watercolor pencil and acrylic on canvas, 65x80cm, 2026

converge
graphite, watercolor pencil and acrylic on canvas, 30×40 cm, 2026

distributor
graphite, watercolor pencil on canvas, 100×70 cm, 2026

garden
graphite, watercolor pencil and acrylic on canvas, 20×50 cm, 2026

membrane city setup
graphite, watercolor pencil, soft pastel and acrylic on canvas, 65×81 cm, 2026

glistening germ atom
graphite, watercolor pencil, soft pastel and acrylic on canvas, 30x50cm, 2026

clock
various objects and plants in plastic box, sewing machine mechanism,variable dimensions, 2026

Photos: Līva Priedīte

Sabai Sabai
Margrieta Griestiņa
06/03 – 11/04/2026

When Murčello began to tear apart the Yucatan Peninsula with his nails, a rock that had faded in the sun and crumbled into slabs appeared. Margrieta was trapped between them, hibernating like a vinyl sticker. With tiger whiskers and axolotl eyes.

เมื่อมูร์เชลโลเริ่มใช้กรงเล็บฉีกคาบสมุทรยูกาตัน หน้าผาที่ซีดจางจากแสงแดดและแตกสลายเป็นแผ่น ๆ ก็เผยตัวออกมา ระหว่างชั้นหินนั้น มาร์กรีเอตาหลับจำศีลติดอยู่ ราวกับแผ่นไวนิลที่ถูกลอกออก มีหนวดเสือและดวงตาแอกโซลอเทิล

– Viestarts Gailītis

Margrieta, together with like-minded people, organizes MABOCA events in Madona and is part of the art collectives GolfClayderman and Shady Ladies.

During the opening there will be performances by TV Maskava and Multilux.

Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation), Riga Municipality

FAMILIAR / LĪDZBŪTNE
Agate Tūna
15/01 – 21/02/2026

What remains present when an image is transferred from one body to another?

The exhibition considers the photographic image as a familiar. Not as representation or proof, but as an accompanying form. It exists in the relationships between materials, between people, between presence and memory.

The concept of familiar (familiar spirit) refers to a non-human companion, a being that is permanently attached to a witch or other practitioner of magic. A familiar is a relationship structure based on long-term coexistence. Often this being takes the form of an animal, such as a cat, bird, dog, or toad. The exhibition offers a photographic image in this mode of coexistence, as a presence that follows and changes along with the medium.

The work is based on an analog photographic negative, with film as the original body of the image. The negative is not perceived as an intermediate stage on the way to a “finished” image. Here, photography becomes a traveler. Her journey begins the moment the film is inserted into the camera. Then she encounters light, movement, coincidences, mistakes, and moments of insight. Then it goes through development, drying, scanning, file processing, and printing. On this journey, it passes through many hands, instruments, surfaces, and technologies. At each stage, it receives an imprint. She develops scars, scratches, and grain. She can burn, become saturated, or fade.

The exhibition considers archives not as an organized system, but as an organism. As an environment where images accumulate, layer, and become semi-living. Although all images are analog, their life inevitably intersects with the digital cycle. Analog becomes ghost software. The image continues to exist in the mind, in thoughts and on screens, as a file on a hard drive, as a copy on a USB flash drive, as an attachment in an e-mail, as a backup copy. In this cycle, images disintegrate into digital dust and settle in the collective visual field. Here, the body of the photograph is digitized and becomes a data carrier, a face that contains countless passwords, access codes, and permissions. It becomes searchable, comparable, and recognizable, sometimes even confused. Similarity begins to function as a feature that opens accounts and archives.

The exhibition itself functions as a familiar to these works. It is a temporary skin, put on at a specific time and place. When it is removed, impressions remain. Surfaces, fabrics, material remnants – evidence of coexistence.

– Agate Tūna

Agate Tūna is a multidisciplinary artist from Riga, Latvia, working with analogue photography, experimental video and sound art. Her practice explores the relationship between spirituality and technology from a woman’s perspective, tracing connections between her family’s spiritual heritage, hauntology, quartz crystals and techno-specters. Photography, as a “haunted medium,” is central to her work, combining chemigrams, self-portraits, and staged compositions to create imagined spaces with constructed objects and printed fabrics, making photography itself a tactile experience.

She holds a BA in Painting (2020) and an MA from the interdisciplinary department POST (2023) at the Art Academy of Latvia, and is a graduate of the ISSP School (2022). Recent projects include a solo exhibition at gallery ASNI (Riga), group exhibitions such as reGeneration Z at Musée Photo Elysée (Lausanne), Under the Sun at TUR art space (Riga), in collaboration with art space 1646 (The Hague), and a residency at Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris). Tūna is a Futures Talent (2024), a participant of Plat(t)form at Fotomuseum Winterthur (2025).

Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation)

Kapu Svētki Stabu ielā
STEPS
31/10 – 02/11/2025

Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation)

Orange Line
Ojārs Pētersons
19/06 – 26/07/2025

Support: VKKF, Auss

Photo: Līva Priedīte

Interiors
Laura Kaminskaitė
29/05/2025

Laura Kaminskaitė (b.1984, LT) is an artist based in Vilnius. Her works take on many guises and punctuate the exhibition room or public space with poetic moments that subtly contest the boundary of materiality and immateriality. She also regularly operates as an exhibition architecture designer and collaborator on projects at home and abroad.

At 427 gallery she will present a site-specific installation emphasizing invisible events through language, abstract forms and dailiness, evoking exhibitions, scenarios, and narratives in the minds of viewers.

