THEMATIC EXHIBITION OF CONTEMPORARY ART OF LATVIA ARTISTS "THE FOOD"

2023 August 11 - September 2 in Šiauliai art gallery, the thematic contemporary art exhibition "The Food" by Latvian artists is open.

The exhibition opens on Friday, August 11, at 5:00 p.m. Visiting the exhibition during the opening is free.

The group exhibition “Food” is an art project of three artists from Latvia: Li Bond, Gint von Kehle and Jānis Murovskis. Three artists are united by a shared aesthetic sense and passion for serigraphy (silkscreen) as one of the main forms of artistic expression, and culinary as one of the main forms of celebrating life.

Each author has it’s own artistic style, which has evolved in different directions over the years. Professor Jānis Murovskis “allows the work to happen” playing with surface, texture and color until a content association appears into the work. He is passionate winemaker and owner of a small vineyard. Gints von Kehle produces solemn figurative compositions in which a match of colors and shapes creates cinematic tension. He creates theatrical celebrations in which guests, himself, fish, cucumbers and cakes are part of performed scenography. Li Bond’s artworks is balance of the form and the content, leaving a lot of free space for imagination, she makes laconic shapes, punctuated by a fragile sense of content that the viewer must find by himself. She’s looking for the perfect bread recipe.

The events of recent years have driven many people away from being together, celebrating and Eros as a positive, life-moving force. The balance between Eros and Thanatos has fundamentally changed, so it seems important for artists to remind of the energy needed for life: the joy of being together, of meeting each other, coming together, cooking together, eating, talking and sharing. Understanding the chosen subject more broadly, both as an integral part of celebrating life, a symposium, the connection with grandparents, medicine or food for the soul, the artists would like to rebuild the disrupted balance for a moment, because the experience of food, however diverse it is, can unite us.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

LI BOND (Liena Bondare) – was born in Alūksne, Latvia in 1980. To date, Liena has had fifteen solo exhibitions, including solo shows at Norman Mainsite Contempoary, USA (2019), National Art Museum of Latvia Art hall Arsenāls (2018), gallery “Māksla XO” (2013), the Riga Art Space INTRO Hall (2011) in Latvia and Kulturspiecher Dorenthe during Munsterland Festival Part 4 (2008) in Germany. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions and projects in Latvia and abroad: including biennials and shows at MOCAK – Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow (Poland), KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn (Estonia), Horst Janssen Museum in Oldenburg (Germany), Gallery Vartai in Vilnius (Lithuania), Novas Gallery in London (UK), Contemporary Art Gallery in Opole (Poland) and had few artist residencies, including YAC, Tianjin, China (2019), Guanlan Printmaking Base, Shenzhen, China (2018) and France Masserel Center, Belgium (2007), Kloster Bentlage, Rhein, Germany (2007). Her works can be found in the collection of China Printmaking Museum (China), Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium), the Latvian National Museum of Art and Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center (Latvia).

Liena Bondare was one of the organizers and the main curator of Latvian part “Et nuit illumina la nuit” of the exhibition “EXPOSITION D’ART CONTEMPORAIN BALTE” in Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, France (2008) and contemporary printmaking exhibition “Power and man” in Novas Gallery, London, UK (2006). She has been the curator of 12 other exhibitions in Latvia and abroad.

Since 2005 till 2022, Bondare has taught drawing at the Riga School of Design and Art and from 2006 – 2009 she was a lecturer in silkscreen at the Art Academy of Latvia.

Liena Bondare lives and works in Riga, Latvia.

For more information, please visit: http://lienabondare.lv/

Jānis Murovskis – was born in Riga, Latvia in 1961. In 2012 he finished his doctoral studies at the Art Academy of Latvia. To date, Jānis has had many solo exhibitions, including solo shows at National Art Museum of Latvia (2019), Cēsis Vidzeme Concert Hall (2019), gallery “Daugava” (2017) and the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre and the National Dr. Sun Yat – sen Memorial Hall, Taipei, (Taiwan) (2016). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions and projects in Latvia and abroad: including biennials and shows at 8ht NBC Tokyo screen print biennale (Japan), Splitgraphic10 graphic biennale at Split (Croatia), Contemporary print Ikeda Art Museum (Japan), Guanlan Printmaking museum (China), Taoyan Culture Centre (Taiwan).

His works can be found in the collections of the National Dr. Sun Yat – sen Memorial Hall, Taipei, (Taiwan), the Latvian National Museum of Art and the National Library of Latvia, Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Center (Latvia), NBC Meshtec screen prints collection, Yamanashi, (Japan).

Since 2006, Murovskis is the professor and the head of the Audio – visual media art department in Art Academy of Latvia. Since 1989 he has taught silkscreen and basics of printmaking at the Art Academy of Latvia.

Jānis Murovskis lives and works in Jūrmala, Latvia.

For more information, please visit: www.murovskis.com

Gynt von Kehle (real name Gints Ozoliņš) – was born in Riga, but grew up and got to know the world in Jūrmala, Jelgava and Hamburg. As his means of creative expression, the artist has chosen serigraphy, which he perceives as a medium in which painting and monumental graphics are best combined.

After obtaining a master’s degree at the Academy of Arts of Latvia (diploma supervisor Jānis Murovskis), he began a civil servant career in the Ministry of Culture, but at the same time he also get involved in the advertising film industry and cinematography as a Prop Master and Assistant Art director. As the guide of the exhibition „Pornography” curated by the art critic and painter Vilnis Vējš (2004), he got to know the most prominent representative of the documentary play genre in Latvia, the film director Ilona Brūvere. This event largely determined the vector of von Kehle’s creativity in the future, both in creating and cultivating his individual ideas about stylistics and form, and participating in the creation of several of Brūvere’s films – as an executive producer, prop master and actor.

Along with his work on the film set, he has published as a freelance author in the Art magazine „Studija” and the web magazine „Art Territory”. In 2022, he created a series of five stories about the history of printmaking techniques for Latvian Radio 3 „Klasika”.

As a public relations manager, since 2016 he has been part of the Latvian chamber orchestra Sinfonietta Rīga led by conductor Normunds Šnē. After a break in visual arts for several years, he built an experimental serigraphy studio in 2021, named after LONO, the Hawaiian god of rain, fertility and creativity.