Fermentation
Īrisa Erbse
19/11 – 18/12/2015
Gamma ray
The kernel
Meadow
Saison
Running dune
Arctic sunstone
Sloth (the sinner series)
Schwarz
Īrisa Erbse (1990) works with painting and writes poetry. She has graduated Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Lives and works in Cologne. Her previous exhibitions include “Milling” at Choice space in Cologne (2013), “Lautering” at Distribution Lorry gallery in London (2014).
Photos: Līga Spunde
Breakout. The Lost Knight
Raids Kalniņš
1/10 – 13/11/2015
…Old house
are not those places
graves move
a lot of graves
heavy steps
no sun
life is fading
damp…
damp everywhere
I SEE LIGHT!
FOREFATHERS ARE COMING!
Raids Kalniņš studied wood-sculpting at Liepāja Art Higschool and graduated from Liepāja Institute of Pedagogy. Previous exhibitions have taken place at Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga, RIXC Center for New Media Culture, Riga, and Liepāja museum. Selected group shows: “Negatnieki” at Latvian National Museum of Art Exhibition hall “Arsenāls” (2012), “Kvarķirņiks” (2010) and other projects.
Support: State Culture Capital Foundation, VKN, Veto Vīni
Photos: Līga Spunde
Agonisers
Gili Tal
6/08 – 28/08/2015
In his ‘Critique of Everyday Life’, Henry Lefebvre writes of:
‘Intense instants – it is as if they are seeking to shatter the everydayness trapped in generalized exchange. On the one hand, they affix the chain of equivalents to lived experience and daily life. On the other, they detach and shatter it. In the ´micro´, conflicts between these elements and the chains of equivalence are continually arising. Yet the ´macro’, the pressure of the market and exchange, is forever limiting these conflicts and restoring order. At certain periods, people have looked to these moments to transform existence. ‘ [1]
As media and political powers increase in centralisation and control everything around them dilapidates in near perfect reciprocity. At the same time, the reality of this experience is continually subdued by the promise of immediate or virtual presence elsewhere or by identification with a different period in time. The vital elsewhere seems most effective as possibility, as image idea, as a moment of frisson.
There is a cyclical relationship between the material world and its romanticisation that often works on a tragic / euphoric order. Even the most tired iteration of say, Americana (as seemingly mythical signifier of a period ending with the break up of the Breton Woods agreement in the early 1970s and the consequent slide to neoliberalism) is still affective in giving rise to an imagination of urban living that alters in turn the appearance of Poplar, 2015.
In literature the figure of the flâneur embodies one way of achieving transformation. The flâneur wanders round the city floating from salon to café, amusing himself and making discoveries, experiencing the city as if it were the substance of a dream. Since love is the conquest of discontinuity between individuals, there is an erotic dimension to this “losing oneself” in the crowd, or in the city. In a varying light, Marx also referred to this when he stated in the Grundrisse that Capital must “strive to tear down every spatial barrier to intercourse, i.e., to exchange, and conquer the whole earth for its market”, and it seems true that for at least three decades now the invocation of the flaneur, as agent, has led not so much to timeless experiential drift (nevermind the production of revolutionary spaces) as to what is euphemistically named regeneration.
[1] Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, Volume 3, trans. Gregory Elliot (London/New York: Verso, 1991), p. 57.
Gili Tal (b. 1983) lives in London. Her recent solo and two-person shows include “Agonisers” at Temnikova & Kasela, Tallinn (2015), Life Gallery, London, with Lena Tutunjian (2015), “Panoramic Views of the City” at Sandy Brown, Berlin (2014), “Immobilien” at Muda Mura Muri, Zurich (2014), and “Real Pain for Real People” at Lima Zulu, London (2013). She has recently participated in group shows at Kunstverein Munich, Mathew, Berlin and New York, Vilma Gold, London, and Sandy Brown, Berlin.
Photos: Kristiāna Marija Sproģe
Princess PomPom in the Villa of Falling Flowers
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy
18/06 – 1/07/2015*
Princess PomPom in the Villa of Falling Flowers presents itself as a dramatic exhaustion to the 427 gallery space. The narrative of the classic piece of Japanese Literature Genji Monogatari – The Tale of Prince Genji is being introduced as an environment study who’s protagonists are all equally degenderized and presented as an oversized scroll painting.
At the windows of the room cloudy character studies made of string hang from the ceiling. Gallery visitors are invited to enter the story through texture and not through text.
In collaboration with Kim? Contemporary Art Centre as a part of the project „Slash”.