Photo: Līva Priedīte

The King of Beatbox
William Ludwig Lutgens
31/01 – 1/03/2025

A door ajar, a window frosted:
Strange figures gather, drawing near,
Their shadows twisted, bent and crossed,
To sip joy sauce, gone rancid here.

While deep in slumber, toxic-bound,
The horned beast dreams of glory’s sound,
His performance, a miraculous feat,
Where praise and triumph seemed complete:

btt-ktt-tbt-ktt
btt-ktt-tbt-ktt
B t K t t b K t t b K t t
b K t
PfdBdbBdbBdbPfdBdbBdbBdbPfdBdb
K f t K K f K f t K K f K f t f
B t K B t K B tKB t K tKPehKBKKBPehK hhhhh K k K

– Luīze Nežberte

William Ludwig Lutgens’ practice delves into the unconscious complexity of the human ego and the pervasive influence of images, media, and representations in our over-achieving society, intertwining these elements with dreamlike desires and symbolic meanings, exploring the fantasies that shape our understanding of reality. His work spans painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, film, and more recently, performance.

William Ludwig Lutgens completed the post-academic residency program at HISK in Ghent in 2017 and has received multiple awards, including the 2020 Gaver Prize for Painting, the 2017 Eeckman Art Prize at Bozar, and the Brussels ArtContest Prize. He has participated in residencies such as the Nanji Residency at the Seoul Museum of Art, Internationale Cité des Arts Paris, Kunstplaats VONK, and Sala D’art Jove/Hangar.
Recent solo exhibitions include De Garage/Museum Hof van Busleyden in Mechelen, Expositieruimte 38CC in Delft, Galeri Kant in Copenhagen, PLUS-ONE Gallery in Antwerp, and CIAP Kunstverein in Hasselt. He has participated in group exhibitions at Museum Schunck Heerlen, the Museum of Contemporary Art Ghent, Seoul Museum of Art, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, Z33 House of Contemporary Art, De Warande Turnhout, and Surplus Space in Wuhan. His work is internationally exhibited and part of collections such as De Bruin-Heijn, SMAK Ghent, and the Flemish Government.
Lutgens lives and works in Antwerp and is a board member of the artists’ association NICC.

Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation), Goethe – Culture Moves Europe, Flemish Government, Kunstplaats Vonk, Auss

Photos: Līva Priedīte

Insider Art Festival
Renārs Zvirgzdiņš, Slumbert Party Entertainment and Latvian Gamer Unit, Aida Šmits, Kārlis Biķernieks, Dream Management, Post Brothers
11 – 19/01/2025

Programma:
11/01 ⚱︎⚱︎⚱︎⚱︎⚱︎⚱︎⚱︎ 13:00 Felt workshop
11/01 ☘︎☘︎☘︎☘︎☘︎ 13:00-23:00 Renārs Zvirgzdiņš’ exhibition “Felt Holidays”
12/01 ☘︎☘︎☘︎☘︎☘︎ 18:00-21:00 Renārs Zvirgzdiņš’ exhibition “Felt Holidays”
14/01 ⛓︎⛓︎⛓︎⛓︎ 19:00-21:00 Slumbert Party Entertainment and Latvian Gamer Unit present: “Matrix” theatrical audioplay stream, 1st Act
15/01 ⛓︎⛓︎⛓︎⛓︎ 19:00-21:00 Slumbert Party Entertainment and Latvian Gamer Unit present: “Matrix” theatrical audioplay stream, 2nd Act
16/01 ☀︎☀︎☀︎☀︎☀︎ 18:00-21:00 Aida Šmits’ creative evening
17/01 ✴︎✴︎✴︎✴︎✴︎ 12:00-21:00 Kārlis Biķernieks’ exhibition “Secret”
18/01 ☣︎☣︎☣︎☣︎☣︎ 18:00-23:00 Dream Management: Celestial Exchange
19/01 ⚛︎⚛︎⚛︎⚛︎⚛︎ 18:00-23:00 Post Brothers: Cosmic Syndication – Frank Chu and the 12 Galaxies

Support: VKKF

Felt Holidays
Renārs Zvirgzdiņš
11-12/01

Photo: Kristaps Bušmanis

Slumbert Party Entertainment and Latvian Gamer Unit piedāvā: “Matrix” theatrical audioplay stream
14-15/01

Meetup Unlimited Create
Aida Šmits
16/01

Secret
Kārlis Biķernieks
17/01

Celestial Exchange
Dream Management
18/01

Cosmic Syndication – Frank Chu and the 12 Galaxies
Post Brothers
19/01

The Big Deal
Dzelde Mierkalne
22/11 – 21/12/2024

The Philosophy of Feasting and Emptiness
Text: Ainārs Kamoliņš

Every day I approach a seemingly different table. These small changes that I notice every day are in a way inevitable: the color is affected by light, the distance from it by shape. That is why the “real” table is unknowable. It is not for nothing that Bertrand Russell, writing in his introduction to philosophy, points out: “What we see is constantly changing as we move through space, so that here too our senses give us the truth not about the table as such, but about its appearance.” Similarly, the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl tried to understand how we know that a table is the same table. He also observed it from different perspectives and this revealed different shades of color, shapes, and the like. He pointed out that the “real” table is transcendent and constitutes itself in our consciousness thanks to memory. Each moment of observing the table connects with the previous one, memories of the table merge with the present observation. However, the unknowability of the “real” table does not yet distinguish it from other physical objects. One can ask in a Heideggerian vein: what is the table-ness of a table? Heidegger himself liked to recall Eddington’s statement that every table has a double – his childhood table and the “scientifically understood” table. The childhood table is not just a simple surface that can be scientifically described – its material, shape, color. You can see various streaks, prints, or stains on the childhood table. Through it, you can remember the games that were played on it. In short, it can reveal the childhood lifeworld. This is an aspect of the table that cannot be scientifically described. Therefore, when entering a room, the table is not perceived simply as an object, but as something at which you can sit down and work. The table is either convenient or inconvenient for the task I have chosen.

