Daughters of the Sun, Venus, driftwood, 20 billion bacteria, mystery flavours and other hefty visions I
(didn’t) have by the sea while visiting my grandparents
Devids Mārtiņš Kasparsons
Curated by Kaspars Groševs un Irma Marija Tukāne
12/06 – 12/09/2026
They call it seasickness or, sometimes, motion sickness. It happens when conflicting signals
are being sent to your brain, so your body doesn’t really know whether it is moving or not. It
is always worse when you are not moving, but think that you are. Smug and pompous, you
bare your teeth at others, so sure you are making progress. Turns out, you’re drifting in the
sea. What a shame. Anyway, the only ailment I would call seasickness is being far away
from it. Sometimes, I travel by bus and I hate it. Once, I traveled for three days, from
Stockholm to Copenhagen on a yacht. No mermaid in sight, but I threw up as soon as I set
foot on land ho!
In a dream, the sea is only knee-deep. Not exactly. It would probably go deeper than that,
but I would not sink further. Still vast, just not deep. I decide to walk to the point where the
sky touches the sea. I would be the second boy to ever manage it. And it ended so well for
the other guy, too. So, I just walk, and I pass buoys, seagulls and drowned idiots who went
swimming during storms. But I don’t have time to chat with them, because I have places to
be. As I am about to caress the horizon with my fingertips, I wake up. It is grandma.
She has fried up potatoes with onion. There is cucumber salad on the side. I am supposed
to go find dill. Apparently from the garden, but I joke that I will look for it amidst the seaweed.
She calls me an idiot. That is fair. It will be a long summer, but a long summer always trumps
extended winter. I tell grandma we will not be able to use the dill for lunch, because I will
need to glue it on my painting to get the right hue for the horizon. She calls me an idiot the
second time. She says it lovingly.
Yesterday I decided to go see my own exhibition. I came here by bike. The city reeked and I
didn’t like what they had done with the place. There is a remarkable lack of places where
you can get dill for lunch, which is absurd in June. Having lamented my misfortune, I went
outside only to find my bike missing. I swear I didn’t come here by boat. I will have to take
the bus. If I walk, I will not get back to sea quickly enough.
Deivids Mārtiņš Kasparsons (Riga/Copenhagen), born in September 2001, is a painter. After
graduating from the Royal Danish Academy, Kasparsons has returned to Latvia and
operates from Zvejniekciems. Daughters of the Sun, Venus, driftwood, 20 billion bacteria,
mystery flavours and other hefty visions I (didn’t) have by the sea while visiting my grand
parents is the artist’s first solo exhibition that has been carefully calibrated to foreground a
visceral and unapologetic expression of self. Kasparsons claims the sea is his leitmotif and
refers to himself as a “common water strider”. His contemporary landscapes challenge
realism’s authority of the world we inhabit.
Text author: Irma Marija Tukāne
Support: VKKF (State Culture Capital Foundation), Riga Municipality
Photos: Līva Priedīte