The exhibition “Slash: In Between the Normative and the Fantasy” (curator: Kaspars Vanags) is the first time a public art institution in Latvia is turning towards “slashes” among contemporary art expression. More than 20 years had to pass since the decriminalization of homosexuality for such an exhibition, influenced by the digitalisation of personal life, to be possible – borrowing from the open-source mentality. The other, here, isn’t juxtaposed to the norm as something locked in the solitude of an individual strangeness or an impossible taboo, but as an awareness of an essentially recognizable, reachable, and modifiable aspect of personal identity.
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy (1984, New York) lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles. He completed the Rijksakademie international artist residency in Amsterdam in 2010 and his undergraduate degree at The Cooper Union School of Art, New York in 2007. Recent solo exhibitions include: “Port”, Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles; “Lutz-Kinoy’s Loose Bodies”, Elaine – Museum für Gegenwarts Kunst, Basel (2013); “Matthew’s Secret”, Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam (2013); “Werk is Free / Be Free! May Day”, Outpost, Norwich, UK (2013); and “KERAMIKOS” – a touring exhibition with Natsuko Uchino at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Kunsthalle Baden-Baden; Elaine Museum für Ge- genwarts Kunst, Basel and Villa Romana Florence (2012-2013). He has staged performances at the Kunsthalle Baden- Baden; Nomas Foundation, Rome; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the New Museum, New York. His videos have been screened at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Berlinale Film Festival; New Museum, New York; and White Chapel Gallery, London.
Support: State Culture Capital Foundation, Kim? Contemporary Art Center, VKN, Mozaīka, Valmiermuižas alus
*The exhibition was abruptly close because 427 gallery suddenly were kicked out of the space
Photos: Ansis Starks
M.S.
20/05 – 12/06/2015
One of the earliest attempts of Latvian abstract art could be the painting which was initially intended as a parody – in 1920 a group of academically oriented artists collectively (while pretending to be one person – Reinholds Kasparsons) created “bumbist” paintings with which they hoped to uncover the flop of modernism. It was a “bumbist” painting, created by Jānis Roberts Tilbergs, that encouraged M.S. to commit to art. On idle evenings he thought about what he’s seen while drawing lines and mixing colours in his mind.
On May 20th 2015 gallery 427 opened M.S.’s monograph where finally there’s a collection of everything that’s known about this unknown artist. The monograph introduces M.S.’s creative search that have been created in unknown time period and explores various mediums and themes. The artist felt enthusiasm for drawings, colours and text. His works have never been shown publicly. Luckily over the years most of M.S.’s work has traveled to artist’s friends and associates. The monograph has been supported by people who shared M.S.’s work from their collections: Joey Villemont, Ēriks Apaļsais, Mikko Kuorinki, Inga Meldere, Sebastian Rozenberg, Zoë Paul, Edgars Gluhovs, OAOA, Carl Palm, Nicholas Riis, Alex Turgeon, Jade Fourès-Varnier & Vincent de Hoÿm, Aditya Mandayam & Ada Pola (Brud), Carl Palm, Amanda Ziemele, Evita Vasiļjeva, Neil Haas, Daria Melnikova, Marius Lut, Maija Kurševa, Robin von Einsiedel, Zīle Ziemele.
The publication is supplemented with texts by Jānis Taurens, Vasīlijs Voronovs, Virginija Januškevičiūtė, Valentinas Klimašauskas.
M.S. is born in 80’s, he studied at O. Kalpaks Riga Folk Art Primary School and Riga School of Design and Art, however he didn’t pursue art in the university. M.S. spends his days building practical constructions and is a devoted American football player.
Photos: Raul Paul
Intermission
Henning Lundkvist
While the gallery space was between exhibitions, from April 20th to May 20th, the website of Four To Seven was devoted to Intermission, a sound piece by Henning Lundkvist.
Glyph
Marianne Vierø
19/02 – 17/04/2015
Comprised of prints and modular wall-like structures Glyph morphs a variety of media and methods to test their defining elements as rendered through the employment of various digitized and real life brushes. Made in an analogue color darkroom the prints are done on photographic C-paper and build up from multiple exposures of filtered light. They combine projected images of exported Photoshop files with traditional photogram techniques where objects are placed directly on the surface of the paper. Although the prints are highly layered the photographic paper leaves them absolutely flat and conceals the choreography of their production. The flatness of the prints is contrasted with the lushness of the textures applied to the wall-like structures. Distributed throughout the space and worked over with a solution of pigments and plaster the structures record the syntax of every movement employed.
Marianne Vierø studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and has been a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and Triangle Arts, NYC. She has had solo shows at P/////AKT, Amsterdam (2012), Officin, Copenhagen (2013) and Fotograf Gallery, Prague (2014). She has participated in group shows such as “Architectooralooral” at 1857 (2010) and “Protein Mix” and at Henningsen Gallery, Copenhagen (2012). She is the coeditor of “Danske Kunstnerbøger/Danish Artists’ Books”, published by Møller/Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König in 2013.
Photos: Marianne Vierø