Even now, when I sit down at the table, it temporarily forms my lifeworld. Gamblers, on the other hand, probably don’t see anything at all outside of what’s happening on the roulette or card table at that moment. Of course, the table also has a shady side. Namely, cheating, dirty dealings take place under the table. There you can sometimes find those who have fallen under the table – those who can no longer participate in the table conversations and celebrations.

The table in the world creates certain lines of demarcation. Not everyone is invited to the table. The invitation separates friends from those who are not. However, the table itself creates an even more significant ontological boundary. The human lifeworld is realized at the table, while the animal world is realized in the pen. Of course, the table can also become a pen at any time. Therefore, the boundaries between the table and the pen are not stable and can easily change depending on the situation.

The table also creates a distinction between Western rationalism and Soviet or post-Soviet hopelessness. It is formed by the attitude towards an empty table. Ilya Kabakov points to the Western attitude: “Empty is a table on which nothing has yet been placed, but on which something could be placed; land that has not yet been cultivated, but which could be cultivated.” Emptiness for Western rationalists is an opportunity, a potential for creation and change. For Kabakov, on the other hand, the Soviet emptiness on the table transforms active being into active non-being. Sitting at the table causes Kabakov special stress, powerlessness, apathy and causeless horror. Even if he had set the table, the emptiness would still be present and nothing could fill it. It is not for nothing that tableiness appears in language when we ask about life: how are things? This question, as one might guess, does not always refer to whether the table is actually set.

Sources:

Kabakov Ilya. On Emptiness. – In: On Art. – Chicago UP, 2018. p.36

Rasels Bertrands. Filosofijas problēmas. – Jāņa Rozes apgāds, 2007. 10.lpp.

Husserl Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. – Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1983. p. 86-87.

Dzelde Mierkalne (1997) is a multidisciplinary artist with a background in printmaking. Based in Riga, Latvia, she has finished studies in the MA program POST at the Art Academy of Latvia. With great reverence for technique and process, Dzelde aims to overthrow technique-related artistic standards to create something new and find its place in today’s context. While reflecting on the existential fears of “world destruction”, mortality salience, and death anxiety through the lens of today’s post-irony and humour, she likes to play around with the syntheses of drawing and form.

Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation), Riga City Council

Photos: Līga Spunde

Rīma
Ieva Kraule-Kūna
27/09 – 2/11/2024

When the voice of my neighbours’ rooster rings out in the pitch-black darkness and I have to sink my feet into thick fog slippers when I get out of bed, I open my mouth wide to fill it with three months of sunshine and foreign sweat. Mrs. Pattison, Mr. Zucchini and little Pumpkin – jump, all of you, into the oven’s mouth! Feed my growling belly, lest it wake the wolves, lure the bears, and eat me!

Someone’s love is jumping into their lap – windowsills full of light courgette bodies, cupboards full of round pumpkins. Happy are the people who have country folk! Maybe when the shelves at home are bursting with autumn bounty, when the numbers on the lids of the cake jars in the cellar reach back into the distant past, when the potatoes have sprouted long octopus tentacles and the cabbage barrel is roaring in the corner, bigger than myself, then one can feel the satiety. Still, I have no cellar and an insatiable appetite drives me to stuff my mouth with a pretzel with a pumpkin with a fish with a parrot with a shoe with a dog with a sheepskin coat with the latest electrical appliance. While I stuff my giant mouth into the corner, someone equally hungry shouts with an empty mouth. When they eat, I’ll grill my horns against the wall and scream.

Put a crown of crows on my head, burn me in hot flames – may the harvest be good to the lords, may the hunger depart!

Ieva Kraule-Kūna (1987) was born in Riga. She has MA in Fine Arts from Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. She mostly produces sculptural objects using various materials (ceramics, stone, metal, etc.), accompanying them with short stories, where absurd adventures of fictive characters alternate with cockeyed interpretations of historical facts. In her works, Ieva Kraule-Kūna references fetishism, history, artisanship and aesthetics of the Soviet era while tracing the origins of both personal and collective aesthetic codes. Her most significant solo and duo exhibitions include: “Where My Cards Lay” (2021, Kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga), “Artist Crisis Center II – Tact Gear” together with Elīna Vītola (2020, P/////AKT, Amsterdam), “Hot Babas” (2019, Latvian National Museum of Art exhibition hall Arsenāls Radošā Darbnīca, Riga), “α: Deceived Deceivers” (2017, Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga), “The person you are trying to reach is not available together” with Aidan Koch (2016, Hester, New York), “Qu’est-ce que ça peut faire tout ça together” with Kaspars Groševs (2015, Shanaynay, Paris), “Nobody Dances Like That Anymore” (2014, Gallery 427, Riga), “…if all you told was turned to gold” (2014, Vita Kuben gallery, Umeå), “11 out of 10” (2013, Kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga). Most significant group exhibitions: Paris Internationale(2015, Paris), XII Baltic Triennial (2015, CAC, Vilnius), “Le fragole del Baltico” (2015, CareOf, Milan), “Lily’s Pool” (2015, Art In General, New York). She is also the recipient of the Kim? Residency Award 2017 and, in 2017, spent three months at the Gasworks residency in London. She is a finalist of the Purvītis Prize 2021. She is a co-founder of Gallery 427 in Riga and co-curated its program from 2014 to 2016, and co-headed LOW gallery from 2020 to 2022.

Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation), Riga City Council

Photos: Līga Spunde

Wished Meself was Dead
Hunter Longe
20/06 – 3/08/2024

Wished meself was dead
Or better far instead [1]
A piece of fossil coral
A 21-million-year-old spine

The past inserts a finger into a slit on the skin of the present, and pulls. [2]

My dad died one year and eleven days ago. He had cancer and in the end, when he was really suffering, he decided to do an “assisted death.” Which essentially means he took his own life by consuming a mix of substances that put him to sleep and stopped his heart. He had two sets of twin boys, I have an identical twin and my older half-brothers are identical twins as well. The four of us and our uncle, my dad’s brother, were in the room with him, singing and holding his hands as he died. It was the most transcendental experience I’ve ever had. Time slipped. Either it actually slowed down or my perception of it was totally altered. Thirteen minutes seemed like two hours.

About six months later, one of my brothers attempted suicide. His survival was a miracle and I am monumentally grateful he is alive and well and back in good health. I felt profound empathy, for I too at times, in the depths of anguish, have wished myself were dead. Needless to say, these trying experiences have greatly impacted me. Thoughts of my brother and father have been conflated with my artistic preoccupations. These days, I wonder how heavy emotions resonate on a universal level, beyond human and into the depths of geologic time. I am curious as to how the occasional yet grave desire to be dead might resonate in the fossil record, and how grief might be petrified.
Sea foam mixed with grief becomes solid [3]

My dad liked the Dubliners, who did a great rendition of the D. K. Gavan song, “Rocky Road to Dublin,” a line of which I have borrowed for the title of the exhibition. When I was a kid I didn’t care much for the song, now it hits hard. I have begun to let my emotions, along with my twin and my father become active in guiding my artistic practice. And I am making an effort to be more perceptive to the ways in which the dead influence the present and even care for the living. I want to honor them and remember them. To do so, I am “resisting the discipline of mourning and rationality.” [4] I try to recognize rationality as a myth and open myself to signs: when I cut an ammonite in half, I see a zygote splitting; the doubling of all the elements in the show are like twins; finding fossils of ancient sea creatures in the regions around Geneva makes me think of my father who would often say, “the ocean is my church.”

The work, Wave Offering, consists of an audio recording of waves made at the coast near Kalngale, which is being sent through LED lights making them flicker with the frequency of the sound. Two small solar panels placed into this light are plugged into portable speakers, converting the scintillating light back into sound. Light and sound are mediums—in the sense of an artistic medium, but also in the sense of a person or thing between two worlds, through whom the spirits of the dead are alleged to be able to contact the living. Since the advent of electricity, people have perceived messages through it from spirits or ghosts. It seems vulnerable to paranormal activity, a medium through which a less visible world beyond might occasionally make itself known. When talking about mediums in her book Our Grateful Dead, Vinciane Despret says, “they perform presentification, both in the sense of moving the past into the present and of making a presence.” [5] For me, fossils do this work too, while flickering lights bring about the feeling of a “presence,” or at least the potential presence of a presence. I’m using this synesthetic audio-visual medium to offer the sound of waves on a calm baltic sea back to my father, and back to the ancient marine life whose remains inhabit the exhibition.

Incredibly long distances of time fascinate me, probably because they are so hard to fathom. I am talking about spans of hundreds of millions of years. On the surface of the Earth, much rests from distant bygone eras which give hints to the elapse of eons, yet in order to grasp them we must rely on our imagination. It seems that time, existence and reality are matters of the imagination. Imagining the geologic and paleontologic past has forced me to question what we often refer to as “the arrow of time,” the sense that time moves unidirectionally. My questioning comes from a recognition of how the past is ever present, how entities and beings of the past still affect the present. In this way, certain objects and things seem to transcend time, existing both in the past, present and future. My work basically tries to embody this collapsed sense of time, perhaps even suggesting that our human perception of the past is somehow an alteration of it, to a degree which we might say we affect the past.

In her book Our Grateful Dead, Vinciane Despret cites Souriau on the notion of “instauration,” which is somehow to create but also to renew, to create from what already exists. “The artist, he [Souriau] says, is never the sole creator; he is ‘the instaurator of a work that comes to him but that, without him, would never proceed toward existence.'” She explains: “The work seeking existence calls on the painter, poet, or sculptor, and these have to devote themselves to bringing the work to its full completion, so it can be accomplished as a work.” [6] This feeling that the artwork has some agency of its own, that it comes from outside the artist, really resonates with my practice. For Despret, instauration also illustrates a methodology by which the dead play an active role in the lives of the living. Writer and filmmaker JF Martel notes a quite literal example: “our very language, the words we use to communicate with one another, are the relics of the dead.” [7] Consider that the petroleum remains of algae and plankton become packaging, clothes, and fuel; the calcium carbonate marine fossils of shells, bones and coral are the key ingredients of concrete; they are ancient yet integral to modernity.

For me, fossils are like gifts from the past. They inspire me. I “instaurate” with them. Once I hold them in my hands and look at them, they begin to give me ideas about how they might be incorporated into a work or installation. They are active in my practice and in becoming an artwork. Only once encountering two 21-million-year-old fossil whale vertebrae, could I have an idea of what to do with them. In the show, they are like twins in time and eyes of the past slipping into now.

