Publication in the newspaper Kultūrzīmes, 18 XII 2024.

Supplement to Latvijas Avīze

Art historian Ingrīda Burāne

Ingrīda Burāne's cultural journey in December: on gifts and the joy of receiving

A meeting of professional like minds
(excerpt)

The exhibition “Pārmaiņas un Pārvērtības”, mounted at the gallery “Rāmis” (director Jānis Dāvis), is an unmistakable reminder of motifs of light. It gathers 11 well-known artists, each with a place and a significance of their own in the Latvian cultural field. And yet in the renovated space, well suited to painting, there is no trace of the known and the recognisable: instead there are new discoveries to be grasped, examined and lived through, in each artist's widening of the limits of their means of expression.

Ritums Ivanovs's layerings of colour and the inexhaustibility of his textures (!); Madara Gulbis's meditative space, which lets you breathe in and out freely and deeply (a function of life!) in one rhythm with the free flow of the colour (oil!); the joy of Dita Lūse's “Garās ēnas” and Māris Upzars's faith in “Pavasaris būs!”; Frančeska Kirke's portrait of a child and Otto Zitmanis's bitterness. The paintings of the other artists, not named here, really do announce transformations on the canvases, along the paths of individual mastery.

One more proof of how significant exhibitions made jointly by several artists are, the more so when professional like minds meet in them. Every viewer can look for changes and transformations until 10 January 2025.

Ritums Ivanovs, “Palete/ Gerhards Rihters” (2024, canvas, oil, 45 x 35).