We’re excited to welcome you to the opening on August 1st from 6 to 9PM!
Nu labi
Dirty Romantics
1 – 9/08/2025
DR: “Nu labi” is often used as a compromise solution – as a way to keep the peace, avoid conflict and not step out of your comfort zone. It is consent without conviction, reconciliation without struggle, and this tonal grayness embodies the spirit of the works in the exhibition. Like “Nu labi”, these works are also in an intermediate state – between excitement and fatigue, between naivety and criticism.
KG: Nu labi… But! Do you think that cats “understand what we say better than we understand them. Understand everything they want to understand,” borrowing a fragment from “Ulysses” from “Theory of Bloom” published by Tiqqun and republished by “Bolderāja”. Do cats recognize tonal grayness, taking into account the peculiarities of their vision? By the way, I am color blind.
DR: You mean a foam cat? Yes, of course. Look into its eyes. When I was a cat, I had perfect vision. I don’t remember anything about whiskers. I’m sleeping next to Bloom and Katya. How did you know you were color blind?
(excerpt from the exhibition text)
Dirty Romantics
One day in the Carpathian Mountains, Sunny Bumbulītis, also known as Enfant Terrible, met Rubber Hedgehog. The two called themselves the Dirty Romantics. Rubber Hedgehog likes to squeeze cakes and sniff interesting things. Sunny Bumbulītis likes to ride a penny board. The Dirty Romantics love to experiment, have fun, and discover the world together. This artistic duo draws inspiration from mistakes.
Kateryna Berlova (b. 1986, Dnipro) is a Ukrainian artist currently based in Berlin. Berlova received her post-graduate degree from Jan Van Eyck Academy in 2023. Her work delves into themes of repetition and trauma, which she perceives as manifestations of time or its visible traces. Berlova employs video to document repetitive, monotonous, or obsessive actions that often embody failure. Drawing from her personal experiences, she transcends the individual to explore universal ideas. Fascinated by failures, she examines how these elements challenge cinematic conventions and expand their possibilities. Berlova frequently engages methods of heightened perception, exploring the world through smell, sound, and touch. Her practice spans multiple mediums, including video, sound, painting, installation, and site-specific art.
Ivars Grāvlejs (b. 1979, Riga) is a Latvian artist and associate professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts (FAVU) in Brno. He studied photography at FAMU (the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague), and later earned a doctorate at AVU (the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague). During his studies, he transitioned from documentary photography to a conceptual approach, which led to the project Early Works. This project was published by MACK and included in the exhibition Performing for the Camera at Tate Modern in London. After his studies, Grāvlejs carried out the subversive project My Newspaper, in which, while working as a photojournalist for one of the largest newspapers in the Czech Republic, he secretly manipulated reportage photographs before they were published. His work Unknown Latvian Photography, which fictitiously describes the creative output of non-existent Latvian photographers in the context of the 20th century, is part of the collection of the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga.
Support: VKKF, FaVU, Auss