I am interested in facilitating spaces or experiences in which the perception of time might be slightly altered. This effect is achieved through unusual combinations of materials and technologies—things both extremely old and rather new. One morning a few months ago, I woke up thinking of LSD, I must have dreamt of it. It occurred to me that this would be an unexpected material to combine with fossils. But I was unsure. Then a few days later, I came across an audio recording of my father describing his purchase of Owsley Stanley acid on blotter paper in 1969 and the epic trip that ensued. I took this as a sign, which led me to investigate the classic art that adorned LSD blotter paper, a “medium” of another dimension.[8]

On the work Afterlife Navigator (for Brian), the blotter tabs are adorned with the eye of Horace. I probably wouldn’t have included this iconography had I not looked up its history. In Egyptian mythology, Horace lost his eye in a battle with Set, which he then managed to get back and then give to his deceased father, Osiris, to help sustain him in the afterlife. These LSD blotter tabs are affixed directly to some of the fossils. Like this, the counterculture from which I am a descendent is put directly in relation with ancient remains, thus constituting an actual temporal slip.
I am interested in facilitating spaces or experiences in which the perception of time might be slightly altered—offering refuge from the clock-face world of capitalist modernity and segmented time. Exiting rationality a bit, sensing a time slip, the past is more likely to move into the present. Despret says: “modifications of consciousness open consciousness to another level of reality.” For me, this seems to link back to the necessity of imagination in understanding deep time and in opening up to signs and messages from the past and from the dead.

The other day in the cemetery near my studio looking intently at the paths left by some critter on a gravestone underneath a yew tree, I thought, “we are the dead.” Yet, despite my confronting death, it remains the ultimate radical mystery wavering out in the void.

References
[1] Lines borrowed from the 19th-century song “Rocky Road to Dublin” by the poet D. K. Gavan.
[2] Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974
[3] Lisa Robertson, Magenta Soul Whip, 2005
[4] Vinciane Despret, Our Grateful Dead, 2021, pg.70
[5] Ibid. pg.107
[6] Ibid. pg.8
[7] Weird Studies podcast, Jan 18, 2023, episode #138, at 1:05 min.
[8] Erik Davis, Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium, 2024
[9] Vinciane Despret, Our Grateful Dead, 2021, pg.62

Hunter Longe is originally from California (b. 1985) and currently lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, and a Master of Fine Arts from Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Recent group and solo exhibitions have been at Centre d’art de Neuchâtel (2024); Soft Opening, London (2024); Kunsthaus Langenthal (2023), Last Tango, Zurich (2023); Sonnenstube, Lugano (2023); Espace 3353, Geneva (2023); Istituto Svizzero, Rome (2022); Krone Couronne, Biel/Bienne (2022); Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2021); Musée Cantonal de Géologie, Lausanne (2019); NoMoon, New York (2019); Et al. Gallery, San Francisco (2018); LambdaLambdaLambda, Pristina (2017); Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen, Norway (2017). In 2021, a book of his writing and drawings entitled DreamOre was published by Coda Press and he was a winner of the Swiss Art Awards.

Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation), Riga City Council, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia

Photos: Līga Spunde

427 Collection
0.0.1.0.0., 3/8, Bora Akinciturk, Ēriks Apaļais, Armands Benders, Māris Bišofs, Kaspars Brambergs, Frank Boyd, Anna Ceipe, Jānis Dzirnieks, Īrisa Erbse, Ricardo van Eyk, F5, Vincenzo Ferlita, Gints Gabrāns, GolfClayderman, Inese Groševa, Kaspars Groševs, Ethan Hayes-Chute, Philip Hinge, Katrīna Ieva, Atis Izands, Mirak Jamal, Labais Dāma, Raids Kalniņš, Lev Kazachenko, Venyamin Kazachenko, kormak, Ieva Kraule-Kūna, Austra Ķimele, Albin Looström, Cian McConn, Daria Melnikova, OAOA, Luīze Nežberte, Dāvis Ozols, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Carl Palm, Ieva Putniņa, Rūdis Romanoss, Gints Rudzītis, Matīss Runtulis, Līva Rutmane, Shady Ladies, Līga Spunde, Roberts Svizenecs, Rūdolfs Štamers, Viktor Timofeev, Marta Trektere, Evita Vasiljeva, Ola Vasiljeva, Elīna Vītola, Tore Wallert, Bogna Wisniewska, Amanda Ziemele
25/04 – 8/06/2024

Like any living space, the gallery’s office gradually sprouted with abandoned, forgotten, misdelivered, bartered works of art that have grown into the 427 Collection that will mark the 10th anniversary of the space. Consisting of sketches, drawings, paintings, video and sound works, sculptures and objects, photographs, and other mediums, the collection presents itself as an ever-shifting organism with possible continuations and mutations. The collection aims to explore what it means to exhibit a number of artworks that often appear in the collection in a rather processual and spontaneous manner.

Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation), Riga City Council

Photos: Līga Spunde

Linolejija*
Hanele Zane Putniņa
15/03 – 13/04/2024

* a place where everything is made of linoleum, and where you think in linoleum.

about 23m2
2.5 – 3 mm thick linoleum crust
inhabited by linoshavings

Originally formed from seismic chisel movements and colour eruptions. Eventually, it became inhabited by linoshavings, which evolved from chisel-cut beings. It is a place where the chisel doesn’t know how to stop, like the atmosphere enveloping the surface of a linoshavingsland, at times revealing the images of a creature in the linotectonic relief.

Paper does not exist in the linocut, it does not burden this place with its fragility and weakness, with its restrictive size and its unwillingness to accept the inescapable burden of the gravity of the planet “earth” and the laws of physics. Linolejija is a firm place.

Zane Putnina lives and works in Riga. Hanele’s prints are based on mythological images from folklore and legends, which she often recreates in large-scale linocut technique. Her large-scale compositions of images alternate with modest absurdities of everyday situations, which she calls “bregellies”.
Hanele is interested in historical printmaking techniques and everything related to them. She continues her explorations into the world of linocut, taking as large a chisel as possible and trying to find a treasure among the shards of linoleum. She is rapidly approaching her first carved hectare of linoleum.

Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation), Riga City Council

Photo: Līga Spunde

Serenade of Shadows
Masha Kovtun, Olga Krykun
26/10 – 23/12/2023

Serenade of Shadows

Trauma is a strange animal. Sometimes it’s linked to a singular event. Other times it spans over long, blurry periods of time. It can be collective, but it’s always isolating. Trauma lingers. It plays the long game. It tells us we’re not safe, or that something terrible is about to happen. We wait for that thing to happen to us, and even when it doesn’t, we keep waiting. Sometimes if we wait long enough, our fears start to take shape and follow us into our waking reality. Maybe you mistake a man walking down a crowded street with a camera for a soldier with a loaded gun. Maybe every time your phone rings, you wince in anticipation of bad news. Maybe the shadows from the tree outside the window on your bedroom wall become more threatening as each nightly hour passes, and you can’t fall asleep. Your sense of the past and present is breaking, and there’s no longer a here and there, but one big same, unstable place that we’re all falling into.

But shadows can also just be shadows. If it’s so easy for them to transform into the material of our nightmares, then we can turn them into other things too, all kinds of things. For example, I’ll stretch out my arm and make the shape of a rabbit with my two fingers. You do the same, but try to make it look like a barking dog. The lamp light is soft so the shadows are a bit blurry, but it doesn’t matter anymore. We continue like this, making up our story as we go, until we finally fall asleep. 

The exhibition Serenade of Shadows is a dual effort conceived by artists Olga Krykun and Masha Kovtun. Within their work, both artists explore themes of nostalgia, longing, and an unending search for identity. More recently, they have begun to explore the physical and psychological ramifications of life during wartime. As Ukrainian artists living abroad, themes of uncertainty, isolation, and hyper-vigilance come to the fore. Serenade of Shadows is imbued with the artist’s nuanced introspections, blurring the edges of reality and escapist fantasy.

– Christina Gigliotti

Masha Kovtun (b. 1993) graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in the painting studio of Jiří Černický and Michal Novotný at the Prague UMPRUM, where she is now continuing her master’s studies in the studio of Fine Arts III under Michal Pěchouček and Dominik Gajarský. She also spent a study internship at the Angewandte in Vienna (Henning Bohl painting studio). In Ukraine, where Kovtun comes from she earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture at PGASA. She works in the medium of installation consisting of painting, video and sculpture with an emphasis on the mutual understanding of nostalgia with melancholy and the search for one’s own identity, determined by the specificity of the situation of an immigrant living in Prague for a long time. Her work relates to the theme of home in the broadest sense of the word, as a loss of intimacy and security in a world based on the endless flow of a present becoming rapidly obsolete. Masha Kovtun’s work has been presented in a number of independent galleries in the Czech Republic, as well as abroad, for example at the Lubov Gallery in New York.

Olga Krykun (b. 1994, Odesa, Ukraine) received her bachelor’s degree from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (Studio of Supermedia) and pursued her master’s degree in the Studio of Painting, which she received in 2021. Her thesis was nominated for the StartPoint Prize. During her studies, she completed international internships at T.E.I. in Athens, The Department of Photography and Audiovisual Arts, Konstfack – University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm and National Taiwan University of Arts. In 2022 she became a holder of Jindřich Chalupecký Award. Olga Krykun uses diverse types of media in her artwork, including painting, objects and video, which she subsequently assembles to create complex installations. By combining elements of fictional narratives with references to real cultural and socially relevant symbols, she invents a self-contradicting mythology of our day-and-age. She works with topics such as identity, fragmentation of society, tension as a result of the personal discrepancy, and fear as a response to that. Her practice is strongly rooted in intuition, emotion and personal experience, the elements of which are approached with a distinct visual style and specific aesthetic, making her works reminiscent of surreal visions or a kind of dreamlike trance, resulting in a highly suggestive viewer experience.

Support: VKKF, Rīgas domem Malduguns

Photo: Līga Spunde

Time’s On, Time’s Gone
Vincenzo Ferlita, Dāvis Ozols
Curators: Kaspars Groševs and Daria Meļņikova
25/08 – 30/09/2023

Vincenzo Ferlita was born in Sicily in 1990 in Santo Stefano Quisquina in the province of Agrigento.

Dāvis Ozols was born in Riga in 1992.

Support: VKKF, Rīgas dome

Photo: Līga Spunde

Clump Spirit
Luīze Nežberte
20/07 – 19/08/2023

Clump Index
Text: Sophia Roxane Rohwetter

In her exhibition “Clump Spirit,” Luīze Nežberte presents a series of steel objects and scanned images that continue her interest in sculptural and spatial techniques of collecting, quoting, and collaging. If Luīze’s practice could be situated somewhere between formal experiments with the object trouvé and the disintegration of authorship through artistic appropriation, it is perhaps best described by the criminal act “theft by finding”. Luīze’s ‘clump spirits’ capture this kleptomaniac yet innocent spirit: these are objects made of a sticky support structure to which lost and found objects adhere to hold each and against each other, thereby transcending themselves and becoming one with the world. The clump spirits thus objectify a primordial, quasi-sublime state in which the integrity of the self is lost, a sense of boundless eternity, an oceanic feeling. 

In the spirit of the clump spirit, this text clings to another text, that is, Anne Boyer’s “Handbook of Disappointed Fate” and her prose poem “Crush Index” that lists, among other crushes, a tableau vivant of former crushes, subcategories of the never-to-be lover-crushes, species of crushes such as the crush of proximity and the crush of lack of proximity. The clump, is, like the crush, often too close to what it desires, and what it desires is often nothing more than a contingent object that it encounters on its way to somewhere else. IT IS EASY TO GO FROM BEING CRUSHED TO BEING CLUMPED, IT’S AS EASY AS TAKING YOUR HAND.

1. Notes toward a theory of the clump spirit, Phenomenology of the Clump Spirit, ma vie en clump.
2. Self-portrait of the clump spirit as Sigmund Freud: To work with the world of objects was to labor at the site of earliest grief. That was the infant world. What happened, first, is that you encountered a thing and then it felt good or it hurt you. This was how you found the boundaries.¹Before there were boundaries, there was a contact with the body of an other felt as one’s own, a feeling of oneness with the external world as a whole, a direct fact of a sense of the eternal, et comme océanique. While the writer and mystic Romain Rolland considered this oceanic sensation to be a religious feeling, his pen pal Sigmund Freud held that the oceanic feeling, if it exists, is a shrunken remnant of an all-encompassing primitive ego feeling from infancy, a boundless narcissism that exists up until the mother ceases breastfeeding. The clump spirit returns to the mother’s lost breast to suck up a last supper.
3. Self-portrait of the clump spirit as an appropriation artist and a copying machine, possibly one known as Lutz Bacher: All you have done to form your practice as an artist extended itself outward toward the heavens. Whatever it was you pursued in the arrangement and alteration of objects and environments until this point has been a telescopic extension.² Perhaps artmaking is an attempt to return to the religious spirit of the oceanic feeling and to extend, through the appropriation and incorporation of objects, outward toward the heavens. The clump spirit artist moves between readymade and object trouvé, picking up objects and concepts off dirty streets and white gallery walls. The clump spirit artist is a gracious thief, an incurable criminal who follows a kleptomaniac desire as a symbolic compensation for an actual or anticipated loss. I like, when, at the end of “Pick Pocket,” the pilferer Michel says to his lover: “Oh, Jeanne, to reach you at last, what a strange path I had to take,” as if kleptomania was a detour on the highway to love.
4. Regarding the clump spirits of toxic attachments, these subcategories: the-clump-spirit-of-toxic-attachments of the objects found in your grandfather’s garage that promise no inherited wealth but recall remnants of repressed intergenerational family trauma; the-clump-spirit-of-toxic-attachments of personal possessions that is less an intimate representation of a life lived among things than an archive of the deadly movements of global capital, the-clump-spirit-of-toxic-attachments that teaches that attachment is not always toxic and often less tight than it appears, that the libido is as unstable as it is sticky (Freud calls this “die Klebrigkeit der Libido”).
5. Some species of clump spirits: the clump spirit of excessive decadence, the clump spirit of dust and dirty hands, the clump spirit of all the lost objects that once caused and then ended your desire, the clump spirit that sticks too hard, the clump spirit that falls apart, the clump spirit of proximity, the clump spirit of lack of proximity, the clump spirit that floods itself with the vast oceanic tides of the marketplace and false feeling and scripted hellos and the aerosolized and the ambulatory and shipping containers and social practice and smile scanners³, the clump spirit that leads with detachment and ends with adhesion, the clump spirit that leads with adhesion and ends with detachment, the clump spirit that feels like it isn’t enough, the clump spirit of the heaviness of the feeling of the too-muchness of the world, such as the heavy feeling of the too-muchness of asphalt, or of amphitheaters, soda bottles, modular furniture, or orange traffic cones⁴, the clump spirit of fighting spirits.
6. If the world beyond the crush moves somewhere between romantic love and armed cells, the world beyond the clump spirit is the clump spirit itself. We can’t go three hours without encountering obstacles in our backs. We move within repulsing and adhesive bodies whose sensations constantly draw us toward other bodies, also repulsing and adhesive.⁵

1 Anne Boyer, A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, p. 145.

2 Anne Boyer, A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, p. 148f.

3 Anne Boyer, A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, p. 214.

4 Anne Boyer, A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, p. 136.

5 Anne Boyer, A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, p. 105.

Luīze Nežberte (b. 1998 in Riga, Latvia) lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

Support: VKKF, Rīgas dome

Photos: Līga Spunde

Torņakalns’ Drive
Ieva Putniņa
7/06 – 8/07/2023

Tina Turner’s “It’s simply the best” plays from the next room. That is enough for Ieva to have woken up and already got out of bed! “Well, this magical day has begun!” Ieva with 5 camels and 3 blind people (the number of steps) reaches the coffee machine, which it turns out Zane and Putriņa have put there during the night, non-stop rummaging in the workshop and drinking coffee. “Heh, heh, that’s nothing,” thinks Ieva, “I can pour coffee beans into my mouth and chew them properly”.
And it’s done.
After drinking coffee, Ieva starts packing her jeep full of painting supplies and CDs. “You never know how long the road will be, it’s better to take more music,” Ieva thinks wisely.
After throwing only 2 circles around Torņkalns, Ieva realizes that everything is so abnormally beautiful, so she quickly turns the corner to the right, easily jumps over the curb and enters the nearby snake grove to paint.
This exhibition features paintings where the study of nature competes with the imagination.

— Margrieta Griestiņa

Ieva Putniņa’s range of interests is wide – painting, animation, cinema, performance. Visually, her works are often reminiscent of older art traditions, but the paradoxical plot twists allow them to be located in a completely modern world. Ieva likes to create props to such a degree of reality that you only have to touch them to realize that they are not edible or usable (but maybe they are?). Ieva is a teacher at the Janis Rozentāls Art School. She has exhibited in Low gallery, Maboca festival, Ag Gallery, Riga Circus Elephant Hall and elsewhere.

Support: VKKF, Rīgas dome

Photos: Līga Spunde

Mailbox Nr. 12
Ēriks Apaļais
28/04 – 27/05

Solo exhibition “Mailbox No. 12” by Ēriks Apaļais invites the audience to a gathering of the painter’s latest works in the candid space of the 427 gallery. At the artist’s grand exhibition, which offered an overview of his work to date at the Latvian National Art Museum in early 2020, visitors could enter the painting series “Memory Object”, in which Apaļais created image models, trying to understand the meanings of autobiographical characters – the paintings functioned as maps of the psyche, in which the artist’s process of explorations was absorbed. In the “Memory Object” paintings, Apaļais discovered that the character as an object of memory is a construction that can be abstracted pictorially, softening the meanings of the experiences attached to the characters.
“Postcard No. 12” offers opportunities for new revelations of how to treat memory objects after their meanings have been critically interrogated, moving from the relativization of characters to an experience in which memory objects are transformed through their states of awareness. In the series, the family characters (mom, dad and sister) are in a dynamic relationship that opens up the possibility of new interactions and an open field for connections and additions of experiences.

Ēriks Apaļais (b. 1981) mainly works in painting and has participated in international exhibitions since 2008. Notable exhibitions: Family, Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga (2020; Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, Riga International Biennial Of Contemporary Art, Riga (2018); Stolichnaya and Snowmen, Art Cologne, Cologne, Germany (2018); Dedication, Exploitation & Haute Collaboration, Silberkuppe Gallery, Berlin (2017); Inscribed Silhouettes, Galerie Vera Munro, Hamburg (2014). The artist has been awarded the Karl H. Ditze-Preis for best diploma, the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, Germany (2011) and DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) award for excellence. In 2011 has been nominated for Ars Viva 11/12 prize. Ēriks Apaļais has received master’s degree in arts from the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg as a student of Prof. Andreas Slominski, Germany (2011).

Support: VKKF, Riga City Council

Photos: Līga Spunde

Mr. Greedy CBD Coffee Shop
9/12/2022 – 3/03/2023

Responding to the current twists and turns of Latvian cultural funding, it is time to change, so we invite you to 427 x Mr. Greedy CBD Coffee Shop opening on Friday, December 9th from 19:00 to 22:00.

The shop will also be complemented by researched works of art, available for purchase or for viewing pleasure. Invited artists: Uģis Albiņš, Armands Benders, CHOLAISIS, Kārlis Biķernieks, Margrieta Griestiņa, Kaspars Groševs, Raids Kalniņš, Latvania, Lazybra, Anna Malicka, Dzelde Mierkalne, Lauma Muižarāja, Shady Ladies, Klára Švandová (Shelter of Trust), Viktor Timofeev, Xozusia and others that will appear (or disappear) over time.

Photos: Līga Spunde

Denim
Jaakko Pallasvuo
17/03 – 15/04/2023

i’m wOrKiNg oN SoMe jEaNs

I’M WoRkInG WiTh sEcOnD HaNd cLoThInG

I ThOuGhT I WaS PlAcInG MySeLf iN A CoNvErSaTiOn wItH FaShIoN

wHaT’S FuNnY AbOuT FaShIoN? iLlUsIoNs aRe fUnNy

CoNcEcPtS ArE FuNnY

sErIoUsNeSs iS FuNnY

lOvE Is nOt fUnNy

dEeP LoVe aNd dEdIcAtIoN ArE NoT ThAt fUnNy

oBsEsSiOn iS (iN A WaY) fUnNy

i’m wOrKiNg oN ThE JeAnS FoR An eXhIbItIoN In rIgA

Jaakko Pallasvuo (b. 1333) is an artist living and working in Helsinki. Pallasvuo’s work has been exhibited at Documenta 15, CCA Derry~Londonderry, American Medium, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and New York Film Festival, among other places. Pallasvuo’s comics for the instagram account avocado_ibuprofen were recently collected into a book by Chicago-based publisher Perfectly Acceptable Press.

Support: VKKF, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Finnish Art Society

Photos: Līga Spunde

Tempo Tempo
Albin Looström
23/09 – 5/11/2022

We enter the space and we sense things have happened here. Even before the fireplace. In a time
zone that exists parallel or sideways and yet shares environments, the piping systems and even
household items with the one we are supposedly in currently. We may feel some unexplainable
longing for that world where paintings and objects that seem to move along and make faces. Do you
reply with a wink?

Support: VKKF

Photos: Līga Spunde

Dreams and Cocktails
Raids Kalniņš and Shady Ladies
Curator: Kaspars Groševs
17/06 – 30/07/2022

We started with fish, wrapped up and served with generosity. We wandered through Malenia to Courland, from Prague to Vērmane Garden. Occasions of meeting – always sporadic, yet fruitful, with sediments that were floating over the waves and caught mid-air. While listening to the voice of Mārīte Veisberga, we drew strokes and debris in an imagined happening, that after all reveal themselves as a conversation between materials and threads.
-KG

Support: VKKF

Photos: Līga Spunde

Ⓗ ᴣ⎣⎣
ᴤℙ◎☈†ϟ

is made from our repeated hits at the grid wire cage when star blinded and spinning we kept poking the motherland-and-,,aend/end-end
through shared antipower accelerations upwards
circling the core
in the bottled static electRIXcity with light at the end of the freshly burned barrel
we turn the blocked underwater signals into Big Hertz of bowed strings

seventy stabu street
4/20/2022/427 – 5/20/2022

nutritional value 236kJ
[ chupakabra + 0.0.01.0.0 + robertsbliezais97 + simba.20 + snarkans + CHOLAISIS + andrejspoikans11 + glociks + eternalusa +++]

Support: VKKF